Liam Drew gropes for a better understanding of the evolutionary reason for external testicles, unsatisfied by the widely-cited “cooling hypothesis”:
Heat disrupts sperm production so effectively that biology textbooks and medical tracts alike give cooling as the reason for the scrotum. The problem is many biologists who seriously think about animal evolution are unhappy with this. Opponents say that testicles function optimally at cooler temperatures because they evolved this trait after their exile. If mammals became warm-blooded 220 million or so years ago, it would mean mammals carried their gonads internally for more than 100 million years before the scrotum made its bow. The two events were hardly tightly coupled.
The hypothesis’ biggest problem, though, is all the sacless branches on the family tree. Regardless of their testicular arrangements, all mammals have elevated core temperatures. If numerous mammals lack a scrotum, there is nothing fundamentally incompatible with making sperm at high temperatures. Elephants have a higher core temperature than gorillas and most marsupials. And beyond mammals it gets worse: Birds, the only other warm-blooded animals, have internal testes despite having core temperatures that in some species run to 108 degrees.
(Photo: a scrotum in a warm state by Brallion, via Wiki)
Abigail Rine points to research suggesting that “beliefs about gender roles are more predictive of a victim-blaming mentality than the gender of the research participant”:
In other words, men blame at higher rates not because they are more susceptible to misogyny or misandry, but because they are more likely to endorse traditional views of masculinity and femininity. This holds true for victim-blaming that stems from “hostile sexism,” which refers to the denigration of a rape victim who violates gender expectations. Both men and women, however, are equally inclined toward “benevolent sexism,” or reserving one’s sympathy for those who fulfill gender ideals.
A study published just this year in the Journal of Sexual Aggression lends further support to the gender transgression hypothesis. Unlike previous experimental studies of samples from the United Kingdom and United States, this study analyzed a Swedish population. In this instance, victim-blaming attitudes were found to be scarce, as participants of both sexes overwhelmingly blamed the rapist for the attack, and, in a divergence from other studies, male participants did not victim-blame more than their female counterparts. Sweden, one of the highest-ranked countries in the world in terms of gender equality, appears to have significantly lower rates of victim blaming.
Lydia Tomkiw reports on a change to Channel 4’s late-night broadcast schedule:
[T]he British broadcaster Channel 4 has announced that it will be airing the call to prayer, or adhan, live every morning throughout Ramadan (an autoplay version will also be available on its website five times daily). … Writing for Britain’s Radio Times magazine, Channel 4’s head of factual programming, Ralph Lee, called the decision “a deliberate ‘provocation’ to all our viewers in the very real sense of the word,” noting that the broadcaster expected to be “criticized for focusing attention on a ‘minority’ religion.” Lee went on to point out that nearly five percent of the country will be participating in Ramadan. “[C]an we say the same of other national events that have received blanket coverage on television such as the Queen’s coronation anniversary?” he asked.
For Muslims, this is an opportunity to have showcased what is important to them in a nuanced manner. But perhaps more significant is that British Muslim culture and faith is being integrated into and reflected back from mainstream culture. For me, this makes it a turning point.
It’s positive for Muslims, of course, for our faith to be taken seriously by a mainstream broadcaster rather than demonized. But it’s also positive for a wider audience to have the opportunity to look beyond media stereotypes and gain a better understanding of mainstream Muslims and our way of life.
[Channel Four] actually wants to “provoke” the wrong sorts of people for the purposes of publicity, much like when it made the atrocious decision to broadcast an ‘alternative message by the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–although in the case of the latter it would have been wrong not to be provoked. … Personally, I would like to see a lot less religion on television. But that doesn’t mean I’m the sort of person who is going to be “provoked” by four minutes of Muslim prayer each day for a single week. You should probably worry about anyone who is.
Sam Harris, the avowed atheist, recently wrote, “Despite my antipathy for the doctrine of Islam, I think the Muslim call to prayer is one of the most beautiful sounds on earth.” Listen to it above.
In the last month, our top referrers have been search engines, Twitter and Facebook, in that order, followed by HuffPo and Drudge. In the same period, we directed the most traffic toward Slate and the Atlantic, in that order. We sent 39,000 people to Slate and 32,000 people to the Atlantic; they sent us 66 and 1,100 in return, respectively.
