Sex in the States

This is nice.

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year -- the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday. "A new US record," said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More bad news: Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a "superbug" version resistant to common antibiotics, federal officials said Tuesday.

Syphilis is rising, too. The rate of congenital syphilis -- which can deform or kill babies -- rose for the first time in 15 years.

When the Chinese think of American culture, they think of Sex In the City. Most have never been to the States, obviously, so they rely on our movies and tv shows for background. Sex is where all my female employees learned most of the foul language. I say most, because what they didn't learn there, they've learned from my colleagues. These statistics certainly reinforce that view.

In fairness to the US, we aren't capable of comparing those statistics with say . . . China, because China would never honestly report something like this.