http://www.metafilter.com/87772/Cardboard-Lamb

http://www.metafilter.com/87771/Holy-Night

http://www.metafilter.com/87770/The-Horror-of-Being-an-Adult-is-Hilarious

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CM7mZ-tBTgQ/ted-2010-program-gui.html

TED 2010 Program Guide



Make Notes

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/z3oLx5vGkGc/the-most-awesome-end.html

From swarms of ginormous trilobites to Ida-the-over-hyped-ancient-lemur, National Geographic counts down the Top 10 Dinosaur and Fossil Finds of 2009.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/1I7GDtf5qw0/Reset_a_Windows_XP_Password

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Reset_a_Windows_XP_Password

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/Fvvq-nNL17M/securitymatters_1223

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2009/12/securitymatters_1223

Sometimes mediocre encryption is better than strong encryption, and sometimes no encryption is better still.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Iraqi, and possibly also Afghan, militants are using commercial software to eavesdrop on U.S. Predators, other unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and even piloted planes. The systems weren't "hacked" -- the insurgents can’t control them -- but because the downlink is unencrypted, they can watch the same video stream as the coalition troops on the ground.

The naive reaction is to ridicule the military. Encryption is so easy that HDTVs do it -- just a software routine and you're done -- and the Pentagon has known about this flaw since Bosnia in the 1990s. But encrypting the data is the easiest part; key management is the hard part. Each UAV needs to share a key with the ground station. These keys have to be produced, guarded, transported, used and then destroyed. And the equipment, both the Predators and the ground terminals, needs to be classified and controlled, and all the users need security clearance.

The command and control channel is, and always has been, encrypted -- because that's both more important and easier to manage. UAVs are flown by airmen sitting at comfortable desks on U.S. military bases, where key management is simpler. But the video feed is different. It needs to be available to all sorts of people, of varying nationalities and security clearances, on a variety of field terminals, in a variety of geographical areas, in all sorts of conditions -- with everything constantly changing. Key management in this environment would be a nightmare.

Additionally, how valuable is this video downlink is to the enemy? The primary fear seems to be that the militants watch the video, notice their compound being surveilled and flee before the missiles hit. Or notice a bunch of Marines walking through a recognizable area and attack them. This might make a great movie scene, but it's not very realistic. Without context, and just by peeking at random video streams, the risk caused by eavesdropping is low.

Contrast this with the additional risks if you encrypt: A soldier in the field doesn't have access to the real-time video because of a key management failure; a UAV can't be quickly deployed to a new area because the keys aren't in place; we can't share the video information with our allies because we can't give them the keys; most soldiers can't use this technology because they don't have the right clearances. Given this risk analysis, not encrypting the video is almost certainly the right decision.

There is another option, though. During the Cold War, the NSA's primary adversary was Soviet intelligence, and it developed its crypto solutions accordingly. Even though that level of security makes no sense in Bosnia, and certainly not in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is what the NSA had to offer. If you encrypt, they said, you have to do it "right."

The problem is, the world has changed. Today's insurgent adversaries don't have KGB-level intelligence gathering or cryptanalytic capabilities. At the same time, computer and network data gathering has become much cheaper and easier, so they have technical capabilities the Soviets could only dream of. Defending against these sorts of adversaries doesn't require military-grade encryption only where it counts; it requires commercial-grade encryption everywhere possible.

This sort of solution would require the NSA to develop a whole new level of lightweight commercial-grade security systems for military applications — not just office-data "Sensitive but Unclassified" or "For Official Use Only" classifications. It would require the NSA to allow keys to be handed to uncleared UAV operators, and perhaps read over insecure phone lines and stored in people's back pockets. It would require the sort of ad hoc key management systems you find in internet protocols, or in DRM systems. It wouldn't be anywhere near perfect, but it would be more commensurate with the actual threats.

And it would help defend against a completely different threat facing the Pentagon: The PR threat. Regardless of whether the people responsible made the right security decision when they rushed the Predator into production, or when they convinced themselves that local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, or when they forgot to update their Bosnia-era threat analysis to account for advances in technology, the story is now being played out in the press. The Pentagon is getting beaten up because it's not protecting against the threat — because it's easy to make a sound bite where the threat sounds really dire. And now it has to defend against the perceived threat to the troops, regardless of whether the defense actually protects the troops or not. Reminds me of the TSA, actually.

