Ranting – Page 8 – Rolling Doughnut

The clowns are piling into their car in preparation.

Who said this?

“If players believe they are wrongfully accused in the report,” [he] told the paper, “they are welcome to volunteer and we’ll take it under consideration. But as I understand it, all these players had a chance to cooperate [with Mitchell], and everyone declined to cooperate.

“So, to an extent, that’s what they get.”

That would be Congressman Tom Davis, who I believe was sworn to uphold the Constitution when he entered office. Allow me to unpack his assumption of what is acceptable:

Absence of a trial by jury.
Absence of a trial.
Absence of an indictment.
Absence of criminal charges.
Absence of Fifth Amendment rights.

I’m reminded today of all the reasons I despise being represented by a moronic, meddling malcontent.

Switch the gender. Would we accept this journalism?

Via Kevin, M.D., a doctor snapped a picture of his patient’s penis during surgery:

A Mayo Clinic Hospital surgeon in training used a cellphone to photograph a patient’s genitals during surgery and now may face disciplinary action and a patient’s attorney.

The doctor took the picture while installing a catheter in preparation of gallbladder surgery on the patient because the patient has “Hot Rod” tattooed on his penis. Obviously this is unprofessional conduct by the doctor and, in my opinion, deserves termination. But that’s just more “people are stupid” fodder. I’m more annoyed by a lack of maturity in the “journalism” surrounding the story:

After Hansen showed the photo to other members of the surgical staff, one phoned a Republic reporter on Monday and left an anonymous message about the incident.

Compare that to this sentence, also from the article:

Hansen told Dubowik that when he attached a catheter to the patient’s member, he had shot a picture.

Is it so complicated to use the accurate anatomical name for the body part? Is that low standard of maturity really too much to expect from a journalist and/or editor? Yes, member is a common euphemism for penis, but journalism should be above stupidity better suited to making a schoolboy snicker. Otherwise, I might believe that “members of the surgical staff” is meant to be hilarious.

How is Circuit City still in business?

I’m searching the Internets for a price on Season 1 of Heroes on DVD. This should be simple. At Amazon, one word – “Heroes”, obviously – typed into the search field and a quick press of the enter key and the results list Heroes as the number 1 result. Imagine that.

I tried the same approach at Circuit City, assuming it would result in something equally simple. Circuit City suggested 787 options. Heroes was not on the first page, although every version of Guitar Hero for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 appeared. “Go Pro Digital HERO 3 Digital Camera” was result number 1.

“Heroes dvd” gave me 14 items, none of which involved Heroes the television show. I was unhelpfully offered Heroes of Earth by Wang Leehom on CD as the first suggestion. The results decreased in relevancy from there, until reaching the end and a pitch for a Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite Console Bundle. Huh?

“Heroes” in Movies & Music faired no better. It’s mostly cartoons and John Wayne movies. “Heroes tv” returns “The Life and Works of Anton Dvorßk, Narration with Musical Excerpts” on CD, “In Search of Ancient Ireland” on DVD, and “Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM” for PS3. A search for a few of the actors (Milo Ventimiglio, Adrian Pasdar, Ali Larter) suggests several B-movies and items available only for pre-order, but no Season 1 on DVD.

The only method I’ve discovered for finding the obscure little television show Heroes on the Circuit City website requires the following steps:

Click the “Movies and Music” category.
Click Movies.
Click TV Shows from the specialty items.
Scan the best sellers list down to the 15th item, which is Season 1 of Heroes on DVD.

Circuit City’s search functionality appears to have been designed by the hamsters deemed too incompetent to run on the wheel generating the power necessary to run its servers.

For what it’s worth, Amazon asks $41.99. Circuit City wants $49.99. Surprise. It costs real money to feed hamsters.

Use the word “torture” in the headline.

Speaking of “evolving standards of decency”, we’re not always moving in the correct direction:

The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.

The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, “mock” executions and the use of attack dogs, and prohibit the withholding of food and medical care.
…

The White House vowed to veto the measure. Limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual “would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

The passage of this bill in the House is correct, although it’s years overdue. The Senate should do the same.