Murdoch told the journalists that the culture of paying police officers for stories “existed at every newspaper in Fleet Street. Long since forgotten. But absolutely”, and had existed long before Sun journalists had been arrested. Murdoch also criticised the “incompetent” police investigation that has led to the arrest of so many of his staff.
In one clip broadcast by Channel 4 News, a journalist asks Murdoch: “I’m pretty confident that the working practices that I’ve seen here are ones that I’ve inherited, rather than instigated. Would you recognise that all this predates many of our involvement here?” Murdoch replies: “We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops. That’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn’t instigate it.”
The possible charge against him personally? According to the Guardian: “conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office”. Extracts from the tape here.
Although the object of beauty is debated, the experience of beauty is not. Beauty can stir up a snarl of emotions but pleasure must always be one (tortured longings and envy are not incompatible with pleasure). Our body responds to it viscerally and our names for beauty are synonymous with physical cataclysms and bodily obliteration — breathtaking, femme fatale, knockout, drop-dead gorgeous, bombshell, stunner, and ravishing. We experience beauty not as rational contemplation but as a response to physical urgency.
And don’t forget “crush”. Popova also seizes upon Etcoff’s summary of the fascinating work of anthropometrist Leslie Farkas, who compared survey responses to photographs with the “conventions of the classical beauty canon” and concluded there’s no formula for attractiveness:
The canon did not fare well. Many of the measures did not turn out to be important, such as the relative angles of the ear and nose. Some seemed pure idealizations: none of the faces and heads in profile corresponded to equal halves or thirds or fourths. Some were inaccurate—the distance between the eyes of the beauties was greater than that suggested by the canon (the width of the nose). Farkas’s results do not mean that a beautiful face will never match the Renaissance and classical ideals. But they do suggest that classical artists might have been wrong about the fundamental nature of human beauty. Perhaps they thought there was a mathematical ideal because this fit in a general way with platonic or religious ideas about the origin of the world.
Take it away, Dustin Hoffman:
(Detail from Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, 1485, via Wikimedia Commons)
I had already begun to tell the story through the eyes of the idiot child, since I felt that it would be more effective as told by someone capable only of knowing what happened, but not why. I saw that I had not told the story that time. I tried to tell it again, the same story through the eyes of another brother. That was still not it. I told it for a third time through the eyes of the third brother. That was still not it. I tried to gather the pieces together and fill in the gaps by making myself the spokesman. It was still not complete, not until fifteen years after the book was published, when I wrote as an appendix to another book the final effort to get the story told and off my mind, so that I myself could have some peace from it. It’s the book I feel tenderest towards. I couldn’t leave it alone, and I never could tell it right, though I tried hard and would like to try again, though I’d probably fail again.
And he had this to say about Hemingway’s fear of failure:
I thought that he found out early what he could do and he stayed inside of that. He never did try to get outside the boundary of what he really could do and risk failure. He did what he really could do marvelously well, first rate, but to me that is not success but failure…failure to me is the best. To try something you can’t do, because it’s too much [to hope for], but still to try it and fail, then try it again. That to me is success.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects 2.2 million American adults. Matt B. reflects on a childhood experience of debilitating indecision over a souvenir T-shirt:
[M]y fixations had grown to the point where Mom offered to drive me back to the restaurant so I could exchange my shirt for the pink one. I had turned her down once or twice before, but things had gotten pretty tumultuous in my head, and I relented. Fine, I thought. Let’s just get this over with. Maybe then I’ll be able to go down to the beach and enjoy things.
When we got to the restaurant, though, my doubts multiplied. I could feel a tension building, a fizzy pressure in my head. I weighed the pros and cons of each shirt: the gray one was more traditionally cool, but the pink was bolder, full of a weird, preppy swagger. Gray wouldn’t turn any heads, but maybe I didn’t want heads turning – maybe I just wanted to get in under the radar. Pink was edgier, but it ran some real risks.
Mom tried to talk me through the decision, telling me to ask myself which one I liked better. She angled her head forward in determination, smacking her hands as if wiping them clean: “Just go with it.”