So the military is now committed to encrypting the video ... eventually. The next generation Predators, called Reapers -- Who names this stuff? Second-grade boys? -- will have the same weakness. Maybe we’ll have encrypted video by 2010, or 2014, but I don't think that's even remotely possible unless the NSA relaxes its key management and classification requirements and embraces a lightweight, less secure encryption solution for these sorts of situations. The real failure here is the failure of the Cold War security model to deal with today's threats.

---

Bruce Schneier is chief security technology officer of BT. His new book is Schneier on Security.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/ZZQy-t0vfY8/Save_a_Wet_Cell_Phone

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Save_a_Wet_Cell_Phone

http://www.metafilter.com/87769/Kaney-ONeill-is-a-quadreplegic-and-a-mother-Her-ex-however-feels-that-she-cant-be-a-competent-mother-because-of-her-disabilities

http://www.metafilter.com/87768/Reformat-your-FACE

http://www.metafilter.com/87767/Holiday-Greetings-from-Congresspeople-and-Their-Families

http://www.metafilter.com/87766/General-Tsos-Climate

The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/gAyt0SxUW0w/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/approaching-january-apple-tablet-rumors-gain-serious-momentum/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/vVwQf3xiTFM/Help_Mozilla_Improve_Firefox_s_New__Home__Tab

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Help_Mozilla_Improve_Firefox_s_New__Home__Tab

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/zf0ZFmDSGes/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/blackberry-second-outage/

http://comicsworthreading.com/2009/12/23/best-graphic-novels-of-2009/

http://comicsworthreading.com/?p=9982

Here’s what I thought were the best graphic novels of 2009, in order. For more information on any of the following titles, the links take you to my reviews.

1. Johnny Hiro — Thoughtful adventure and an impressive love letter to New York City.
2. Masterpiece Comics — Amazing comic/literature mashups that had me marveling at R. Sikoryak’s skill at art mimickry.
3. Sinfest — The best webcomic out there, collected into book form this year by Dark Horse.
4. Nothing Better: Into the Wild — Philosophy and faith explored through a realistic (and often funny) look at college life.
5. Drawn to You — This comic collaboration between Lucy Knisley and Erika Moen is like reading a combination interview and letter exchange.
6. Kabuki: The Alchemy — David Mack’s story of an assassin has changed and grown as the artist has, concluding here with a mind-bending postmodern exploration of the nature of creation of both self and art.

Yeah, only six this year. I did more manga reading, fewer graphic novels, and those are the books that impressed me. If I was doing a combined list, I could easily make 10 by including some of the best manga of the year, but I thought I’d separate the two this year, given their different audiences.

What else should I have considered? Before you answer that, here are some popularly recognized books on lists of this type that I didn’t select, and why:

• Asterios Polyp — Impressive craft that lacks the narrative heart that would make it great.
• A Drifting Life — Terrific book, but it’s manga (and on my separate list), and it’s a bit overwhelming due to its size and historical scope.
• Parker: The Hunter — Too much a product of its time in its treatment of women and glorification of tough-guy violence. Beautiful illustrations, though.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe — A terrific installment, but it didn’t strike me as wonderful as the earlier books. In part, that’s human nature, where “just as good” feels like “not as good” because we expect more and better every time. I’m also looking forward to the coming conclusion. Setting up for that just isn’t quite as satisfying.
• Stitches — Morose autobiography about terrible parents. Don’t we have enough of that in comics? Plus, every surprise in the story was revealed in the press material, making it feel like a slog to get to the point. Too much setup, not enough payoff. It may have helped the artist to tell his story, but it didn’t help me to read it.

I wouldn’t make an argument for this next title on an art or craft basis, but for pure enjoyment, The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse was one of my favorites. I was glad to get one more visit with these beloved characters.

For comparison, here’s last year’s list and one from the year before.

http://comicsworthreading.com/2009/12/23/asterios-polyp/

http://comicsworthreading.com/?p=9980

It’s a shame that such an artistically accomplished work doesn’t have a story of the same high quality. Asterios Polyp is beautiful, with all kinds of formalist and craft tricks to push the medium of comics. But the characters are cliches and you’ve seen the content before, making it an ultimately disappointing book, emptier than I hoped it would be.

