By Sabrina Rojas Weiss

Every couple of months, someone comes out with a study trying to link teen sex and pregnancy to popular music, TV shows or movies. They always inspire these alarming headlines like, "Rap Music Makes Kids Have Orgies" or something of the sort that I'm sure makes many parents decide to lock their kids up with nothing but a phonograph and some Mozart LPs (though I'm sure back in Wolfie's day, there were people saying the same thing about him).

This week, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a study that shows a link between exposure to music with "degrading sexual references" in the lyrics and the level of sexual activity in a group of 711 ninth graders from urban high schools. According to the BBC, the kids were divided into groups based on how many hours a week they listened to music that describes sex as a physical act (rather than an act of love). Those who listened to such music regularly, at least 17.6 hours a week, were twice as likely to have had sex as those who listened to it infrequently (under 2.7 hours a week).

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By Garth Bardsley

People love to tell us how cool our jobs are. We get to travel, we meet celebrities, we know Tila Tequila. While that's all true, it's also important to note that the stress level can be high, traveling can be a pain, and every fantastic celebrity has a not-so-fantastic manager. Last week, however, was an exception. A team of us went to Mexico City to attend the 2008 International AIDS Conference, a meeting of the world's leading activists, scientists and politicians in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We took along Tara Bonistall, a young activist from Ohio who won a contest sponsored by MTV's Think community on ItsYourSexLife.com.
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MTV is famously (and sometimes miserably) located in the heart of Times Square, and yesterday, in walking to pick up lunch, we noticed people protesting outside of HBO on Sixth Avenue. They were part of a group against the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and they were riled up about HBO re-airing a series about a bordello called “Cathouse.” Then today, Ice-T announced that he's dying to play Iceberg Slim -- a pimp for 35 years -- in a new movie. (Oh wait, didn't Hustle & Flow win an Oscar...?)

So, in the view of mainstream American, has prostitution become a no-big-deal issue? We decided to ask the MTV News crew whether or not they think prostitution should be legal (after all, you couldn’t shut people up about Client #9). And it seems that, with the exception of one lone voice, everyone on the 29th floor thinks the oldest business in the world should be legalized…

Kristin: Yes Yes Yes! I mean at the end of the day, it was one of the first ways for women to make money -- and to be real, everything is better once the government puts limitations on it! Taxes. =) Gotta love ‘em.

Jonathan: I think it’s a lot like gambling. It was outlawed primarily because of the associated criminal element, not so much the act itself. And just like legalized gambling, controlling it will help control -- but not eliminate -- that associated criminal element.

Joe: Absolutely! What better way to “stimulate” the economy.

Elena: Yes. I'm sure a much larger danger to society could have taken up Heidi Fleiss' jail cell.

Matt: Two words: victimless crime.

Sabrina: Yes, because I think it would allow for measures to protect the health and safety of prostitutes.

Daniela: Yes, I believe it should be legal. I would like to see the data, but I bet you that the sex workers who work in legal/protected environments have less complaints about disease, abuse, exploitation, etc. than those who are avoiding legal ramifications. It's the oldest business in the world and it will never go away, and it does have its place in society (between consenting adults).

But what about the argument that prostitution creates a market in trafficking women – women who never had a choice?

Do you think prostitution should be legal?

Today, on Malaria Awareness Day, MTV News producer Garth Bardsley thinks back on his recent visit to Houston, and the boatload of important info he picked up along the way:

Apparently I’m an idiot. Wasn’t malaria essentially eradicated from the planet way back in the 50’s? Or even if it didn’t completely disappear, wasn’t it highly contained, and the few people who caught it were just given a few pills and sent on their way?

Uh, well, nope. While malaria has been contained in the US since the 1950’s and Panama even earlier, in sub-Saharan Africa a child dies from the disease every 30 seconds -- that’s over 1 million deaths a year -- from a disease that’s both treatable and preventable! Ridiculous. And there’s even evidence that links global warming to an increase in the endemic zones.

In anticipation of Malaria Awareness Day, I went to Houston last week -- along with Chamillionaire -- to visit with a bunch of kids at YES Prep, a fantastically amazing charter school dedicated to educating economically disadvantaged youth. While there’s no doubt some of these kids could choose to spend their time bellyaching about what life has handed them, the students at this school -- which has a 100% acceptance rate to four-year colleges -- instead dedicate themselves to serving others.

Through raffle-ticket sales at two different dances in the last few months, the YES Prep students have raised $1,250 to buy mosquito-protecting bed nets to send to Africa. That dough will fun 125 nets, preventing 250 people from ever getting malaria. The organization behind the dances, Malaria No More (recently featured on "Idol Gives Back"), has set a completely attainable(!) goal of getting a bed net to everyone who needs one by the year 2010. They estimate needing 250 million nets. So far, they have enough money to fund 131 million -- over half of the way there.

Obviously, the goal of events like Malaria Awareness Day is to raise awareness, so morons like me know what’s going on. Consider me schooled.