The Tuesday TC News Break

Just when I thought politics and the economy was too depressing for words, it turns out regular people aren’t doing too well. And when things start going bad? Well, as often as not they just get worse.

These people sound just like my next door neighbors:

Pamela Rozzelle Sets Boyfriend on Fire Because She Can’t Find Her Car Keys

They were both getting hammered Thursday night at Richard’s home in Audubon, New Jersey. At suppertime Pamela called police to say they’d been arguing. But while she’d been living at Richard’s house for the past few months, she was too drunk to remember exactly his house was. And because she was calling from a cell phone, police had no idea where to go.

Two hours later, Pamela called again, this time to say Richard was on fire. She says she couldn’t find her car keys, and she couldn’t wake Richard to help her find them. So she lit a cigarette, then claims she accidentally dropped the match on the blanket Richard was sleeping under.

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Steve Chapman: Does pornography cause sexual violence?

Indianapolis passed a law allowing women to sue producers for sexual assaults caused by material depicting women in “positions of servility or submission or display.”

The campaign fizzled when the courts said the ordinance was an unconstitutional form of “thought control.” Though the Bush administration has put new emphasis on prosecuting obscenity, on the grounds that it fosters violence against women, pornography is more available now than ever.

That’s due in substantial part to the rise of the Internet, where the United States alone has a staggering 244 million web pages featuring erotic fare. One Nielsen survey found that one out of every four users says they visited adult sites in the past month.

. . .

So in the past two decades, we have essentially conducted a vast experiment on the social consequences of such material. If the supporters of censorship were right, we should be seeing an unparalleled epidemic of sexual assault. But all the evidence indicates they were wrong. As raunch has waxed, rape has waned.

There’s a lot more information, speculation and thought but the punchline:

But if expanding the availability of hard-core fare doesn’t actually prevent rapes, we can be confident from the experience of recent years that it certainly doesn’t cause such crimes. Whether you think porn is a constitutionally protected form of expression or a vile blight that should be eradicated, this discovery should come as very good news.

Is a little dubious to me. “Very good news” …. would have to be something a little more valuable than this story.

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Some young adults with STDs say they’ve never had sex

Of 14,000 people (whose mean age was about 22 years) included in a study published this morning in the journal Pediatrics, fully 10 percent of those who tested positive for one of three common STDs (chlamydia, gonorrhea trichomoniasis) reported they hadn’t had sex during the previous 12 months.

And 60 percent of that 10 percent said they’d never had sex at all.

The numbers held even after researchers controlled for such variables as gender, race, age and education. The authors acknowledge some room for error: for instance, study participants were only asked about penile/vaginal penetration, not about oral or anal sex. The timing was such that a person could have had sex during the study period but not within the 12 months before the question was asked. And there’s some small possibility of false positive readings on the urine tests used to detect STDs.

And this is a surprise?

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After all this is it any wonder that a Florida man would rather hang out with lions?

Florida Man Says He’ll Live Among Lions for 30 Days

A Florida man says he’s going to spend the next month living in a fenced enclosure with two African lions.

James Jablon of Spring Hill told WTSP-TV that he hopes the stunt will raise money for his wildlife center, Wildlife Rehabilitation of Hernando.

Jablon entered the lions’ den Saturday. He says he’s going to sleep on hay near the lions, named Lea and Ed, and eat when they eat.

He says he’s also going to build a place to sleep and hide in the trees in the enclosure, in case the lions fight with each other. His adventure is being streamed live online through Jan. 31.

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Me? I’M going to find a nice cave in Viet Nam:

Massive Caves In Vietnam, Some Large Enough To Fit Skycrapers, Explored By National Geographic

This month’s National Geographic features an in depth look at a mammoth series of caves discovered in Vietnam. Inside one of the caves, there’s enough room to park a 747. An excerpt from the article reveals more about the massive cavern:

“An enormous shaft of sunlight plunges into the cave like a waterfall. The hole in the ceiling through which the light cascades is unbelievably large, at least 300 feet across. The light, penetrating deep into the cave, reveals for the first time the mind-blowing proportions of Hang Son Doong. The passage is perhaps 300 feet wide, the ceiling nearly 800 feet tall: room enough for an entire New York City block of 40-story buildings. There are actually wispy clouds up near the ceiling.”