Author: Tony

Yes, I think about this more than most people.

This story is from last week, but I ignored missed it while I was away. I think it’s interesting and insightful, while not needing much commentary.

The Marines are banning any new, extra-large tattoos below the elbow or the knee, saying such body art is harmful to the Corps’ spit-and-polish image.
…

“Some Marines have taken the liberty of tattooing themselves to a point that is contrary to our professional demeanor and the high standards America has come to expect from us,” he said. “I believe tattoos of an excessive nature do not represent our traditional values.”

Any time traditional values pops up, I’m likely to shake my head and dismiss the logic. However, when dealing with the military, there is some leeway since members of our military offer up some of their freedoms when they join. Such a policy could have implications in recruiting and retaining soldiers (and sailors and …), but that’s a different debate than whether that policy is reasonable. I’m not inclined to get worked up over the issue.

However, this quote fascinates me:

“This is something I love to do,” said Cpl. David Nadrchal, 20, of Pomona, who made an appointment to get an Iraqi flag and his deployment dates etched onto his lower leg. “The fact I can’t put something on my body that I want — it’s a big thing to tell me I can’t do that.”

Change a few words (while the overall meaning remains) and you arrive at a perfect summation of the argument against routine infant circumcision. It’s a big thing to tell me I can’t… To forbid a tattoo or keeping a foreskin, there must be an excellent justification. Perhaps there is a reason with tattoos, although I find that difficult to believe given the mission of the Marines. There is no reason with routine infant circumcision. The burden of proof rests with he who wishes to remove the body part from the male, not with the male to later protest that irreversible action.

Avoiding Capitalism Because Winners Aren’t Pre-determined

Is this the type of “research” our government listens to?

The influential research firm Carmel Group, whose analysis helped kill the 2003 merger of EchoStar Communications Corp. (ECHO) and DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV), will release a new report Tuesday that outlines arguments against merging satellite radio companies Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., The New York Post reported in its Tuesday editions.

Sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters, which has already come out against the deal, the 11-page independent white paper includes a point-by-point rebuttal to the six main arguments put forth by Sirius and XM in favor of a merger.

I like having research back up my opinions as much as anyone, but this is shameless. I shouldn’t worry, though, because I’m sure the National Association of Broadcasters is looking out for customers and only customers, whether those customers choose to purchase the free broadcasts of its members or the non-free broadcasts of its competitors non-members. The FCC will probably fall for it, which is why Sirius’ stock price is down so much.

Good Intentions and Taxpayer Money

As long as government is doing something, that action is “good”. Or not:

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is planning a campaign to encourage men at high risk of AIDS to get circumcised in light of the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the procedure as an effective way to prevent the disease.

The taxpayers of New York should not pay for cosmetic surgery. Yes, it has some supposed health benefits regarding HIV, but condoms are more effective. In that context, the surgery is unnecessary because any benefits it might achieve can be achieved without surgery and the corresponding risks. (Malpractice insurance, anyone?) If the government pays for anything, condoms are the way to go.

However, this is government, so when it takes action, it must find extra-special creative ways to be stupid.

In the United States, “New York City remains the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said in an interview. Referring to H.I.V., he said, “In some subpopulations, you have 10 to 20 percent prevalence rates, just as they do in parts of Africa.”

His department has started asking some community groups and gay rights organizations to discuss circumcision with their members, and has asked the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs city hospitals and clinics, to perform the procedure at no charge for men without health insurance.

If you have no insurance, you still get to have sex with fewer consequences! Aren’t New York’s taxpayers city officials generous? But ignore that. The three released studies (which all ended early, remember, despite HIV’s 3-6 month latency period before detection) have not shown any link between circumcision and reduced HIV-infection among men having sex with other men. The research simply isn’t there. To theorize any such link is irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Continue reading “Good Intentions and Taxpayer Money”

Regular Blogging Will Return Soon

I’ve been on a mini-vacation since last week. Among other activities, I spent a few days exercising my First Amendment rights.

