Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes that were reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex at about the same age as other students — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

Is anyone at all surprised? I’m not!

I find the violence shown by the Muslim protestors to be far more offensive than a cartoon could ever be. A cartoon is a drawing on a piece of paper. Slogans demanding people be beheaded in revenge and setting fire to buildings is outrageous. It seems to me that the Muslim protestors are behaving in a way that was satirised by the cartoon. — Lesley Morgan, Coventry, UK

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Original Article

“The Flower Lady” who for years sang inspirational tunes and sold roses from a wheelchair on Downtown street corners died Sunday.

Inez Powell, 61, had an apparent heart attack and fell off her wheelchair at Washington and Illinois streets at shortly before 4 p.m. She was pronounced dead at Wishard Memorial Hospital. The death is natural, according to the Marion County coroner’s office.

Cold is not believed to have been a factor in Powell’s death. A deputy coroner’s report noted Powell wore several layers of warm clothing.

An autopsy is pending, but coroners suspect Powell’s long history of health problems contributed to her death. Powell had polio at age 2 and survived a serious car crash in 1991, she told The Star in 1999.

Fearing rowdiness from college basketball fans in 2000, The Indianapolis Police Department asked Powell to bring her sweet singing voice outside the RCA Dome in hopes that she’d provide a calming influence after that year’s NCAA Final Four.

“I used to be at Illinois and Washington,” Powell told The Star. “But the police told me they’d rather have me at Illinois and Maryland (across from the dome), because they say my singing calms crowds down. They don’t riot if I sing.”

I remember hearing her sing several times. She would sit in her wheelchair at the northwest corner of Maryland and Illinois, across from the Steak N’ Shake (which is probably where I was eating dinner). I don’t exactly remember any of the music, to be honest, but I remember her having quite a set of pipes because she could be heard from at least a block away, if not more.

Anyway, It makes me wonder what other interesting stories are out there. The unfortunate thing is that I tend to just avoid the people I see every day on the streets of downtown, but I think it would make for a good oral history project, none-the-less.

I think I shall start blogging some of my favorite photos from Flickr.

Can you imagine the French coming back to help save New Orleans?

https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

It’s the least anyone can do to help the situation in New Orleans, being that the entire city is being evacuated.

I read that iTunes 4.9 was released today. This is the version that Steve Jobs announced at WWDC would support podcasting.

Since I was at home this morning — working, of course — I installed it on my PowerMac and took all of my podcast feeds from Bloglines and put them in to iTunes. All I had to do was update my iPod and start listening.

I guess when it rains it pours! This is three posts in one day!

This morning a truck carrying some sort of cheese mixture overturned on Interstate 465 causing a huge backup. Looks quite messy.

“So okay, I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation and all but I don’t get how guys dress today. I mean, come on, it looks like they just fell out of bed and put on some baggy pants and take their greasy hair – ew – and cover it up with a backwards cap and we’re supposed to swoon? I don’t think so!”
– Cher (Alicia Silverstone), Clueless (1995)

• I was told yesterday afternoon that Cummins has decided to extended my contract even further, beyond June to around August. It feels good to finally have some job security again, but I am still baffled as to what they will have me do here since we’re wrapping up this packaging work.
• The first suspected case of SARS in Indiana has been reported today. The State Department of Health says that the public is at no risk.
• Last night I stayed up late attempting to install and boot NetBSD on an old PowerMac 5400/180, with relatively good results. The operating system installed flawlessly, but required a little tweaking for it to boot. The only problem is that console access can only be obtained via a serial port. I’m uncertain if this is permanent or not, but it may not be an issue once I figure out its role on my network, if any.
• I’ve spent all morning so far trying to figure out why FileMon and RegMon from SysInternals won’t operate under a non-privileged user in Windows XP. Duh! Of course they won’t run! They require administrator access! SysInternals says so. Well, at least those are two more packages I don’t have to handle later down the road.
• Last night I attended my first meeting of the Indianapolis Computer Society. Their monthly meeting included a presentation from Scott Jones who is the Chairman, President, and CEO of Escient, which is the Indianapolis-based company who owns Gracenote (formerly CDDB). He gave a good and interesting presentation regarding their company and the growing “convergence” market. Anyway, the meeting was full of a bunch of gray-hairs (old people, to you and me) and people asking questions about why their Windows XP won’t boot, during the technical support session prior to the main presentation. They also raffled off a few Windows-centric goodies, but I didn’t win shit. I haven’t decided if I’m going to attend the next meeting.

RED FIGURE: “Hi there! We’re the Mighty Mormon Power Rangers! Saying the word ‘crap’ makes the Baby Jesus cry!” ^[1]

• Here’s a photo of the building to which I’m moving on Saturday. For the first time in my life, I am going to have digital cable. Now I can waste even more time in front of the television!
• As I go through life, I am finding, even though I’m a man, this site to be incredibly relevant. (This goes out to all of the emotionally petty people in my life.)
• I’m going to be experimenting with vinum in FreeBSD tonight, as I need to setup RAID1 on what will be a new server. Here’s to me not fucking up!
• Remember the nine marines killed by Iraqi soldiers pretending to surrender? One of those nine was my age (26) and also from Indiana. He’s from an area near Warsaw, which is in the northern part of the state. Here’s an article from the Indianapolis Star.
• How about them Bulldogs? You can tell that Butler is a good school when 86% of their basketball players graduate every year while 0% (zero!) of Oklahoma’s players succeed.

CRUSADING INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: “Oh, shit. We’d better get some help from the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program.” ^[2]

_{1, 2 – Internet Oracularity #1304-01}