Asterios Polyp
Buy this book

Asterios Polyp is an architect. Well, a professor, really, because the point is made early on that the building he designs haven’t been built. He teaches based on his paper constructions. He’s brilliant and lives the life of the mind, harsh to his students when he’s not sleeping with the female ones. He’s a self-obsessed showoff who thinks about no one but himself and is always right.

His wife is a shy sculptor whose parents loved her brother better, the opposite of him in every way possible. She finally leaves him, although I was wondering what she saw in him in the first place. It’s not clear in the book; their relationship just is because it’s artistically apropos.

The conflict here is heart vs. art, achievement vs. academia… classic themes, so one would hope that David Mazzucchelli would have something new to say about them. He doesn’t. Instead, it’s all about his technique. The number of devices you can demonstrate here make this perfectly suited for a college course on graphic novels. It’s full of symbolism and evocative parallels. How this story is told is unusual and unique. You could write essays about the book’s construction and its use of duality.

Stylistically, it’s glorious. Each character has a color, and they’re not the usual ones. Asterios is blue, ranging from electric to sky. His wife is magenta (although rarely purely, since she’s more often part of the background). Instead of black ink, purple frequently appears. Panels scatter across the page or images have no boundaries.

But again, the plot. Lightning burns down his home, destroying all his awards and records. Ooh, a fresh start! A visible image of needing to begin again. He heads out to rural America, randomly, and finds himself by working with his hands fixing cars. (One reason I find it so odd that this book has gotten so much critical praise is that it’s so anti-intellectual.)

Thankfully, I’m not the only one saying this emperor is lacking some robes. But the most damning indictment, I think, comes from my brother. He doesn’t read comics frequently, although he’s familiar with the classics (and his taste has always been better than mine, which tends to be more entertainment than art-centered). He’s also a professor of engineering who almost went into architecture instead. When he heard of this book, he begged to borrow my copy. After I leant it to him, he read through it and returned it, disappointed. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but his reaction was along the lines of, “There’s not much heart there, is there? It’s awfully familiar.”

http://www.metafilter.com/87765/The-ducks-penis

My tale is rich with deep scientific significance, resplendent with surprising insights into how evolution works, far beyond the banalities of "survival of the fittest," off in a realm of life where sexual selection and sexual conflict work like a pair sculptors drunk on absinthe, transforming biology into forms unimaginable. But this story is also accompanied with video. High-definition, slow-motion duck sex video. And I would imagine that the sight of spiral-shaped penises inflating in less than a third of second might be considered in some quarters to be not exactly safe for work. It's certainly not appropriate for ducklings.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/YNCKEGcYzjQ/stir-natural-peanut.html

When you buy a jar of all-natural peanut butter, don't stick it in the pantry. Park it on top of the refrigerator, upside down. Once a day, when you walk by it, say "hello peanut butter", and flip it over.

When you're ready to open it and stir it up, it will be half mixed for you (and not hardened into a frustrating marble block).

I'm thinking someone could make a version of this that used some of the same circuitry and components in the hourglass random number generator project I posted earlier today. The jar of peanut butter would go where the hourglass is. The gadget could either sense the opacity of the oil and flip it when it was no longer translucent, or it could just flip it once or twice a day.

Stir natural peanut butter easily



Make Notes

http://www.metafilter.com/87764/Menu-Psychology

"If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer's hand before they part with their money."

http://www.metafilter.com/87763/The-10000-Spam-That-Wasnt

http://www.metafilter.com/87762/Best-Financial-Infographics-of-2009

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/C27F0Sa2qco/micro-fluff-truly-th.html

This man owes his livelihood to Micro-Fluff. Shouldn't you consider a career in Micro-Fluff, too? (Via Mostly Forbidden Zone)



Make Notes

http://www.metafilter.com/87761/Oh-Five-of-Them-Actually

http://www.metafilter.com/87760/A-truth-universally-acknowledged-pretty-much

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/pxxt44RxCR4/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/muscovy-duck-sex/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/RS8ZGoKqClQ/

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/character-bento-box/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/hohBnBCWspQ/

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/12/final-fantasy-xiii-preview-2/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/O6JCbBkdBmM/

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/12/boeing-787-dreamliner/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/Ynuyt3lyvmU/

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/review-sherlock-holmes/

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/dj-OByD6GzQ/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/tipping-elements/

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/bQo-Wq-8K1M/creepy-old-print-ad.html

A disturbing ad from days of yore. (Via Vintage Ads)



Make Notes

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/GjdZj_R21T4/usb-hourglass-random.html

USB Hourglass from alwynallan on Vimeo.

