Author: Richard

Intact America Launches Campaign to Change How America Thinks About Male Circumcision

Standard

NEW YORK, June 25 — Parents, pediatricians and health and human rights activists today announced the launch of INTACT AMERICA and its website — www.intactamerica.org — to change how America thinks about male circumcision. The national campaign argues that painful and medically unnecessary surgery to remove healthy genital tissue from non-consenting baby boys violates medical ethics and human rights.

They were joined by Soraya Mire, the Somali filmmaker who is a global leader in the fight against forced female circumcision.

“The same universal human right to an intact body that I have fought for on behalf of women and girls must apply to boys as well, especially those too young to make an informed decision about the integrity of their bodies,” said Mire. “How can it be wrong to surgically alter the genitals of a baby girl without her consent but okay to surgically alter the genitals of a baby boy?”

—PRNewswire

Amen, sister.

Quick Question

Standard

What kind of hot is it when your air-conditioner keeps going out because it can’t keep both you and itself cool?

Also: what kind of hot is is when you can’t leave bananas on the kitchen counter because they rot in their peels?

Those aren’t riddles or knock-knock jokes or weak Match Game references: they are serious questions. Is there a word for that kind of heat–perhaps a scientific term? Because otherwise, I’m just left saying that it’s just damn hot, y’all.*

* Yes, I am reduced to talking about the weather. BECAUSE IT IS THAT HOT.

John Hodgman on Iran, Jocks, and Nerds

Standard

I SAID ON FRIDAY HOW CURIOUS it was that the fate of the protesters in Iran is so strangely entwined with the sleep schedule of the geeks maintaining the servers at twitter and YouTube.

THAT THE PROTESTORS’ STRUGGLE IS VISIBLE, on a granular, person by person level, gives them optimism, and it gives us a new window upon a remote land and culture.

WHAT WE SEE: similarity.

YOUNG PEOPLE, CLOSER TO US in wardrobe, vision, and optimism, than we might have thought. And though great divides may yet separate us, the protestors are similar in at least one way: they all use the internet. And not in the insidious, demonizing way we were warned of, to recruit terrorists and plan attacks on civilians. But in the most geekish way: to subvert authority with an idea.

And he goes on.

Damn, I love John Hodgman. For that piece, for his speech at the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner, for his impeccable comic timing–oh, what? You missed his speech at the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner? Please stop now and watch:

BEATING WITH GOLD LAME BOOT BRINGS FIVE-YEAR TERM

Standard

From the Times-Picayune:

The weapon was one gold lame boot.

The victim: An early-morning patron at a French Quarter bar known for welcoming drag queens and their paramours.

The perpetrator: Walter Black, 41, of Belle Chasse, who had already racked up convictions for robbery and extorting some $10,000 from a priest he was having sex with and blackmailing in 2001.

And it goes on.