Blame Yourself For Moral Decline

Sun., June 13, 1999

By Susan English susane@spokesman.com

The biggest problem regarding moral standards is a tendency to blame others instead of taking personal responsibility, say 39 percent of the respondents in a poll commissioned by Shell Oil.

Thirty percent of those polled said the biggest problem is a lack of respect for others; 28 percent said we focus too much on money and materialism.

Only 15 percent cited sexually permissive attitudes as the biggest moral problem we face.

* Cutting to the chase: Percentage of newlyweds who say they consummated their relationship on the first date: 17. (From June Harper’s)

* Wyoming, progressive? Well, yes: It’s a little-known fact that the women in Wyoming Territory were granted the right to vote in 1869, 51 years ahead of the U.S. constitutional amendment which gave all women this right.

Norway was the first nation in the world to give women voting rights, that being in 1913.

Polling places in many U.S. states were off-limits to black people of both genders until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (From May/June Utne Reader)

* What a sorry sign of our times: Percentage of Alabamans who oppose removing the state’s constitutional ban on interracial marriage: 26. (From June Harper’s)

* What goes on at the cube farm: Seventy percent of those who use e-mail at work admit to receiving adult-oriented e-mail on the job. (From June Wired)

* Statistically, sex isn’t ever totally safe: Contraceptives fail for 9 to 12 percent of women using them after a year, researchers report.

Two studies of U.S. women by the nonprofit Alan Guttmacher Institute and a team at Princeton University found that on average, a woman has a 10 percent chance of getting pregnant despite using contraception in any given year.

As might be expected, contraceptive methods that require the user to remember them regularly, such as the pill or a condom, have the highest failure rate, while hormone implants or IUDs have the lowest. (From The Philadelphia Inquirer)

* Keep the engine running: A typical mom spends more than an hour a day chauffeuring kids, according to a Washington State Surface Transportation Policy Project survey. (From May 31 Time)

* Just a reminder: “Never, never eat anything out of a carton, even if you are at home alone with the shades drawn,” says Miss Manners (Judith Martin). “Doing so is wicked and constitutes Miss Manners’ one exception to the generally genial rule about violations of etiquette not counting if you don’t get caught.” (From May The Sun)

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