No matter how early I wake up, it's always five hours later in the UK and I'm overwhelmed by the thought that I'm already behind (I won't even get into the feeling I have when I think of our Australian readers).
So when I start the day reading my Twitter stream, it's usually populated by midday news from England. I follow the NHS - National Health Service - "one of the largest publicly funded health services in the world," and their superb health information site, NHS Choices.
This morning I saw this tweet about the launch of their new sexual health site:
@NHSChoices Our new sexual health hub includes advice on contraception, good sex guides, sex & young people, STIs and much more http://bit.ly/3wtJwL
Beyond the simple fact that the NHS exists because the UK has held since 1948 that every person deserves a basic level of state-supported health care, could you imagine what it would take for such a site to be sponsored by a US health agency? Supported with tax dollars? Can you imagine the wrangling of politicians, the religious right, and all manner of people ranting about government-sanctioned sex - and information for the young people???
So at the risk of being deemed a socialist, let me applaud the NHS for what is a truly terrific and straight-talking resource. What I've seen of the rest of the site is pretty fantastic as well.
You don't have to be British to get a lot of great take-home information for yourself and for your kids.
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Why do you hate America? ;-)
Yep, can't have kids learning how to have sex safely and properly in the U.S... It's only the continuation of the species and a major disease propogation method.
Also brilliant on that site is the Behind the Headlines service. A one-stop-shop for deciding whether that news story you read is of any use.
http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx
That NHS site may be wonderful, but unfortunately the quality of sex ed teaching in schools is woeful. It wasn't all that long ago that I was being 'helpfully' informed by a teacher not to choose chewing gum (presumably as a barrier, but she didn't specify - the mind boggles...)
How involved we are with what we do? Are we so engrossed with our job, that we have no time to think of anything else? Or we are so less connected with our job that having it or not makes no difference to us? Albert Einstein, the great scientist was so involved with his job of thinking and finding solutions to mysteries of physics and cosmos that he had no time left for anything else. His involvement was total. Do you have such an involvement?
Don't underestimate the ol' US, their social darwinistic method of disease control will result in a breed of Super-Americans immune to Aidsbola and Syphilitic Super-Gonorrhea.