Month: March 2007

Ability to Speak Does Not Validate the Opinion

Many people fought for the title of stupidest logic yesterday.

The proposed merger of the nation’s two satellite radio companies came under sharp criticism yesterday from the chairman of a Senate panel that monitors antitrust matters, who said consumers probably would suffer if the deal goes through.

“You’d be virtually unrivaled, unchallenged in this area,” said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights. “You’d have no competition — what a business!” he told Mel Karmazin, chief executive of Sirius Satellite Radio, at a two-hour hearing.

Right, and satellite radio subscriptions are price inelastic. Whatever the merged company wants to charge me, I’ll pay. I’m a sucker and an automaton. If the merged company offered a service to take over my financial well-being and make choices for me, I’d give up control in an instant. I am beholden to the power of Mel Karmizin.

That’s pretty bad, but this is like what I expect to say after a kick in the head.

Mary Quass, chief executive of NRG Media, a radio company in Iowa, said local AM and FM stations cannot match Sirius’s and XM’s ability to send scores of channels to every corner of the country. Listeners and advertisers might abandon local stations, she said, and “consumers will be the losers.”

If listeners abandon local radio stations, they, as those consumed, will choose to “lose”. This makes sense in what understanding of reality? The government needs to step in because I might make a decision to abandon local stations. I’m unable to know that I’d lose by doing this. Thanks, but I can make up my own mind. Local stations already lost me, anyway. There are only so many Yuk Yuk D-Double-E-Jays I can suffer, and I’ve already passed my lifetime limit.

Of course, a company like Clear Channel owns lots of local stations, all over the country. Somehow this seems like radio companies send “scores of channels to every corner of the country”. Ms. Quass’ objection surely has nothing to do with being CEO of a competing radio company.

Just for fun, I like this euphemism for central planning of the essential satellite radio product:

Gigi B. Sohn, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge, urged the government to set price caps and other restrictions on the merger. “We believe that a properly conditioned merger would be in the public interest,” she said.

Baseball gloves are “properly conditioned”. Hair is “properly conditioned”. This is plain vanilla government regulation designed to give consumers what they “should” get and to protect specific donors constituents. No doubt the latter decides the former. Goverment knows best, after all.

Orwell would be dismayed but not surprised

No matter how many times it’s used, the euphemism fools no one:

Of course, [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]’s credibility is a very big “if.” He might have lied in his confession about his role in the 1993 WTC bombing; he might have lied to his CIA captors (which itself would say something about the effectiveness of their aggressive interrogation); or, in selecting bits and pieces out of their full context, the CIA project officer may have accidentally mis-briefed the 9/11 Commission staff.

If nothing else, good writing demands using the word torture. Don’t put two words where one will prove sufficient suffice. Regardless, even the partisans know that we torture. Using code words doesn’t make it less offensive.

On not finishing the job

We all know Iraq is where we’re supposed to be focused. Without said focus, we want the terrorists to win. Got it. But the Bush administration should be ashamed for allowing Afghanistan to get back to this point:

Taliban militants have hacked off the ears and noses of three Afghan drivers captured helping American forces.

Obviously we can’t stop every attack like this, but it highlights how little commitment the administration has that it moved on before standing up a free, stable society in Afghanistan. Mission accomplished, heckuva job, Brownie, and all that.

Via Andrew Sullivan

Like gathering requirements for software design

This article addressing whether or not circumcision is required for conversion to Judaism contains two fascinating quotes. (Three actually, but I don’t want to rant on the third.)

Marlon Franklin, 37, recently underwent a brit milah. Born into a Catholic family in Venezuela, he directs commercials and promotions for Spanish-language television. This past year, he converted after participating in the University of Judaism’s introductory course given by Weinberg.

“The [brit milah] wasn’t bad at all,” Franklin said. “Dr. Sam Kunin explained everything, both before and during the procedure. I had local anesthesia, so I could see what was going on. It was excellent, no complications, no problems.”

Franklin said he was very conscious of the ancient, spiritual nature of the ritual, which made it “an awesome experience.”