With many dedicated activists, I talked to people about ending routine circumcision in America. I faced most of the opinions I’ve discussed here in some context over the 18 months, from many different perspectives. I could get disheartened¹ if I focused only on the negative reactions, the ones that began “Are you a Christian?”, “But it’s the parents’ choice…”, or “Don’t you have anything better to do?”. I can respond when faced with such questions, although the questioner’s receptiveness to an answer based in logic is rare. The debate certainly helped strengthen my skills at persuasion.

More important, though, were the conversations I had with people who were happy to learn. Many people couldn’t believe we’d be out there discussing this until they learned our perspective. For example, I talked with a group of 13-year-old schoolgirls who were horrified at the prospect of male circumcision once we explained it. One of those girls debated me, probing to find weaknesses in my argument. One could argue that she’s only 13, but she (and her friends) asked intelligent questions. She eventually conceded that a) I knew my facts and b) that what’s she’s been taught is silly. I came away convinced that at least one of those girls will question circumcision enough to not make her future son’s decision.

Overall, it’s a productive way to spend a few days.

Random links discussing the protest here,
here, here, here, here, and here.

¹ One woman shooed her kids away while saying “It’s a 2-second snip, and it’s your mother’s choice. Whatever your culture does, that’s what happens to you.” She didn’t come over so I could ask her opinion about female genital mutilation in countries where it’s practiced as part of the culture.

Retelling the story of America’s Pastime.

The window for the cable industry to make a deal with Major League Baseball for its Extra Innings package is closing. (It ends Saturday.) As time clicks away, I fear that Bud Selig and Co. have no intention of honoring their public pronouncements. Fine, I’ve come to expect that. But I flipped on Field of Dreams this morning at the most awesomest part. When Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) delivered his monologue, he reminded me why I love baseball. Consider:

Here is the text of that monologue for those who prefer a quicker read.

Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack.

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.

People will come Ray.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Thank God Bud Selig didn’t write the screenplay for Field of Dreams. If he had, Terence Mann would’ve said that only baseball fans watching DirecTV driving a Mercedes SUV could pay the $20 per person and sit in the bleachers. He might make an exception and let people watching MLB.tv riding a Segway get in for $10.

The monologue’s closing wouldn’t be nearly as powerful then, I suspect. Oh… people will come, Ray. People will most likely come.

Catching Up to What It Should’ve Offered at Launch.

“Complete My Album” is so obvious that it should’ve happened much earlier.

Apple introduced the “Complete My Album” feature Thursday on its iTunes Store. It now gives a full credit of 99 cents for every track the user previously purchased and applies it toward the purchase of the complete album.

For instance, most albums on iTunes cost $9.99 so a customer who already bought three tracks can download the rest of the album for $7.02.

Previously, users who bought singles and later opted to buy the album had to pay the full price of the album and ended up with duplicates of those songs.

The album price reduction is good for only 180 days after the initial purchase of individual tracks.

Indeed, I’ve thought this to myself many times when purchasing singles. The advantage of iTunes is being able to sample individual songs before buying a full album. If I buy a song and then I like the album, I want to not pay for the same digital download again. The primary goal of technology should be to make life easier/better for customers. When doing this, the company can succeed, as well. Bravo to Apple for catching on in another area.

Please tell us if you steal from us.

With a recent update through its Automatic Update feature, Microsoft proves that it’s incompetently evil, at most. At issue, it released Windows Genuine Advantage Notification (KB905474). The description is as follows:

The Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool notifies you if your copy of Windows is not genuine. If your system is found to be a non-genuine, the tool will help you obtain a licensed copy of Windows.

Good grief. I know my copy of Windows is genuine. I do not need notification. I purchased every computer I own, and they still have the original operating system included when I turned them on for the first time. I’m honest; I don’t need this surveillance. Thanks for the trust, though.

If I happened to be the type of person who would install a pirated non-genuine copy of Windows, does Microsoft really believe that I would utilize its help in obtaining a license?

The idea is preposterous. Yet, there is the option from Microsoft, treating me like I’m incompetent or stupid. Yes, it has a significant portion of the market for several key software product types. So what? There are options to avoid Microsoft brought about by its own incompetence at innovating and/or adapting to the market’s demands.

Post Script: None of this applies to the Xbox 360. I love my Xbox 360.

Slow Solutions From Fast Food

So that I show my contradictions on this morning’s post, consider this decision by Burger King:

In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a “historic advance,” Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, said yesterday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.

