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Girl or Woman

If you are female, which term do you prefer if you had to be labeled by one of these words: “Girl” or “Woman” or “Female” or doesn’t it matter?

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln I was educated, roughly and roundly, by certain forces in the English Department that one must never call a female a “girl” if she has had her period — how one determines if menstruation has happened or not was never explained — and the correct term for the rest of her life was “woman” but never “lady” because “lady” was an Olde Englishe synonym for “bitch.”

Ladies and gentlemen rightly translated to the modern ear, I was told, as Bitches and gentlemen and it was an unfortunate, but culturally accepted, put-down of women who fought to advance their self-worth beyond being seen merely as property.

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Chlamydia and the White Van

If you could look at a similar Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Map of New Jersey counties that charts Chlamydia infections, you would see intensive clusters centered in urban centers and around major hospitals and few infections in wealthy counties.

Chlamydia is a curable sexually transmitted infection (STI), which is caused by bacteria called Chlamydia trachomatis. You can get genital chlamydial infection during oral, vaginal, or anal sexual contact with an infected partner.

It can cause serious problems in men and women, such as penile discharge and infertility respectively, as well as in newborn babies of infected mothers. Chlamydia is one of the most widespread bacterial STIs in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 3 million people are infected each year.

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Killings by County

With less than three months before the end of the year, here is an update on killings in Hudson County in New Jersey compared with numbers from Essex County in New Jersey and New York County in New York. All homicide rates are per 100,000: 

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Ask Me Everything Everyone Else Does

I have been called a Pasty White Boy from Nebraska (my skin is so pale my friends tease me I actually look green) more often than I like and ever since I moved to the East Coast I have become, against my will, a Personal Information Servant.

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Make Yourself a Blank Page

The task of living is can be difficult as the world in which we spin becomes smaller, time speeds up, and the distance between people and cultures shrink. Now, more than ever, we need to find ways to achieve common ground beyond ideology and narrow value sets.

Rutgers-Newark has one of the most diverse student body populations of any university in the world. In fact, Rutgers-Newark won awards in the past for several years in a row for having the most diverse student body in the nation. The great thing about teaching at Rutgers-Newark is that everyone is a minority.

No one can claim majority rule by culture or ethnicity or regional flavor. That kind of “minority rule” can teach great lessons that cross color lines and cultural obstacles unlike any other place I have previously experienced. One precious thing we are losing in current university experiences is the loss of individuality in favor of the requirement to be politically correct to the point where the world becomes grey and differences and dissent are discouraged so no one will be offended.

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