Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Marriage obligations are for men only

Dear Abby gives this advice today:
Remind him that when you were married he promised to be faithful to you until death do you part. From my perspective, your husband appears to be a self-serving hypocrite, and you need to decide if that's the kind of person you want to live with for the rest of your life.
No, the self-serving hypocrite is the woman who asks her husband to keep his promises until death, but she plans to bail out of the marriage at the first sign of trouble.

This advice doesn't even seem controversial. Marriage obligations are for husbands, not wives.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Student Seduction

I happened to watch the 2003 movie Student Seduction on the Lifetime TV channel. It was about a high school chemistry teacher who tries to help a student, but is then falsely accused of a sexual assault. The teacher was going to accept a plea bargain to a felony sex offense, but is ultimated vindicated when another student is persuaded to testify about a previous incident in the accuser's past.

While it seems as if the testimony would be persuasive, I don't think that it would be admissible in an American court. The rules of evidence forbid inquiries into a sex-crime accuser's past, even if the accuser has committed previous sex crimes.

Lifetime TV shows programs for women, such as predictable movies about some suffering women. I am not in the target audience. I am just wondering how many people in the target audience realize how unfair sex crime trials really are.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Sex-crimes prosecutor charged with 12 sexual offenses

Here is some news from the Oakland Calif suburbs:
MARTINEZ — State authorities charged a Contra Costa County sex crimes prosecutor with 12 felony counts Friday, claiming he raped and sodomized a fellow deputy district attorney at his Martinez home in early May, tying and binding her and using a handgun and an ice pick.

Michael Gressett, a 21-year veteran of the county district attorney's office, pleaded not guilty Friday morning and then proclaimed his innocence outside the same courthouse where he tried cases before his Oct. 2 arrest. His lawyer says the sex, if rough, was consensual.

"I can say it's been very difficult after all these years of prosecuting the bad guys," Gressett said. "The truth will come out ... I stand in the shadows of fear in a false accusation. I know the accuser knows they are not true."

Gressett remains free on $1 million bail and is scheduled to return to court Jan. 27. His accuser is identified in court papers only as "Jane Doe." Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Charles Treat ordered them to stay away from each other.

The charges include four counts of sodomy by force, three counts of forced sexual penetration, two counts of forcible rape, and single counts of oral copulation by force and false imprisonment. In the last charge, state prosecutors claim Gressett threatened a crime "which would result in death and great bodily injury to Jane Doe, with the specific intent that the statement be taken as a threat."

That threat, the charge states, "was so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to convey to Jane Doe a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution."

Deputy Attorney General Peter Flores said the charges stem from "multiple acts on the same day." Police say they took place May 8 at Gressett's home on Village Place in Martinez and that they were notified of the allegations through the district attorney's office on Sept. 26. The judge has sealed information from a search of the home.

If convicted, Gressett, 51, could face a nearly 23-year prison sentence, although with the enhancements he could also face life, Flores said. Among them, Gressett is accused of using a handgun in 10 of the counts against him. He is accused of using the ice pick in three counts, including forcible rape and forced oral copulation. According to the charges, Gressett used both a handgun and an ice pick when he falsely imprisoned Jane Doe "by force, menace, fraud and deceit ..."
So two sex-crime prosecutors have some rough sex on May 8, and the woman lodges a complaint on Sept. 26 that sounds like it came from a horror movie plot? I don't believe it. If it were true, she would have reported it the same day. She is a prosecutor herself, and she knows the law. I think that Jane Doe's name should be reported.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Parents want nosy pediatricians

A blog reports:
Pediatricians are being encouraged to add another screening test to their lifestyle assessments of the families of their young patients. Medscape just reported on a study in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics telling pediatricians that it had found eight out of ten parents would “welcome or not mind at all” their child’s doctor asking them about their alcohol use and screening them for a drinking problem. Pediatricians also read that one-third or more parents said they would similarly appreciate their child’s pediatrician reporting them to a social worker or making an appointment for them with their own doctor if he/she found they had a drinking problem.
I don't believe this. If a pediatrician asked me a bunch of questions like that, I would tell him to mind his own business and I would look for another pediatrician.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Lesbians twice as likely to be obese

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports:
Lesbians are twice as likely as heterosexual women to be overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk for obesity-related health problems and death, US researchers said.