The company said that it would also favor suppliers of chickens that use gas, or “controlled-atmospheric stunning,” rather than electric shocks to knock birds unconscious before slaughter. It is considered a more humane method, though only a handful of slaughterhouses use it.

The goal for the next few months, Burger King said is for 2 percent of its eggs to be “cage free,” and for 10 percent of its pork to come from farms that allow sows to move around inside pens, rather than being confined to crates. The company said those percentages would rise as more farmers shift to these methods and more competitively priced supplies become available.

This is invariably good. Less animal suffering while they’re alive is the correct action. Welfarist animal policy can promote a valid marginal gain.

But the animals will still die. Does it matter significantly to the chicken that it’s gassed¹ before it dies? Of course it suffers less, but it still dies. And how significant will the change be if we’re talking 2 percent of Burger King’s eggs and 10 percent of its pork? That still leaves 98 percent and 90 percent of animals, respectively, facing the same amount of suffering. Will this be a one-time improvement, or will there be a continual push to reduce the amount of suffering? The answer isn’t clear.

I found the link to this story at the Daily Dish, where Andrew Sullivan wrote this about the decision:

I’m a McDonalds fan, but I’m switching. The more of us do it, the more likely it is that the rest of the food industry will follow Burger King’s lead.

In the past, Mr. Sullivan wrote about the moral implications of using animals for food. He was honest about the qualm he has with how animals are treated, specifically pigs because of their intelligence. Yet he’s also stated that “it should be possible to remain carnivorous and more humane than we currently are.” Now we see the effect of the welfarist approach. How likely is Mr. Sullivan to align² his views and habits further now that he has a way to ease his moral qualm? I’m not suggesting that guilt is appropriate, but there are consequences to providing such moral escape clauses.

I appreciate what the welfarist approach can do. I’m just not overly thrilled at such half-measures. For example, with routine infant circumcision, anything that reduces suffering should be implemented. But I will not cheer increased use of analgesic creams and dorsal blocks, which should be standard even though they are insufficient. The case against routine infant circumcision is not that the child suffers during the surgery and the healing time after. It is important in the debate, but it is not primary. What the child is being denied for the rest of his life, without his consent, is the problem. No amount of compassion diminishes this. The drawbacks of the welfarist argument allows parents to feel better about “their” decision, and consequently think less about the lifelong consequences. Kids will suffer who may not have faced the knife if their parents had been forced to confront the full ramifications of their actions.

Positive changes are useful and should not be abandoned solely because the results won’t live up the hope. They’re just not enough and should be seen as incomplete.

¹ If you eat that chicken, wouldn’t you then eat some of that gas? Consider this article titled Beef diet ‘damages sons’ sperm’ discussing the impact of pregnant women eating beef raised with “growth promoting chemicals”. (Link via Julian Sanchez.)

² I’m not trying to pick on Mr. Sullivan on this. This rationale is not exclusive to him, nor am I perfect in this in the ways it applies to my life.

In Case the Message Hasn’t Gone Out Already

Let’s see if we can decipher the convenient omissions as the Associated Press builds this story. First, the title:

Circumcision urged to fight HIV

Nothing new there to deviate from previous reporting. Stupid, but consistent as it flows into the lede:

U.N. health agencies recommended Wednesday that heterosexual men undergo circumcision because of “compelling” evidence that it can reduce their chances of contracting HIV by up to 60 percent.

At least they’re saying men, but they might be forgetting a few key qualifications. But who needs to read further. We now know what to do. Even if the marketing is flawed.

The public health impact is likely to be most rapid where there is a high rate of HIV infection among men having sex with women.
…

More study also is required to find out whether male circumcision will reduce HIV infection in homosexual intercourse, it said, but it said promoting circumcision of HIV-positive men was not recommended.

The studies reviewed male circumcision’s alleged protective impact on the transmission of HIV from infected women to HIV-free men. Nothing more. To promote otherwise is unethical. But why should ethics matter when this is buried in the middle of the article where it can be easily avoided by those who skim the beginning looking for a justification to perpetuate what they already want to do.