The Bush administration’s immediate rejection of adhering to our existing laws and treaty commitments is shameful. It wants only vague restrictions on itself, with the option to define the interpretation of those vague rules. That is contrary to everything our republic is supposed to represent. Few are still shocked by this, but that does not validate its approach.

Other provisions of the intelligence bill also drew criticism from the White House, including a measure that would require regular reports to Congress on the CIA’s detention and interrogation methods, and on any Justice Department legal justifications for those methods.

This provision, the OMB said, would require from the president “information that may be constitutionally protected from disclosure,” which, if made public, “could impair foreign relations [and] national security.”

If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to be afraid of. Right? Isn’t that what we’re told when the administration wants the option to spy at will? Of course the truth is more complicated, but the Bush administration needs to be accountable to the American people, not the other way around. This is not a dictatorship, despite its apparent aspirations.

John Cole is right when he states:

Bush is a petulant child surrounded by a coterie of scared men who seem to think the world is so dangerous they need not act in accordance to established law, and they really don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. They want all the benefits of pretending to be the world’s moral authority, all the while behaving like despots. January 2009 can not come fast enough.

I’ll echo the last sentence, but only because Congress is guilty of dereliction carrying out its duties. There is no valid reason that President Bush should still be in office.

Steroids can’t make a pitch curve.

I don’t have much to say about the newly-released Mitchell Report. It’s an illegitimate waste of government time in pursuit of a political quest for ever-expanding power. Not interested. As I wrote when Rep. Tom Davis first brought this nonsense into the federal sphere:

When Rep. Davis called the inquiry into steroids in Major League Baseball, how was that not a conspiracy to seize power? It may have involved one sport industry, but Rep. Davis seemed to enjoy threatening MLB with greater congressional control if it didn’t implement a policy banning a drug that’s already illegal. I don’t think any major sport in America explicitly bans its players from money laundering, drunk driving, murder or income tax evasion, yet we never have hearings about those, even though players have been involved in all of those offenses.

My stance is unchanged. And my basic understanding of liberty requires that steroids be decriminalized.

As for the situation at hand, Major League Baseball would ban steroids in my ideal world. As a group of consenting individuals, it would be free to do so. It would level the playing field to talent alone, which is what I want to see as a fan.

Of course, it would be free to ignore my preference, too, which it clearly did throughout the latter part of the ’90s. John Cole expresses my sentiments on the shock at the report’s finding:

Imagine if, in ten years, the GOP and the media decide to get outraged about intelligence being finessed before the Iraq war, they launch an investigation, and then get shocked when they see what they find. That is the level of stupid this baseball steroid report is right now.

Naturally that doesn’t preclude politicians from going to the for the children defense of our collective outrage:

Recalling that he had raised the steroids issue in a State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, Bush said he did so “because I understand the impact that professional athletes can have on our nation’s youth.” He urged athletes “to understand that when they violate their bodies, they’re sending a terrible signal to America’s young.”

When we force our subjective opinions onto the actions of others, it sends a terrible signal to America’s young that it’s okay to be meddlesome moralists opposed to the liberty of the individual. For the mental development of our youth, I’d say what we’re teaching is far worse than what a handful of athletes are (allegedly) teaching.

Post Script: Russ Roberts sums up the best way to read the names on the list and how detrimental these allegations are (not) to my opinion of the players.

Be scared to scar your baby boy.

Bernadine Healy M.D. writes an ethics-free, logic-free essay in the latest U.S. News & World Report on male circumcision. She mostly offers the recycled nonsense promoted by people uninterested in thinking the issue through. However, Dr. Healy searches for a new bottom in the discussion. She comes as close to stating it as anyone I’ve read:

I caution parents, however, against delaying the decision until the child is old enough to decide for himself. Get real. Not many teenage boys would relish the discussion, let alone the act. Nor do I think they would have the perspective to weigh the medical pros and cons.