Over at Make: Online, John Park posted this video of a gadget that generates random numbers by watching sand fall through an hourglass.

It watches falling sand in an hourglass with an optical sensor. That data is sent via the Arduino USB output to the PC where it's analyzed. This entropy is useful for all your random number needs. My favorite part: when the hourglass runs dry a servo motor flips it over and it starts again.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/kEL1Z7F_AcA/2009-in-transit.html

Treehugger has a slideshow of the best and worst ideas in sustainable transportation from 2009. But, instead of debating the varying merits of this or that electric car, they've left cars out entirely, in favor of planes, trains, bikes and boats. Bikes get the most play here, and there are some innovative ideas—like cargo bikes and bike highways. Treehugger is mostly talking about their use in places like Copenhagen, but I love how Minneapolis' system of limited-access bike trails makes bike travel and commuting faster, easier and more enjoyable. (They're even plowed in winter!)

I do with the slideshow had focused less on the bikes, and more on mass transit and shipping. Mass transportation is a key component in just about every plan for lowering greenhouse gas emissions, but it doesn't get nearly as much attention as every random attempt to revamp the personal car. There is, however, some interesting stuff about high-speed trains and early developments in alternative-fuel aviation.

Treehugger: Best and Worst of 2009: The Year in Bikes, Trains, Planes and Boats

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/4qDU1cjfJ7Q/have-a-very-phil-spe.html

http://www.metafilter.com/87759/Happy-Hellidays-to-you-and-yours

http://www.metafilter.com/87758/Is-college-really-worth-it

http://www.metafilter.com/87757/Streamin-Criterion

http://www.metafilter.com/87756/Computer-Genius

http://www.metafilter.com/87755/Barabar-Olson-made-no-cell-phone-calls

http://www.metafilter.com/87753/Military-maps-of-The-War-on-Christmas

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/4Hk6dGOLkqc/duck-sex-competition.html

Eversion in air: from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a duck penis. Science blogger Ed Yong has a great article up today about these freaky, corkscrew behemoths and the equally freaky, labyrinthine duck vaginas. A researcher from Yale has been studying both, and thinks these rather baroque naughty bits evolved in competition with one another, as female ducks tried to evade rape (or, rather, impregnation by a rapist) and male ducks tried to get around those barriers.

The shape of the female duck's vagina is a physical barrier that prevents the male from launching forth his ballistic penis to its fullest extent. It won't stop a drake from ejaculating (and those in Brennan's trials always did), but it does limit how far the semen is deposited along the vaginal tract. Not all males are hit equally hard by these defences. Those that the female actually wants to mate with have an easier time. If she's into a male, she strikes a pose that signals her receptiveness, keeping her body level and lifting her tail feathers high. She repeatedly contracts the walls of her genital tract, relaxing them for long enough for favoured suitors to achieve full penetration.

Males who try to force themselves upon her receive no such help and have to cope with vigorous struggling. The female may not be able to resist such advances, but her convoluted vagina gives her ultimate control over where the sperm of her current partner ends up. The fact that only 3% of duck offspring are born of forced matings suggests that females are indeed winning this battle of the sexes.

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Ballistic Penises and Corkscrew Vaginas (There's more video!)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/u08o0SNgcq8/grimmer-tales-twiste.html

These running gags are pretty funny, but the really standout moments are the longer strips, especially the "What a Witch" strip, in which two witches standing over a cauldron extol the virtues of Kiddee Flakes, which are much more convenient for kidnapped-child-fattening than candy-houses. This is good, wicked humor at its finest -- if you loved Fractured Fairy Tales...

Grimmer Tales: A Wicked Collection of Happily Never After Stories

http://www.metafilter.com/87752/Introducing-Introducing

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wwdn/~3/i2cWvgOI-kk/the-twelve-days-of-pirate-christmas.html

http://www.metafilter.com/87751/London-Undergrounds-Northern-Heights

http://comicsworthreading.com/2009/12/23/happy-anniversary-to-cwr/

http://comicsworthreading.com/?p=9992

Ten years and one week ago, I bought ComicsWorthReading.com. Yes, the site is now 10 years old. Here’s to many more! I’m game if you are, dear reader.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ChuCUQNvDw4/sex-science-and-stat.html

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across yet another news story about how young people no longer date—they just have friends with benefits—and how those hookups are liable to lead to emotional and psychological damage.

