Seven Sons

Would an adult male ever choose to be circumcised, even in the face of “overwhelming evidence” of health benefits? Should encouraging parents to have their sons circumcised be a public health policy?

Fortunately for all of us a good deal of time and effort has been spent on studying the effects of circumcision on male sexual sensitivity and disease transmission rates. When you have a newborn baby boy, you can Google for all sorts of data to help make the decision about whether to elect the surgery, and I won’t rehash the evidence or arguments here. Without a moral objection to circumcision, parents might feel that for a little cost and effort, they can do a little something to help out their future sexually active teenager. But let me present a little thought experiment, a perspective that I haven’t seen elsewhere: What if circumcision was a decision left up to the adult individual, to be elected sometime after they reach sexual maturity and can evaluate the data themselves? What man, considering a possible reduction in AIDS and HPV transmission rates during all that unprotected sex they plan to have, would choose the surgery? I’m guessing the same men that would have their tonsils and appendix pre-emptively removed.

More details have emerged about the F/A-18 crash in my neighborhood.

I don’t think many (especially me) are qualified to know what military pilots should or should not do when, in an emergency, their superiors are giving orders that conflict with their training and gut feelings. Having said that, and having actually gone through ground school, I know that civilian pilots have the concept that the pilot is the ultimate authority in an emergency situation repeatedly drilled into them. I suspect the same is true for the military. But this guy was green* and he was in an aircraft of questionable airworthiness. I give him a pass.

Update: The decision has been made. The unit will be called Tranquility and the exercise treadmill within shall be called the C.O.L.B.E.R.T.

NASA held an online naming contest for the last piece of the International Space Station that will be delivered by shuttle in the near future. They obviously wanted “Serenity,” which segues nicely from “Unity” and “Harmony,” the other USA-built nodes that are already in place. But, to the eggheads in Houstons’ mild regret I’m sure, they allowed write-ins on the voting page. Xenu, the top secret galactic overlord of Scientology, was winning the voting contest until Stephen Colbert anounced on his show that his surname would make a better node moniker (and, for that matter, a better galactic overlord). Since then, NASA has closed the voting and “Colbert” was the overwelming favorite. I’ll go on record as hoping NASA sticks with the will of the people on this one, but I’ll list the factors for consideration.

• It is admittedly risky to name a space station node after a living celebrity. While Colbert’s upstanding faith-centered family-man status is well known, he’s not afraid of dropping the occasional 4-letter word on prime-time television and you never really know who is going to be the next rifle-wielding water tower climber.
• NASA still has image stereotypes to battle, and naming a station node after a comedian would be a very positive step towards encouraging a hip new aura around publicly funded space exploration.
• The ISS won’t be there forever. And if Colbert really embarasses himself before its shelf life expires, they can always either re-christen the node or in a brave and aggressive public statement against the unspecified future moral infraction that the comedian commits NASA can push the eject button and let the node tumble into the atmosphere. Or they can deliver Colbert to his namesake node for good.
• There is no such thing as bad publicity.
• Flaunting the voters’ choice will take a lot of meaning out of any future polls. NASA will lose that marketing avenue if they go with Serenity at this point.

I was directed to an Ethicurean article about the milk crisis by Jay’s blog at The Linkery in San Diego. It is a quick and very informative read – go ahead, I’ll wait.

Image from scapbookershaven.com

OK, you’re back? Great. Did you even know we have a milk crisis? Probably not, unless it is your business to know that sort of thing. We take for granted the availability of dairy on our store shelves at reasonable prices. We also take for granted the FDA’s role in regulating food safety. The Ethicurean points out some holes in our faith.

The article skims over the issue of milk prices, mentioning the technical detail involved and providing some links. To me the details are fascinating. For about 70 years, one factor in the price of milk was the distance of the producing cow from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. No joke. The bottom line is that in a nation that celebrates the free market economy, milk is traded in one of the most manipulated markets on earth. Thus this  staple of western civilizaion is sold for half of what it takes to produce it.  And that, my friends, is not sustainable.

Submitted without comment, other than: This seems like the ideal Monday morning stepping off point.

I know that Mr. Obama wants to look to the future rather than dwell on the past, but as more Bush-era insanity is revealed I can’t help feeling that this will all happen again someday unless some of these jokers (like Yoo or Gonzalez) end up in jail or at the very least lose their license to practice law. To claim broad powers to set aside constitutional protections for US citizens in a time of war – arguably a war of opportunity unilateraly declared by the very president claiming these powers – amounts to a dictatorship and an obvious violation of the most basic founding principles of our nation. Yes, the Congress authorized the use of force in Afghanistan and (incredibly) Iraq, but even John Yoo’s initial public take on that authorization limited it to the use of force against foreign enemies.