So, because he would not relish the discussion or the act, it’s better to force it on him as an infant? As if his presumed refusal as a teenager is not a timeless opinion, as true when he’s 13 hours old as it is when he’s 13 years old. And how unfairly low does your opinion of teens have to be to guess that he wouldn’t have the perspective to understand that his foreskin is healthy and doesn’t require surgical removal? How unfairly high is your opinion of parents if you trust that they’re worried more about his (absurdly low) risk of HIV than the risk that ~~daddy~~ junior will freak when he sees that ~~junior~~ daddy looks different?

In a time when it is appropriate to question the use or overuse of certain medical procedures, however minor they might seem, having these discussions in medical journals and in public circles is healthy.

Just don’t have them with your kid when it’s his genitals at stake. He might not understand. He might even say “no”. Otherwise, yeah, let’s discuss this.

What is not healthy in this free flow of ideas is to diminish the real abuse of female genital mutilation with a trumped-up portrayal of the “abuse” that infant circumcision allegedly exacts on our helpless baby boys.

This is the obtuse thinking of a dullard. For (not) the last time, comparing male and female genital cutting does not diminish what is done to girls. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

But the exact same thing is perpetrated upon boys. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

There is nothing complicated about understanding this. The mutilation of boys rises to the level of unacceptability of what is done to girls. No one is saying that the comparison now justifies cutting girls. Stop hearing what you want to hear and listen to what is being said. Medically unnecessary genital cutting on non-consenting individuals is wrong, ethically and morally. Gender is not a factor in the violation.

I’m shocked – SHOCKED! – by this development.

Rejecting our earlier sanity wasn’t enough. Now the United States government wants to perpetuate our cognitive dissonance regarding circumcision through bribery:

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) has requested beneficiary governments to draft policies that encourage male circumcision to reduce on the risks of spreading of HIV/Aids.

The Principal Deputy Coordinator of PEPFAR, Dr Thomas Kenyon, said via a video link from the U.S., that PEPFAR was prepared to provide funds to any country that is willing to undertake mass male circumcision, Dr Kenyon said.

The only way to undertake “mass” male circumcision involves the systematic violation of infant males’ rights. This, of course, requires a willingness to ignore both the voluntary and adult aspects of the recent circumcision/HIV studies.

I’m supposed to be mollified by this:

“We can only release the funds for circumcision to a country which has come up with a clear policy on how it is going to carry out the exercise.

I’m not mollified. The presence of a policy does not guarantee effective (or ethical) outcomes. In this approach, boys will be injured beyond the 100% guarantee of “acceptable” injury. Boys will be disfigured beyond the 100% guarantee of “acceptable” disfigurement. Boys will die. And men will still get HIV through unsafe sex.

But we’re America. We care. Our money proves it. Isn’t that enough?

(Not Really) Newsflash: UNAIDS lies.

This story should make me angry. I suppose it does, but I’m so numbed to the incredible pile of garbage people distribute in defense of their agenda that I have a harder time bringing forth an outburst than I’d like.

The United Nations’ top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year’s estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

Good intentions are enough, remember. There is no need to worry about effectiveness, even in the reality of limited resources. There’s certainly no need to worry about uncomfortable details. If the method promotes what is good, it is worthwhile. Or so goes the logic of UNAIDS and the United Nations.

Of course HIV is terrible. Yes, we should work to promote effective strategies. But the desire to do good does not justify misrepresentation. We have to have this conversation? This doesn’t discredit, or at least render questionable, everything else the organization claims?

Remember this the next time someone from UNAIDS or the United Nations advocates male circumcision. It can’t even get the ethics of properly representing the problem correct. Who should trust them to get the ethics of genital cutting correct?

Just as frustrating, despite the clear indication that some renewed questioning is justified, the media is comfortable repeating the preferred story line:

Rates are lower in East Africa and much lower in West Africa. Researchers say that the prevalence of circumcision, which slows the spread of HIV, and regional variations in sexual behavior are the biggest factors determining the severity of the AIDS epidemic in different countries and even within countries.