But recent research suggests that picture may be wrong. Published in the December issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the new research was based on surveys answered by a diverse group of more than 1300 Minnesotans in their late teens and early 20s. Not only were the majority of these people having sex within a relationship, but whether they were or not had no bearing on their mental health. The casual-sex havers were every bit as happy and healthy as the kids who were only doing it with a committed partner.

So who's right? To find out, I turned to a couple of experts in teen sex and sex education. At the heart of this apparent discrepancy, they told me, are big differences between the way scientists study sexual behavior and the way that information gets presented to the general public.

For instance, let's go back to that question of casual sex. An older paper that found 78% of young people had at least fooled around with a stranger or acquaintance during their college years. So it was surprising when the Minnesota study turned up just 8% of respondents who's last partner was a casual acquaintance, and another 12% who were in a relationship, but not an exclusive one.

That's a big difference, but the reason behind it should be instantly apparent to any current or former teenager. At least, any who have been to a slumber party. It's as simple as the difference between of-the-moment gossip and a game of "Have You Ever". The Minnesota survey asked people to categorize their most recent sex partner. The earlier study asked whether they'd ever, at any time, got all up on someone they didn't know very well.

Both are legitimate questions. The problem is that they're often reported by the media as being the same question. And neither "Have you ever?" nor "What are you doing right now?" is really a great stand-in for the far more important, "What do you normally do?"

"I think people stereotype teenagers sometimes," said John Santelli, M.D., a pediatrician and adolescent health specialist who chairs the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "I don't think hookup situations are the norm for young people. Serial monogamy is very common among youth. The 20% in this study who weren't in committed relationships, I'd be willing to bet that many were between relationships, or in the process of forming one."

Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful. That basic idea is stated as a fact in federally funded abstinence education programs, Dr. Santelli told me. But most scientists don't think it's so clear-cut. Dr. Santelli, as well as adolescent sexuality researcher Douglas Kirby, Ph.D., told me that teen sex and mental health are more of a chicken/egg conundrum—and which came first depends a lot on how old you are.

Correlations between sex and poor mental health do turn up for very young teenagers—people younger than, say, 14—Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me. But you can't separate that from the fact that sex at that age, particularly for girls, is more likely to be coerced—and being pressured or forced into sex you really didn't want to have can cause mental health problems on its own. Dr. Santelli also pointed out that children who have been abused at home are more likely to start having sex early. Again, you can't look at any depression or addiction those kids have later and say that early sex was the clear cause.

Kirby said the same holds true for slightly older teens—people who were younger than 17 when they started having sex.

"Young people who are risk takers, more non-conventional, or challenging of social norms, they're more likely to have sex between the ages of 14 and 17. They're also more likely to smoke cigarettes, try alcohol, use drugs, be less attached to school, drop out, etc.," Kirby said. "Again, it's not the case that sex leads to all those things. It's that these people who are less connected to family and school are engaging in a wide variety of risk-taking behaviors and sex is just a part of that."

The median age for when Americans lose their virginity is 17. After that, Dr. Santelli and Kirby told me, studies show there's no longer any real correlation between poor mental health and sex. Whether you have it or not, your psychology isn't effected. The Minnesota study backs that up, they said, and goes one step further by showing that who you have sex with doesn't really matter, either.

Again, the problem is that media seldom make distinctions between situations that represent cause-and-effect and those that are simply correlated.

The result is that we, as a society, aren't addressing the things older teenagers and young adults really need to know, Dr. Santelli said. Americans start having sex at 17 and get married around 27, he said, but abstinence-based programs are presented as though getting married right out of high school is still the norm.

"We aren't providing realistic social models to young people. We need a healthy cohabitation program in America. And healthy relationship education," Dr. Santelli said. "We just say how wonderful marriage is. Abstinence programs are aimed toward getting you married at 20, not supporting you and helping you make healthy and smart choices as a single 20-something. We don't really support long-term, non-married monogamy. Which is a pretty good choice for many young people."