Year: 2005

Here’s an email explaining some of the finer issues of circumcision, and responding to the Slate survey I mentioned Tuesday:

Your survey of men circumcised in adulthood has already been conducted – but first let’s correct a misconception:

One perennial error of the circumcision debate is lumping together the modern hospital technique with the traditional techniques used by Jewish mohels (and I presume by Muslims). The traditional Jewish technique is much less invasive, and preserves almost all of the erogenic tissue of the foreskin. Briefly: the foreskin is like the sleeve of a suit jacket, with an outer layer of skin and a freely-sliding inner lining of skin. This inner lining is the erotically responsive bit, and traditional Jewish circumcision preserves it.
In contrast, the modern hospital technique used since the 1960s totally ablates both layers of skin. This technique replaced the freehand technique with a specialized clamp or cone that allows unskilled health workers to circumcise newborns.
It’s possible to tell the difference between the two circumcision styles by visual inspection. In fact here in Israel (where your study has already been conducted) many circumcised Jewish men would not by be “circumcised” by American standards, as their penis heads are partially covered by a cuff of foreskin. Many of the negative effects of circumcision – skin too tight during erection, friction during sex, loss of sensation – are relevant only to the modern medical circumcision technique.

Now for your study: Israel has absorbed over a million Jews from the Soviet Union over the past decade, and most of the men were not circumcised in infancy. Many of these men have undergone (Jewish-style) circumcision in adulthood. An Israeli doctor sent a follow-up questionnaire to several thousand of these men. The results split rather evenly into thirds: One third said “no change.” One third said “circumcised sex is better.” One third said “circumcised sex is worse.”
Of course the anti and pro circumcision forces began wrangling over the “no change” group, while the rest of us commonsensically concluded that circumcision (at least, the kinder, gentler, Jewish ritual) had negligible effect on sexual satisfaction.

Because of the international interest generated by the study, a later researcher went back and re-examined the questionnaires. He compared the sexual satisfaction question with the question asking why the subject opted to be circumcised. The result: the overwhelming majority of the “circumcised is worse” group were forced into the procedure by girlfriends or other peer pressure (army service, etc.) – which seems likely to have influenced their perceptions.

I am a rare American Jew who was circumcised in adulthood (Jewish technique), and I would say “no significant change”. On the other hand, I have seen some hospital-circumcised guys with whom I would never want to trade equipment – on aesthetic grounds, and projecting what sex must be like for them.

My own view is that circumcision should be a decision made by an adult male on health grounds alone – and the data on HIV should make many men consider it. But the involuntary genital mutilation of newborns remains an outrage.

Borat hijacks a retriever-chihuahua wedding.

Haven’t looked at one since June. Here’s what I’ve been lacking. Don’t miss the Martha burps.

Theocon Maggie Gallagher waxes rather eloquently about the devotion of penguin mates in caring for their young. I loved the documentary, “March of the Penguins,” as well. But nature can sometimes be more complicated than some theologians posit. Here’s a wonderful little children’s book about a true story about a pair of penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. They, like other pairs, became inseparable and bonded for life. But they were both males. When other penguins hatched eggs, these two found a pebble and warmed and nursed it. Then a zoo-keeper decided to give them a real egg, which they nursed and brought to birth and childhood like every other heterosexual couple. This alternative penguin family still thrives and you can go see them, if you want. The presence of homosexuality in nature is ubiquitous and clearly part of God’s creation. As Maggie writes,

I don’t know Jordan Roberts’ agenda, religious or otherwise, but it is hard not to see the theological overtones in the movie he remade. Beauty, goodness, love and devotion are all part of nature, built into the DNA of the universe. Even in the harshest place on the Earth (like 21st-century America?), love will not only endure, it will triumph.

It’s just a pity that Gallagher is so opposed to such a triumph of love that is happening today – among people whose mutual care and devotion she sadly refuses to cherish – and even wants to stigmatize.

My musings have prompted quite a wealth of response over at Instapundit and elsewhere. Some good points. The problem is: Americans tend to blame everyone but themselves for higher gas prices. But when you’re actually going backward in fuel efficiency and your government subsidizes that trend, you have a problem. And when you’re a president who cozies up to the enemy in Saudi Arabia and then guzzles more gas than anyone else, you might begin to have a p.r. problem. I say: toughen fuel standards, double gas taxes, remove all tax breaks for SUVs and drill in ANWR. It’s a start. Oh, and if you live alone as more and more people do, and you live in an urban area, get a bike.

And how iPods have helped undermine them. Yay!