The studies looked at voluntary, adult circumcision. That’s more accurate than a blanket statement about male circumcision. Isn’t the point of this report that details matter? Why ignore the most important scientific and ethical aspect of the recent studies in reporting them? (Unfortunately that’s rhetorical because I know the answer is about cognitive dissonance.)

To the point, researchers said that nearly 40 million people are infected with HIV. That’s not true. But we should believe them about circumcision without clarification on correlation and causation? Why? Statistics from the countries involved in the reporter’s claim are messier than advertised. (See here.) Also, it’s reasonable to assert that education had a far more effective benefit for all study participants than voluntary, adult circumcision had. (See here.)

Still, it’s supposed to be okay to take everything – lumped together without questioning – and trust that something will work if we try them all. I don’t particularly care about anyone pursuing that intellectually lazy path. People should have the right to make stupid decisions about their lives. But I demand that we follow all parameters involved when we make decisions for another. Particularly, voluntary and adult must never be forgotten.

Eternal vigilance is the price of integrity, Coach Gennaro.¹

I forget where I first saw this story (Balloon Juice, I think), but the case of a Utah State Trooper tasering a motorist deserves sufficient attention for the way it demonstrates excessive police use of tasers. The video, in case you’ve missed it:

Before going any further, my take: Mr. Massey was resisting arrest. The officer, John Gardner, needlessly escalated this incident into a pissing match, given that he could’ve simply written that Mr. Massey refused to sign the ticket. He did not choose that route, instead preferring a display of authority for the sake of authority. His actions leading to the Mr. Massey getting out of the car were unnecessary and demonstrate a lack of fitness for police work. However, the point stands that, in an escalated scenario, Mr. Massey resisted arrest. That is incidental to what transpired as a result.

Courtesy of Michael D. at Balloon Juice, this editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune:

… If you watched closely, and heard Gardner order Massey to put his hands behind his back, there’s no doubt that by walking away, Massey was resisting arrest. There’s no doubt that the use of the Taser was justified; that an attempt to physically subdue Massey may have forced both men into oncoming traffic.

The use of the taser was not justified. First, Trooper Gardner made no other attempt at lesser force to subdue Mr. Massey. Second, he tasered Mr. Massey in the back. Third, he tasered him as he approach the traffic lanes. Fourth, after he tasered Mr. Massey, Mr. Massey fell back, clearly either in or dangerously close to the traffic lane.

In this entry Kip states the reasonable:

A big part of the problem with tasers is that they were originally marketed as a substitute for guns, but have become a substitute for exertion. Tasers are, increasingly, not used to save lives but to merely make cops’ lives easier.

If the rule were: “Never use your taser unless you would also be willing to shoot your firearm…” then I can’t imagine too many incidents of “taser brutality.” … But instead the rule seems too often to be: “Use your taser whenever you perceive a risk to yourself.” Or, worse: “Use you taser whenever you deem it convenient.”

That simply cannot be right — not to the tune of 50,000 volts.

Exactly. The four violations – five if you count the initial, unnecessary escalation – demonstrate that Trooper Gardner’s use of the taser was indefensible.

For what it’s worth, this kind of nonsense occurs on almost every new episode of Cops. I love Cops, but it’s getting increasingly unbearable to watch because of the police state inclination it highlights. It’s basically an orgy of tasering and moral superiority over drug users. When I watch, I’m more often rooting for the “bad” guys. It’s uncomfortable, like watching someone try to humiliate me while he has food stuck to his face.

¹ Headline reference here.

Luckily, I have a forum to grind my axe.

Via Kevin, M.D. I read a recap from a doctor who had to amputate a patient’s finger. It’s an interesting enough story, but something caught my eye in the middle of the story.

… there’s a deeply ingrained taboo that prohibits me from causing permanent damage.

If you read Rolling Doughnut, you won’t be surprised at what immediately popped into my mind. I wonder what this doctor thinks about unnecessary infant circumcision? Based on experience, I guess the answer. I find it, precisely as guessed, here, from three years ago (about a topic I discussed last year):

Note to anti-circumcision trolls: I will ruthlessly delete or negatively alter your screeds about how awful regluar circumcision is, etc. I fully support circumcision done under normal hygenic circumstances. If you desire to grind your axe, do so elsewhere.