“It was therefore recommended that countries with high prevalence, generalized heterosexual HIV epidemics that currently have low rates of male circumcision consider urgently scaling up access to male circumcision services,” the agencies said.

I’m trying to think of a country that does not fit that description, but for the life of me I’m drawing a blank. Could it possibly be the United States? Oh, wait… it is? What an oversight. Accidental, I’m sure.

Within those countries that fit the criteria, where other methods of known prevention would work, what’s the suggestion for implementing this not-really-a-solution-solution?

Priority should be given to providing circumcision to age groups at highest risk of acquiring HIV because it will have the most immediate impact on the disease. But, it said, circumcising younger males also will have a public health impact over the longer term.

Younger males is a new euphemism for infants. That’s not what the U.N. is saying, but it’s what it means. It knows that if it gets children circumcised, those males are much more likely to impose the surgery on their own children, regardless of its ethical flaws (and efficacy). Who needs ethics when you have good intentions?

On Buying Absolution

From Kip I learned of this brief essay by Michael Dorf. Here are the first two of its three paragraphs:

In my FindLaw column yesterday, I argued that Al Gore undermines his ability to act as a spokesman for combating global warming by living in a very large house and jetting around the world — even though he “carbon balances,” i.e., pays green causes to plant trees, cover landfill and take other actions that compensate for his own generation of greenhouse gases. I compare these compensating measures to the purchase of papal indulgences and the payment of substitute soldiers by Civil War draftees. (I go on, however, to praise Gore’s policy proposals.)

Here I want to add another example. Suppose I think that it’s wrong to eat animals and animal products (as in fact I do) but that I really like the taste of meat. Could I discharge my moral obligation (as I see it) to be a vegan by continuing to pack away the hamburgers and steaks but pay a carnivore to convert to veganism so that I “meat balance?” The very idea seems absurd.

Such a transaction is far too utilitarian-at-the-expense-of-principles for me personally, but I don’t think it’s absurd to consider this.

Animal rights vegans, of which I am one only tangentially¹ through my primary health justifications for being vegan, tend to fall into two camps: welfarists and abolitionists. The distinction isn’t perfectly applicable here because the distinction has more to do with approach to the treatment of animals, but it’s useful anyway. Welfarists believe that marginal improvements in how we treat animals is useful. Free-range chickens and cage-free hens, for example, reduce the suffering of animals while they’re alive. If a pig has the ability to stretch her legs in her gestation crate, that’s better than her being pinned to the floor by the constraints of her crate. The treatment may still be despicable, but the animal suffers less.

Abolitionists view this distinction more as a black-or-white issue. It does matter how compassionately you treat the animal, the animal still suffers. It doesn’t matter how compassionately you slaughter the animal, dead is still dead. Since humans do not need meat and alternatives exist for animal products, there is no justification that renders the use and abuse of animals acceptable.

I tend to side with the abolitionists. There is value in the welfarist approach when it exposes people to the horrible practices involved in animal “agriculture”. Every change must begin somewhere. But I agree that such concessions may lead to as much or more animal consumption. I’ve had discussions where a carnivore will say “but I buy only free-range meat”. So? The animal still suffers, although that’s not apparent in the marketing. (How many singing cows do we need to see to believe something untrue?) Again, dead is dead.

Which gets back to the question at hand. Would a barter of money for veganism work? I don’t think it discharges the buyer’s moral obligation, but it could work to reduce animal suffering. For every new vegan, n animals will not die or suffer. That’s the beauty of capitalism. Reduced demand will lead to reduced supply. Over a lifetime, that could be a tremendous individual impact.

There are drawbacks, of course. The buyer may now consume more meat because he is “offsetting” his consumption. The buyer may be a large man with a vociferous appetite, while the seller may be a petite woman with a small appetite. The balance falls heavily against significant improvement. The net effect from the person with a moral qualm is potentially less than if he had the character to act according to his beliefs.

I suspect this drawback is more likely than the optimistic outcome from buying veganism. A bit like Al Gore’s energy consumption for his home, for example.

¹ I care about animals rights enough to do the basics. I don’t buy animal products such as leather. I don’t buy products tested on animals. You just won’t find me actively protesting and agitating for change. I care about it, but I’m not passionate enough. I’d get in the way.