I’ve argued this point in the past. We must consider that men who choose circumcision for themselves will find greater significance in the procedure, or ritual, if allowed to choose for themselves. When imposed, that possibility is lost. Any “awesome experience” for the circumcised is intellectual only. That makes no sense to me as an expression of faith. That, among many reasons, is why non-medically-indicated circumcision should never be forced on anyone.

The second quote is a bit less reassuring since it implies that something I’ve tackled before is more widespread than it should be.

“I don’t understand the fuss people make,” [Dr. Kunin] said. “In Africa now they’re circumcising thousands of adult men for AIDS prevention. If it were such a big deal, don’t you think word would get around and the men would stop doing it?”

It’s clear that Dr. Kunin doesn’t understand the fuss, for the fuss over circumcision isn’t about whether or not adult men should choose it. They have the right to decide whatever they want for their body. Instead of looking at the controversy as a whole, and how it applies to children, he used the pressure of past acceptance to dismiss valid opposition. That’s convenient but not intellectually fair given that boys will lose a healthy part of their anatomy to such poor logic.

I’ve come to expect everything but fairness in this debate.

Blunt-logic Thresholds in the Adult Brain

As I posted earlier this month, I’m not foolish enough to take news that clearly helps me and run with it on first appearance. Everything should be aired, but qualifiers are useful. Skepticism is the lifeblood of future wisdom since evidence can be fleeting after more than a glance. Being in the minority on an issue also means I have to be more careful. Some of what I believe in is too important to have my stance tossed aside because I touted incorrect data. But it should embarrass society that the intelligent stance must play conservative while mass opinion gets to push any sort of nonsense that wouldn’t pass a third-grader’s scrutiny if all facts were treated equally.

With that, I offer this study recently published in the British Journal of Urology.

OBJECTIVE
To map the fine-touch pressure thresholds of the adult penis in circumcised and uncircumcised men, and to compare the two populations.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS
Adult male volunteers with no history of penile pathology or diabetes were evaluated with a Semmes-Weinstein monofilament touch-test to map the fine-touch pressure thresholds of the penis. Circumcised and uncircumcised men were compared using mixed models for repeated data, controlling for age, type of underwear worn, time since last ejaculation, ethnicity, country of birth, and level of education.
…

CONCLUSIONS
The glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis. The transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis.

By default this should be assumed true because circumcision is not medically indicated at birth. It is up to circumcision advocates to disprove this idea and the common sense behind it. It is no longer acceptable for people like me to have to protest that removing skin full of nerve endings causes a harm or that the owner of the skin is the only person qualified to voice an opinion on its removal.

I know wishful thinking won’t turn this truth into reality. Every new data point helps, no matter how obvious I know it to be.

How bad laws happen

Through harmless good intentions:

A bill currently before Parliament could have a devastating effect on motorcycling, as Frank Melling reports

We all know that well-intentioned actions can sometimes bring unintended results. But few events in motoring history would be as spectacular as the potential fall-out from The Off-Road Vehicles Registration Bill proposed by MP Graham Stringer (Labour, Manchester Blackley).

That Mr Stringer’s basic idea was harmless enough is beyond dispute. Annoyed by feckless youths irritating his constituents on mini-moto bikes, he felt that if all these tiny motorcycles had to carry number plates then the police could arrest the miscreants and the nuisance would stop.

The law would essentially criminalize ownership of any motorcycle not registered and licensed by the government, including race motorcycles and museum pieces that never see public roads. This is a brilliant example of careless legislating and unintended consequences, but the bigger point is obvious. We legislate things that are good, or “harmless enough beyond dispute”. Everyone says “well done” and moves on with life. Then we cry foul when the resulting impact to liberty is too great.

Careless governing may be less troublesome than malicious governing, but it’s still objectionable. Laws have consequences. This is why governments should be ruled by a constitution. List the powers of the government and what it can do. Leave everything else to the people who possess those rights. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close to perfect as mankind will ever get when implemented diligently. Freedom isn’t free.

Have free society’s really lost this much of their commitment to liberty?

Via Fark.

Vacation Blogging – Spring Training Edition

It’s that time of year again. I’m in Florida watching the Phillies. As a result, blogging will be light, if at all, through the weekend. Until I return, enjoy this picture from today:


That’s Cole Hamels. That’s from his pre-game preparation in the bullpen. It was the best he looked all night. No, that’s not a good thing, but it’s Spring Training. All is still right with the world.

