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Did you bring protection?

According to the Guttmacher Institute, whose mission statement reads “advancing sexual and reproductive health worldwide,” the teenager pregnancy rate is up for the first time in a decade.

Teens, they say, are getting it on more and more and not worrying about little things like condoms or other methods of birth control.

Reports The Institute:

For the first time in more than a decade, the nation’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3% in 2006, reflecting increases in teen birth and abortion rates of 4% and 1%, respectively.

These new data from the Guttmacher Institute are especially noteworthy because they provide the first documentation of what experts have suspected for several years, based on trends in teens’ contraceptive use—that the overall teen pregnancy rate would increase in the mid-2000s following steep declines in the 1990s and a subsequent plateau in the early 2000s. The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.

“After more than a decade of progress, this reversal is deeply troubling,” says Heather Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute senior public policy associate. “It coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which received major funding boosts under the Bush administration. A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work. Fortunately, the heyday of this failed experiment has come to an end with the enactment of a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative that ensures that programs will be age-appropriate, medically accurate and, most importantly, based on research demonstrating their effectiveness.”

According to some published reports, GOP Senator-elect Scott Brown, who posed nude for Cosmo mag back when he modeled, says he just might do it again.

We’ve heard about politicians who promise “full disclosure” but this may be more than we want to know.

Scott Brown (AP Photo)

Keith Olbermann, the left’s answer to Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, went so far in a hyperbole-filled attack against Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown this week that even some of his more-liberal allies are calling him down for the tirade.

In coverage leading up to the final results of Tuesday’s special election, Olbermann called Brown a “irresponsible homophobic racist reactionary ex-nude model teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politician with whom he disagrees.”

When some questioned Obermann’s judgment on the attacks, the sportswriter-turned-newsman amended his tirade to add “sexist” to the list.

That prompted comedian Jon Sewart to lampoon Olbermann’s “special comment” and call the MNSBC anchor out. Stewart pointed out that Olbermann’s so-called “evidence” is too week to back up the attack and asked Obermann to stop wallowing in the mud of personal attacks.

No response yet from Olbermann.

(Photo from The New York Times)

Add another danger to life while talking on your cell phone.

Walking.

That’s right…walking.

Ever hear the joke about the guy who couldn’t walk and chew gun at the same time?

Now put talking on a cell phone into the mix.

Reports The New York Times:

On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation.

Very lost.

“I ran into a truck,” Ms. Briggs said.

It was parked in a driveway.

Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.

But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.

Most times, the mishaps for a distracted walker are minor, like the lightly dinged head and broken fingernail that Ms. Briggs suffered, a jammed digit or a sprained ankle, and, the befallen say, a nasty case of hurt pride. Of course, the injuries can sometimes be serious — and they are on the rise.

Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.

Dennis Hopper

According to multiple reports, Dennis Hopper is on his deathbed at the University of Southern California hospital after the prostate cancer he has fought for years spread to his bones.

Hopper, 73, is also using his final hours to divorce his wife, 43-year-old Victoria Hopper. Papers filed in Los Angeles cite “irreconcilable differences.”  Family friends say its more about the cutting her out of Hopper’s will.

The actor/photographer/writer/director has had a long and often troubled career. For many, he will be remembered most for Easy Rider although he made dozens of films over the year and appeared a couple of years ago in a short-lived TV series on NBC and more recently on the Starz series Crash.