{"id":379,"date":"2007-12-06T11:53:43","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T17:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2007\/12\/06\/mean-teen-average\/"},"modified":"2007-12-06T12:29:44","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T18:29:44","slug":"mean-teen-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/12\/mean-teen-average\/","title":{"rendered":"Mean Teen Average"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The medical science report of the hour talks about how many teenagers are teenagers. It&#8217;s not a happy statistic, that the number of teenage mothers has increased in the United States. The Associated Press article, though, has an interesting touch on the facts:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The teen increase was based on the 15-19 age group, which accounted for about 99 percent of the more than 440,000 births to teens in 2006.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20071205\/ap_on_he_me\/teen_births_4\" title=\"Published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as well\" target=\"_blank\">Report: U.S. Teen Birth Rate on the Rise<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The remaining 1 percent would appear to come from the 13-14 age group. After that, we&#8217;re plumb out of teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>-30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The medical science report of the hour talks about how many teenagers are teenagers. It&#8217;s not a happy statistic, that the number of teenage mothers has increased in the United States. The Associated Press article, though, has an interesting touch on the facts: The teen increase was based on the 15-19 age group, which accounted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":128,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/the-dickens-with-harry-potter\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":0},"title":"The Dickens with Harry Potter","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, July 27, 2005. Three cheers for Harry Potter and his inventor. J.K. Rowling may well be this generation's Dickens. I'm not saying she is a perfect novelist or storyteller, although yes I am implying Dickens can be difficult, especially140 years later. But enough about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Course of Words&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":305,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/04\/blasted-commercial\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":1},"title":"Blasted Commercial","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The first-day coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings was, compared to most similar events, surprisingly restrained. CNN was unbearably repetitive. I couldn't see more than five minutes at a time, due to impatience, but wasn't it wonderful that the cable news station of excess kept guesswork and pseudo-psycho-pap about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;American Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":439,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/07\/arson-wells\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":2},"title":"Arson Wells","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Book report: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke Panning a novel that I devoured in 50- to 80-page chunks approaches being disingenuous. Perhaps an An Arsonist's Guide, released in fall 2007 to overall glowing reviews (though readers on amazon.com gave it only three of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mr. Boo Klist&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":98,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/11\/food-shelter-and-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":3},"title":"Food, shelter and story?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 24, 2005. Old School by Tobias Wolff provoked this riff. (I checked out the audio book from the library perhaps a year ago and returned it after hearing only most of the first disc, going by that's when its familiarity ended. Having\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Course of Words&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2492,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/12\/food-shelter-and-columns\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":4},"title":"Food, Shelter and Columns","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is my column for the December 2010 edition of monthly newsletter of the\u00a0National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Earlier this week I woke up presuming I could start this month's column with, \"Hello, I have a story to tell,\" and wing it. I didn't have a clue where to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Course of Words&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":359,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/09\/fifty-fifty\/","url_meta":{"origin":379,"position":5},"title":"Fifty Fifty","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Any number of self-appointed TV experts in recent months say either \"40 is the new 20\" and \"60 is the new 40.\" Oprah Winfrey said the latter to David Letterman when she interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. They were discussing his toddler son.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life Lessons&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}