I knew, at some level, that she was right, that thinking about things this way was tormenting me to no good end. But I couldn’t decide. I didn’t know which one was better. As soon as I leaned in one direction, I felt terrified that I might be missing out on everything the other shirt had to offer. After ten minutes of indecision, I burst into tears.
Mom stayed with me, but I suspect she was more unsettled than she let on. I’m not sure there had ever been an instance like this one, in which my indecision and ambivalence rose to such acutely painful heights. I felt silly sitting there, aware of how privileged and prissy my concerns would look to most people. Here I was, a young boy on a nice beach vacation with his family, with a totally unnecessary T-shirt already in his possession, thrashing about because he thought there might be a slightly nicer one out there.
I was also aware of what I was missing. Everyone else was at the beach, playing or reading or crashing around in the surf. The beach itself was only a small road and a short sand dune away. I didn’t want to be here, but I didn’t know how not to be.
Michael McCarthy notes Pope Francis’ ride of choice is a $16,000 Ford compact:
The Pope advised new priests and nuns to travel in more “humble” vehicles rather than driving fast, late model cars. To prove his point, Pope Francis is driving a low-priced Focus around Vatican City, according to news reports.
Scott Monty, Ford’s global head of social media, said via e-mail that the former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina appears to be using a “second-generation” Focus instead of a new model.
For Pope Francis, it’s yet another contrast with predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, who had a custom-made electric vehicle donated by Renault and a BMW X5 given to him as a gift by the German auto maker.
Gary Stibel, chief executive officer the New England Consulting Group, sees synergies:
“This is a smart car for a smarter Pope,” said Mr. Stibel. “It’s a simple, real car for a real humble Pope. Clearly Ford does benefit from this because he’s chosen their car.”
“It hurts me when I see a priest or a nun with the latest model car; you can’t do this,” he said. “A car is necessary to do a lot of work, but please, choose a more humble one. If you like the fancy one, just think about how many children are dying of hunger in the world.”
Brian Kellett, a paramedic who in “most cases [is] completely against force-feeding,” nevertheless deems the Mos Def video “propaganda”:
I have placed more NG tubes than I can remember and I have never seen a reaction as strong as that shown in the first video. It certainly isn’t very pleasant to have a NG tube inserted as it tickles the back of the throat that makes you want to gag (or swallow), but it is not this apparent torture that is being shown. An NG tube is inserted in hospitals for a number of reasons, sometimes for surgery, sometimes because a patient cannot swallow. In the first video Yasiin Bey [aka Mos Def] isn’t given water to drink during the procedure, but in many of my patient’s I also couldn’t give them anything to drink to ease the passing of the tube as these patients would have no gag reflex and so giving them water could result in them inhaling rather than swallowing the water. Inhaling water can have side effects that include death.
Yasiin Bey is also shown to be resisting, while the person in the [above] video is complying with instructions. Many of the patients that I passed an NG tube into had some form of confusion, either due to a stroke, due to dementia or due to a multitude of other causes . In some cases I would be passing a tube into the stomach of someone against their will because they had tried to commit suicide and were under a Mental Health Section.
Even in these cases I never saw a reaction as strong as that of Yasiin Bey.
A reader has a very different take:
I have a rare condition called Multiple System Atrophy, which involves a number of progressive diseases/conditions. But of all of the painful things I’ve endured, feeding tubes take the prize.
I first encountered NG tubes in 2002, when after a bout of pancreatitis I found my stomach completely without function. After about a week, the decision was made to insert a nasal tube. I can never forget that experience. Two nurses came to insert the tube. They explained what the process would be, telling me it would be mildly uncomfortable. Undersale of the century. They tried inserting it in the right nostril first. Whether I already had a deviated septum or they caused it with poor technique, they couldn’t get the tube to pass. It turns out they also forgot to apply the numbing agent, meaning I felt every bit of the pressure and pain of the first attempt.
They moved to the left nostril. This time, they remembered the xylocaine or lidocaine, but it really made no difference. It was mildly uncomfortable in the way that the New York Yankees are a recreational baseball team. I have never felt such pain – not even in proctological or urological procedures. Well, maybe it is similar to the urological ones. I felt as if I was drowning as the burning hot sensation passed from my nasal cavity to my throat. I began dry heaving, with the most intense gagging sensation I’d ever felt. The hose didn’t move easily, and the nurses were literally pushing against the resistance with jabbing movements.