The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, is one of the first large studies to look at obesity among lesbians.

Ulrike Boehmer of the Boston University School of Public Health and colleagues looked at a 2002 national survey of almost 6000 women, and found that lesbians were 2.69 times more likely to be overweight and 2.47 times more likely to be obese.

“Lesbians have more than twice the odds of (being) overweight,” the authors wrote. ...

“The results of these studies indicate that lesbian women have a better body image than do heterosexual women,” they wrote.
Huhh? A better body image because they are fat? I would have said the opposite.

The argument does not say whether lesbianism causes obesity, or whether obesity causes lesbianism.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?

The NY Times reports:
When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.

When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling. In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. Data collected by the Computing Research Association showed even fewer women at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering in the United States and Canada granted in 2006-7 by Ph.D.-granting institutions, down from 19 percent in 2001-2. Many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates.
The article does not mention that the job opportunities for computer scientists crashed in 2000 after govt policies flooded the market with foreign labor.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Singer complains about marriage law

Here is a web site that is bitter about California reaffirming opposite-sex
marriage law. It claims that the public was misled by the P8 advocates, and it wants to correct the matter:
They told us churches would lose the right to free speech. Lies. ...

To restore the right stolen from us, we must correct the amendment to California's constitution. To do this requires another statewide proposition. Yet how will we avoid another election season of deception, when the Mormon Church can use vast tax-free money into advancing their platform?
Strip the Mormon church of its status as a religious organization.

Thus many of the same-sex marriage advocates do indeed want to limit the free speech rights of churches who oppose same-sex marriage.



Melissa Etheridge is putting her (tax) money where her mouth is.

Responding defiantly to the passage of California's Proposition 8, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter suggested in a blog post on The Daily Beast that she will not pay her state taxes in protest of the gay-marriage ban, People reports.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood:
Melissa Etheridge says that she won't pay her California state taxes as long as she's not allowed to marry in the state. ...

But since she's not allowed to do so, she writes, "I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes, because I am not a full citizen ... There is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California." ...

Ellen DeGeneres said she celebrated Barack Obama's win Tuesday night, but decried the passage of Proposition 8. ... "Here we just had a giant step towards equality and then on the very next day, we took a giant step away," she says.
Maybe they should have voted against Obama and refuse to pay their federal taxes also. They cannot marry under federal law either, and Obama-Biden campaigned with the position that they oppose same-sex marriage.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Reporting child rape

ABC News reports:
LOS ANGELES -- For the third time in four years, California voters weighed whether doctors should be required to notify parents before performing an abortion on a minor.

In early returns, the ballot measure appeared to be splitting the vote.

Similar to laws in 35 states, Proposition 4 also requires a two-day waiting period. Voters have twice defeated very similar measures in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, 54 percent voted against it. A year later, that rose to 56 percent. ...

Opponents said Proposition 4 is a thinly disguised attempt to chip away at abortion rights.

They claimed the provision for minors who do not want their parents notified requires that the minor write a detailed statement that the health care provider must report, triggering an investigation by Child Protection Services. Many teenagers, the opponents said, would not want to disclose abuse if they knew it would lead to an investigation. ...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supported Proposition 4, while the California Teachers Association opposed it.
I am still trying to figure out why teachers would want child rape to go unreported.

California, like other states, has a Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act. Teachers and physicians are required by law to report suspected child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, and child neglect. A 14-year-old girl getting an abortion would certainly be a victim of statutory rape.

Proposition 4 has now lost, so does that mean that people are really against these child abuse reporting requirements? If teachers don't want child rape to be reported, then what do they want reported?

My guess is that this proposition only lost because the radical pro-abortion lobby spent a lot of money on misleading ads against it. Abortion business like Planned Parenthood do not want to have to report child rape. Most voters did not understand the issue.