What do we owe them? They had much more economic freedom under Saddam than under other Islamist states, even though that freedom was to work at the behest of a vicious dictatorship. I’m worried like many others about the possibility of reversals, especially in domestic law, that are now being considered in the various constitutional drafts for the new Iraq. And I certainly hope the U.S. is doing its utmost to protect women and other vulnerable groups in Iraq. But perfection should not be the enemy of the good. Equal status on Western lines may not be possible, given the deeply sexist nature of Islamic society. But a real and persistent reversal would be a terrible disappointment. Freedom is part of what we fought for, and we should especially try to allow wives and women legal recourse outside theocratic courts. I find Reuel Marc Gerecht’s comments on “Meet The Press” unfortunate:

I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women’s social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there’s no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it’s important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we’d all be thrilled. I mean, women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they’re there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

Gerecht is not entirely wrong in bringing a little realism to these debates. And we can be sure that the Dowds of this world who opposed every attempt to liberate Iraq’s women in the past will now be whining that they do not all have equal access to her suite at the Chateau Marmont. But I do believe that the repression of women’s social rights is integral to the pathologies that have bred Islamo-fascism. Sexual repression, misogynist theology, males treating women as property to be fought over or raped, honor killings: all these lead to cultures in which many frustrated young males turn to extreme religious faith or violence. Liberating Muslim women is critical to liberating the Middle East, which in turn is critical to protecting the West from more religious terror. We may not be able to achieve this all at once. But we can try where we can. Iraq is a rare case where we have real leverage for a short period of time. History will not forgive us if we pass this opportunity by.

“With unmistakable clarity and an apparent lack of self-consciousness, Robertson simply called for an assassination, presumably to be undertaken by U.S. military forces in violation of U.S. law.
In so doing he gave the Venezuelan leader a propaganda gold mine, embarrassed the Bush administration, and left millions of viewers perplexed and troubled. More importantly, he brought shame to the cause of Christ. This is the kind of outrageous statement that makes evangelism all the more difficult. Missing from the entire context is the Christian understanding that violence can never be blessed as a good, but may only be employed under circumstances that would justify the limited use of lethal force in order to prevent even greater violence. Our witness to the Gospel is inevitably and deeply harmed when a recognized Christian leader casually recommends the assassination of a world leader.” – Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Good for Mohler.

BUSH AND SUVS: Here’s an email that reminds me why this president isn’t really that serious about the war on terror:

“I am about as left as you can get and still be considered a mature thinking adult. To my shame, my wife and I (we do have four kids) bought a luxury Lexus SUV last year. We had even put ourselves on the waiting list for a Prius when we were shopping for a new car. What finally put us over the fence is that the Bush tax cuts allowed me, a sole proprietor, if I used the vehicle soley for business (which I do) to deduct the entire cost of the largest size SUV from my taxes in the first year if I bought a vehicle weighting over 6000 lbs. This worked out as a subsidy worth over $17,000 for the purchase of this car. (This has since been modified). No wonder there was such an explosion of luxury SUV’s on the road. Curiously, the car we bought weighed in at 6005 lbs and there were a couple of BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Porsche and other models which were marginally over the threshold as well. (There are also models which are way over the 6000 lb mark but it is obvious the car companies were reading, perhaps writing, the tax law very closely).
This perverse tax incentive effectively allowed me to buy this luxury SUV gas guzzler (17MPG) at greater than a 1/3 discount to whatever price I could negotiate. On purely economic terms, it was a no brainer … we were almost compelled to buy the car.”

I guess this is what happens when Dick Cheney is your vice-president.

My favorites:

“U.S. troops died for your SUV — Drive it proudly.”
Graphic of Osama: “LUV your SUV!”
“I’m funding terrorists, ask me how.”
“SUV: Killing Americans at home and abroad”

Or we can stick to the positive: “Support the troops? Buy a hybrid.”

A reader reminds me of Gregg Easterbrook’s pro-Kerry piece last year pointing out how incentives to move away from SUVs and toward hybrids could have a cumulatively important effect on our oil consumption. Money quote (TNR, for reasons beyond me, keeps most of its content behind a subscriber wall):

A simple one-third increase in the mileage of new vehicles would have a remarkably beneficial impact on the United States-Persian Gulf relationship, and quickly.
Here’s the math. About 17 million new cars and “light trucks” (SUVs, pickups, and minivans) are sold in the United States each year and driven, on average, about 12,000 miles annually. If the fuel efficiency of 17 million vehicles driven 12,000 miles annually rose by one-third, from a real-world 17 MPG to a real-world 23 MPG, that would save about 200 gallons of gasoline annually per vehicle, or about 3.4 billion gallons of gasoline. Since a barrel of petroleum yields 20 gallons of gasoline, about 170 million barrels of oil would be saved.
Perhaps you think, Aha! With U.S. petroleum demand at 20 million barrels daily, this MPG initiative has saved just about one week’s worth of oil. Yes–in the first year, the MPG increase would have little effect, in much the same way that, in their first year, few investments yield much return. But remember the miracle of compounding! In the second year, with two model-years’ worth of vehicles at the higher MPG, 340 million barrels of oil are saved. The next year, the savings is 510 million barrels, the next year 680 million, and so on. In just the fifth year of this initiative, we would need to purchase about 850 million fewer barrels of petroleum–approximately the amount the United States imports each year from the Persian Gulf states.

Of course, John McCain backs this strategy. 9/11 was the obvious opportunity to revolutionize American energy policy to rid ourselves of having to deal with Islamo-fascist cartels. Bush blew it.