Once it was in, it felt like there was a knife in my throat. For days, I was gargling liquid lidocaine to dull the stabbing sensation. The pain was constant and would keep me awake. As my tube was more permanent than the ones being used at Gitmo, I had more issues than are relevant to the discussion. But suffice it to say, there were more issues caused by the tube than I care to remember, and they ultimately had to move me to a surgical feeding tube because of the issues with the NG.
I am in a place right now where I am wasting away. My stomach has no peristaltic function. Two years ago, I weighed 215 pounds. Today, I tip the scales at 125. A 5’10” man in his late thirties, I have the build of a prepubescent boy. My biceps are now smaller than my wrists used to be. But I cannot bring myself to being fed by a tube again, either temporary or permanent. I love my family, and want to spend as much time with them as I’m given, but my wife and I agree that when I was living with a tube, I was not really living; I just wasn’t dead.
I have extremely mixed feelings when it comes to Guantanamo Bay and the hunger strikes. On one hand, Congress has made it almost impossible for the Administration to return those prisoners who are cleared, as the requirement of absolute certainty that those released won’t engage in terrorist acts is not something that can ever be 100% fulfilled. And letting prisoners die would be an absolute disaster, both politically and on a human level. But I also know that forcing a plastic tube up the noses and down the throats of human beings is torturous, if not outright torture. Every politician and military leader who has caused or supports this situation should be forced to endure just one session of restraint and insertion. Until then, it will be seen as just another process issue by the game players in Washington, who are more interested in scoring political points than ending the very real humanitarian crisis that we have created in Cuba.
Update from a reader:
I’ve had a naso-gastric tube inserted twice, each time as part of the treatment for a bowel obstruction. I can confirm what others have said: it ranks up there with the worst things I’ve ever experienced. That said, my reaction was nothing like Yasiin Bey, in no small part because the thing I was being treated for was a bowel obstruction (and its subsequent complication, pancreatitis), which is also on the list of the worst things I’ve ever experienced, and which I was willing to endure almost anything to alleviate, up until the tube went in and the gag reflexes and pain from the plastic tube chafing against my nasal passage and throat started. Yasiin Bey seemed to exhibit none of the gag reflexes and dry heaving that I experienced every time, which really made me wonder if the tube was really being fully inserted. The only time I’ve ever seen an NG tube inserted was when it was going into my own nose, so I really can’t say if my experience was typical or not. I can say two things for sure: first, I think Yasiin got off easy. Second, the “paramedic” who claims the tube “tickles the back of the throat” is correct in the same way, to quote one of your earlier correspondents, that the Yankees are a recreational baseball team.
Fortunately, one of my NG tube insertions was in California, where we don’t have strong strictures against pain killers. Dilauded, a wonderfully potent opiate, made me unable to concentrate on anything for even sixty seconds, but also numbed the pain in my nasal passage, throat, and stomach, where the end of the tube was constantly poking into my stomach wall, enough that I could manage to sleep at night. The other time I had an NG tube inserted was in Arizona, where they felt that miniscule amounts of morphine were more than adequate to kill pain. They weren’t. The pain was constant, twenty-four hours a day, and was only tolerable if I didn’t move. Sleep was nearly impossible: moving my head in any way pulled on that tube, increasing the pain and scratching more tissue off my already raw throat.
Yasiin also missed out on the best part of the entire experience. His tube was in for only a few minutes before being removed. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – like having a tube in for days before it’s pulled out. Even though every nurse that extracted my tubes pulled them out slowly and carefully, extraction is also painful, as the tube rubs for its entire length against the now raw surface of your throat and nasal passages. When the tube finally rounds the last turn and pulls free, the sudden feeling of relief is indescribable.
testicles function optimally at cooler temperatures because they evolved this trait after their exile. If mammals became warm-blooded 220 million or so years ago, it would mean mammals carried their gonads internally for more than 100 million years before the scrotum made its bow. The two events were hardly tightly coupled.
