Re: [owaspdallas] Re: [WEB SECURITY] RE: How to stop hackers at the root cause

--On Tuesday, April 13, 2010 15:21:26 -0700 "Arian J. Evans" 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> Keyboard Cowboy,
>
> Education is always a good thing. I think kids should have the opportunity to
> learn both sides of software security. Great suggestion.
>
> Kids, by nature, are drawn to things that are taboo and demonized. Which
> hacking no doubt falls into, and according to Daniel, also Angelina Jolie.
>
> We can find great analogies to the "hacker kids problem" in recent studies
> done on teenage behaviors:
>
> The Bible Belt, particularly evangelicals in the south, have the highest
> rates of teen sex and pregnancy in the US. Telling kids to "abstain" clearly
> doesn't work as well as teaching them how things work, and in particular
> careful education surrounding the use of safety devices. To the exact point
> you made in your blog.

This is totally off topic, but I simply cannot let this slide.  People like to 
throw out canards like this as if they are facts, and seldom are they ever 
questioned.

First of all, your assertion isn't borne out by the data.  Secondly, you've not 
cited a single study to back up your assertion, in particular the claim that 
the lack of sex education (which you assume occurs due to religious objections) 
is responsible for the claimed, but not factual, higher pregnancy rates.

According to a study done by the Guttmacher Institute in 2000 [1] (The 
Guttmacher Institution is a pro-choice group that advocates for sex education), 
here are the state rankings by rates of pregnancy and rates of abortion

1) Nevada                      4
2) Arizona                    19
3) Mississippi                28
4) New Mexico              18
5) Texas                      26
6) Florida                      7
7) California                  5
8) Georgia                   22
9) North Carolina         17
10) Arkansas               41
11) Delaware                8
12) Hawaii                    6

Of the top twelve states, only half are what could be considered Bible Belt 
states, so I think you have to look elsewhere for your explanation of teen 
pregnancy rates.  OTOH, it's pretty clear the Bible Belt states are 
significantly less likely to abort a teen pregnancy, which may or may not be an 
indicator of religious influence.  (I'm not prepared to say it is without data 
to support it.)

About.com also has statistics about teen birth rates [2], and their statistics 
don't bear out your assertion either.  Their stats are based on the 2006 
Guttmacher Institute report, and the rankings have changed very little.

States ranked by rates of pregnancy among women age 15-19 (pregnancies per 
thousand):

   1. Nevada (113)
   2. Arizona (104)
   3. Mississippi (103)
   4. New Mexico (103)
   5. Texas (101)
   6. Florida (97)
   7. California (96)
   8. Georgia (95)
   9. North Carolina (95)
  10. Arkansas (93)

States ranked by rates of live births among women age 15-19 (births per 
thousand):

   1. Mississippi (71)
   2. Texas (69)
   3. Arizona (67)
   4. Arkansas (66)
   5. New Mexico (66)
   6. Georgia (63)
   7. Louisiana (62)
   8. Nevada (61)
   9. Alabama (61)
  10. Oklahoma (60)

Again, the so-called "Bible Belt" doesn't demonstrate a propensity to get 
pregnant at any higher rates than other parts of the country but clearly bears 
those children to term at a higher rate than other areas.

Furthermore, the most recent statistics from the government [3], while they do 
show a change in the rankings, still do not bear out your assertion that the 
Bible Belt, "particularly evangelicals in the south", have the highest teen 
pregnancy rates.  As I've shown birth rates do not equal pregnancy rates.  You 
have to factor in abortions as well.

You may well have been misled by MSNBC [4] (but then who hasn't been misled by 
MSNBC), because they recently reported a study that found a correlation between 
the Bible Belt and birth rates, but that study doesn't address pregnancy or 
abortion, so it's misleading.  The study also appears to be biased toward its 
conclusion by the failure to even consider pregnancy rates.  Birth rates are 
not an indicator of teen pregnancies.  They are an indicator of teen births, 
which may be an indicator of choices between abortion and bringing a baby to 
term that are based on religious factors, but I haven't found any data to 
support that conclusion.

I would have preferred to use the CDC data, but their data takes a lot more 
work to extract than I had time for.  I suspect it would reveal the same (in 
general) information that the Guttmacher institute produced.

[1] 
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:2pauuI7VVBoJ:www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends.pdf+statistics+on+teen+pregnancy+by+state&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjJ1Yt7cIlu5z8STulZhAV2cMQnBegPj0drpWSbOq47UR8qRmEv9XgUpJvXaDQik5-q_VqtvI4lGQ5CY_UUzzUFuVFyPu0l6o7casH7DIlOW5t7k4O5J_SFJgY6d5BtFBctb0V7&sig=AHIEtbQiPQuCASJ8Pe1yKqjPfd8vF4rKuA

[2] http://womensissues.about.com/od/datingandsex/a/TeenPregStates.htm

[3] 
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2009/01/08/teen-birthrates-where-does-your-state-rank.html

[4] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32884806/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

-- 
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson


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