A caveat on the caveat.

Spot the obvious obfuscation in this New York Times article:

While circumcision may help protect a man from catching the AIDS virus, men who are already infected and are then circumcised should refrain from sex until they have fully healed, researchers said last week.

That’s not the full story, is it? Is the Times suggesting that circumcised men, once healed, can then engage in risky, unprotected sex after the healing process finishes? I doubt it. I fully expect the Times to mention condoms at some point.

Further down in the article, it does, so the relevant question pops up. How effective are condoms at preventing HIV infection as compared to circumcision? Reasonable estimates place the success of condoms at 80-90% and above, when used correctly. Why not include this in the opening paragraph? Does it skew opinion too far to the rational understanding that there are better methods of HIV prevention than circumcision? (We haven’t even addressed the serious ethical questions involved.)

It’s useful to consider what the Times says on condoms:

In any case, Dr. Wawer said, men should practice abstinence or fidelity, and use condoms. All the men in the study, including 5,000 who were not infected when they were recruited, were given that advice and free condoms. But many clearly did not follow the recommendations.

Three studies in Africa in the last year have shown that circumcision cuts a man’s chances of catching the virus by 50 percent or more. If an AIDS vaccine that worked that well had just been invented, “the world would be jumping for joy,” Dr. Wawer said.

We already have a tool that reduces a man’s chances of catching the virus by significantly more than 50 percent. Yet, no one is jumping up and down. Instead, we get the condescending reminder of what civilized people are supposed to know about Africans. “Clearly” men are not following that advice. (That’s not what the Times wrote last April.) So start chopping. That’s amateurish and insulting.

Now note the emphasis placed in these two paragraphs:

Women who had sex with recently circumcised men who had not waited about four weeks to heal seemed to have a slightly higher risk of catching the virus from them, according to scientists conducting a circumcision trial in Rakai, Uganda. …

The researchers emphasized that their data were “very preliminary” and based on only 124 couples followed for only six months out of a study meant to last two years. They released the findings, they said, only because the World Health Organization was writing guidelines for circumcision in African countries with skyrocketing AIDS rates, and they felt obligated to raise the alarm about the risks of sex before healing.

I’m okay with skepticism, even when it makes it harder for me. I want to succeed in convincing people that circumcision is unnecessary and unacceptable, but lying or tweaking the truth won’t help. I’m even frustrated now when reports on this story leave out the fact that the newly circumcised men were already HIV-positive, which is where the risk to women ultimately comes from. There’s no reason to hide anything, helpful or harmful.

Excess skepticism, though, seems unjustified. The results, however preliminary, are common sense. A wound isn’t healed? Blood will be involved. HIV-tainted blood. I don’t understand the over-the-top caution on these findings. Again, is anyone going to suggest that the couples in this study shouldn’t use condoms?

The larger lesson from those paragraphs reveals a lot. How is this fact pattern any different than what media outlets have claimed since December (and before)? None of that skepticism existed when the studies showed a lower risk after a short time frame in studies designed to last two years, yet these crucial bits appear now in force. The overall results surrounding circumcision and HIV are not concrete to the point that we should just say circumcision is “good” and set aside the significant ethical concerns. This shows a bias that doesn’t address the scope of the topic. Clearly.

Thought for the Day

I like this, from Annie Sertich’s blog, Jesus’ Favorite:

As I drove myself back from Hollywood tonight, I turned off the radio, got off the phone, and just made another car memory. One that involved just silence. And as I drove in silence, I heard my Dad’s tears. His regrets. His sadness. It broke my heart.

And THEN, just as I was pulling up to my place, I heard her. Her laughter from the passenger seat. Her singing along to Donna Summer. Her telling me. What to remember. “Don’t wait. Don’t fucking wait. Do what you want to do, NOW. Be with who you want to be with NOW. Believe in what you want to believe in, NOW. ‘Cuz in 6 months or 8 months or 7 years, it may be too late. “

They waited. They fucking waited. Waited until the savings account looked ok, and the job was done. But cancer didn’t. And now my Dad drives that car alone.

I don’t envy having to go through such experiences, but that’s great writing.