I wouldn’t have posted on the entry if I’d seen it in 2004, but I’ve been called an anti-circumcision troll a few times. It’s always a misguided smear offered at the end of a debate by the advocate of routine infant circumcision when his or her only fair response would be to admit defeat in defending the indefensible. The desire to excuse the unnecessary cutting of children is too deep for that, of course.

Wishful thinking about all the possible horrors the child will presumably no longer face – which he most likely wouldn’t have faced anyway, without circumcision, and almost never to an extent requiring surgery – are irrelevant, as are claims about the religious validity of this unnecessary surgery. If anyone should get this, it should be a doctor. Unfortunately, that too often flops in practice. From the 2004 entry, GruntDoc stated this about infant circumcision:

… I believe it is painful to the infant. So is falling down, hitting the coffee table, slamming a finger in a car door. Since I have never read about an infant describing his circumcision, it’s one of those things I think is best done as soon as possible (ask any adult who’s had a circ: it’s like chickenpox, the younger you have it the better off you are).

One painful incident is not like the others in his example.

It’s anti-intellectual to claim that not remembering pain is relevant to the discussion. The surgery is medically unnecessary; no further excuse-seeking is justified. If we factor in the child’s ability to not remember the pain as valid, we may excuse any number of surgical interventions with a potential to prevent future disease. Just look at the prevalence of breast cancer in males. Should we think of the good that can be done for those few men if we remove the breast tissue from the majority of newborn males? They won’t remember it! The thought is absurd, of course. Circumcision is the same. But circumcision advocacy isn’t about facts in context.

As to his last point, I can direct anyone interested to men circumcised as adults who don’t think it’s better. They think they’ve made a tragically stupid mistake. I can also point anyone interested to men circumcised as adults who state that the pain was less than it’s made out to be by the fear-mongers. Are those examples subjective? Of course. But so is the nonsense that all men are happy with being circumcised as infants or that the subjective preference of parents for potential benefits is superior to the subjective preference of the male when there is no medical indication for intervention.

Also, forgive me if I don’t cheer the logic of defending the 100% guarantee of pain imposition on an infant who hasn’t consented, no matter how well forgotten, over the low-single-digit risk that the male would need circumcision later in life, with pain that would be better managed through more effective pain relief techniques. I sympathize with the pain men who need adult circumcision will feel, but life has risks. That’s part of the deal. And the men who merely choose it will get no sympathy because they clearly value whatever benefit they perceive more than avoiding the pain. Yet, I’m supposed to value both equally – to the detriment of infants – through crude analysis implying that delayed pain, however unlikely or unnecessary, is worse than pain now. I will not because I am not irrational. Those few who need or choose adult circumcision should not dictate what happens to healthy infants.

For example:

My main argument for it is hygeine. Yes, many many men take good care of themselves, but you only need to see a couple of men with severe balanitis or penile CA, and the argument gets better. I was once told by a urologist that after a slew of penile cancers / amps following WWI (hard to keep clean in a trench), circ became mainstream more as a preventive med thing than an act of religious faith.

Typically, we (allegedly) must also factor in that a few men will face some consequence from being intact as an excuse to circumcise. Those many many men who take good care of themselves are not to be rewarded for their common sense and ability with an intact body. They are to sacrifice for the good of the few who will be delinquent or incompetent in their hygiene. After all, parents can’t know in advance if their son will practice good hygiene, and they can’t teach him good hygiene. Why assume that he will figure it out? There’s only so much a parent can do. Obviously. Being the good parents they are, they should opt to have his genitals cut, even though it exposes him to the risk of surgery. They’re responsible in a way he could never be.

From GruntDoc’s entry about amputating a finger:

Only after telling myself several times that this was actually no longer a finger was I able to take the sharp implement and cut off most of a finger.

How similar is the descent from reason that permits a doctor to remove the healthy, functioning foreskin from his patient at the request of his patient’s parents?