jfields

But we don't plan to rest on past accomplishments. Oh, no. We are going to make bigger and better messes this year.

ScottishJohn, You need to work on your postwhoring skills. You have clearly been negligent in your duty to read all the boards on a regular basis. This joke was posted less than a week ago. We will let you off with a mere reprimand this time, but you'll get no such leniency next time. Note that having a life/girlfriend/wife/child/job is not a valid excuse, nor is a note from your mother or doctor. Just don't let it happen again, and we'll all be good to go.

You don't have to be a Canadian to have lost money in tanked Canadian tech stocks. Plus, we have all those wonderful tanked stocks of our own.

Why, yes. Yes, it does.

Kallend, Before you throw out absolutes and moral judgments like that, check the rest of the thread. You'll see that there are authoritative opinions on both sides of the argument. It isn't like someone is saying AIDS or coke addiction is medically neutral. If your perspective were a medically established certainty, you would find essentially no refuting evidence. That isn't the case here. I'm not sure what your degree(s) are in, but you didn't preface your comments by saying you were a pediatrician, a surgeon or a statistical epidemiologist. You are entitled to your opinion, as am I. When neither of us are experts (other than as men with penises), it is more appropriate to find and cite research that is from experts, rather than attempting to bash each other with absolutes and ultimatums. There are pros and cons of both circumcision and of not circumcising.

The fact that we can both find tons of references to support our views leads me to believe that the debate is valid and that there are elements of benefit to both perspectives. Me too. We just have different opinions. At least we both have the positive intent of family well-being at heart. I hope not. I think the parents should have the right to choose.

That was sarcasm.

So you will of course be refunding everyone that you sold to under the pretenses of it being a limited edition. At least that is a relief.

Those links to a very biased advocacy website. In reference to Kallend, I put a link to a medical study referencing a positive of circumsision. The truth is that there are still valid points in both directions. It is not foregone conclusion that it is or is not medically beneficial. Agreed, but it is potentially hazardous. While low, there is a rate of adverse reactions. There is also a rate of preventable illness that they eliminate. Isn't it my perrogative to learn about both and make the best decision I can for my children's well being? As I said, my daughter has been immunized, but I did have the choice. Then they shouldn't get the immunizations until they are 18 either. Either the parents have the right to choose, or they don't. Who has the right to cease life support for their comatose child? The parents. On the flip side, who has the right to insist on every measure possible being used to prolong the life of a child? Also, the parents. I agree. I just don't consider circumcision a wrong. I think that the government overly interfering in the role of parenting would be the injustice. Where there is no harm, why should the goverment dictate the relationship between mother, father and child?

Part of the dilemma is in the value placed on the part being removed. I say little to none, or even negative, but that is just my opinion. My daughter is 13 months old. We read all the literature about the immunizations, including the disclaimers about the small risk of reaction, up to and including death. We judged that the benefits outweighed the risks and had her immunized. Was that abusive? Immunizations are invasive, but we chose to have it done. I think that is our right. We could have chosen otherwise (perhaps foolishly), then had to bear the responsibility of our actions. Not in the eyes of the law. If they aren't 18, they aren't old enough to choose. The decision is still legally that of the parents, as the children aren't yet to the age of consent. If you are interested in changing that, then that is an entirely different discussion. It is both amusing and sad that with all the real child abuse and neglect in the country, people are perseverating on circumcision. At worst, it is medically neutral. Can we save the "mutilation and abuse" accusations for people that shoot their kids, give them in-utero crack addictions, transmit HIV to them or leave them unattended in boiling hot cars?

That seems both silly and extremely ethnocentric. So you are saying that any form of elective medical or cosmetic procedure performed on a person under the age of 18 is child abuse? No ear piercing, no breast reduction surgery, no immunizations, no cosmetic reconstruction after an accident, no palate surgery to correct a lisp, etc.? And the fact that some of those procedures will be unavailable by the time the child is old enough to choose is just a mere technicality. So the burned child must live with the scars because the parents didn't have the right to choose [a painful procedure] to correct them while they could still be healed? I wouldn't do it to my girl and I don't like the idea of it, but who am I to say that people I don't know thousands of miles away are forbidden to do it? How would you feel if a country halfway around the world said that any use of alcohol, tobacco or firearms was unethical and tried to force you to stop using them? I think we've answered that pretty definitively in the firearms threads. Perhaps I just don't have the conceit needed to think that my beliefs are those that the entire world should live by. There are a lot of strange customs and cultures around the world. I think it would be a tragedy if we were to blot them all out of existence in favor of bland, middle-of-the-road, white-bread, homogenous values as defined by one small group. We fought a World War against the last group that tried to do that.

No. That seems a bit harsh. We should give conservative children mandatory vasectomies and hysterectomies at puberty to prevent them from reproducing. I'd say we should give them lobotomies too, but it is too late. Someone beat me to it. Two can play at meaningless sarcasm, Kallend. *Mandatory* circumcision would be unethical. I've never advocated that. But what happened to all the big words about rights, freedoms and choice? They get tossed around in the firearms debate, along with nasty warnings about the evil oversight of big brother, but why can this not be the parents choice, for religious, ethical or health reasons? Please reread what I wrote. I didn't call it mutilation. But it is both painful and frequently unnecessary. While it may help some people, for most it is neutral, and some otherwise healthy people will get very sick from it.

For example: New England Journal of Medicine article about increased risk to women through viruses transmitted from men. The transfer rates are substantially higher from uncircumcised men. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/346/15/1105 But that isn't really the point. I'm no circumcision crusader. I'm just commenting that there are pros and cons on both sides of the issue. There are health benefits of circumcision, along with health risks. "Disfiguring" is more an objective measure than anything else. As to subjecting children to painful and unnecessary procedures, why is circumcision different than a number of other ones? A flu shot falls into that category too, but lots of people do it.

Push, That is certainly your right. But I think the links you posted are fairly biased. There is also a substantial body of medical knowledge that does support it. It isn't a clear-cut issue. (Sorry, I had to!) I think it all boils down to the parents right to choose for their boys.

Dromedary camels have one hump. Bactrian camels have two humps. From Clay's Little Black Book: http://www.camels-camels.com/

Has anyone explained to Clay that the difference between one-hump camels and two-hump camels is how many humps they have, not how many humps he gets?

We still talking about fast food?

The problem is that the first time you use it, the magic will go away. They are all just interested in breaking him in. Once he has picked his lucky winner and lost his untarnished status, he'll be just like the rest of us slobs.

Before we go any further, I have to say that your friend is one sick bastard! I don't know. I've only ever had my penis one way, and it works for me. I think the ladies should comment on the relative durations of circumcised and uncircumcised men. They are the ones who would know comparative data.

That depends on where you buy the sandwiches. One sandwich almost killed me. Serves me right for buying a hamburger in a bus station in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Death might have been better than what that thing did to my stomach and bowels.

Well, that's progress. At least we don't have to argue about my right to pick my own sandwich toppings.

Being a guy, and knowing how lax some guys are about hygiene, I think it is a reasonable thing to be circumsized. It does have health benefits. Also, some people would do it even if it weren't suggested, for religious reasons.

Subway. You can watch them make your food and have a say in what goes in it. Also, it hasn't been sitting under heatlamps or on a steam table forever.

Unwrapped is pretty damned good, but I still give the lead to Alton.

Jack, I have a Yahoo account, but I don't send mail from it. Yahoo and Hotmail are both good conduits for checking pop3-compliant e-mail accounts. I use my Yahoo account when I'm on the road. I can check mail that way if I'm being lazy. Otherwise, I will just access my own e-mail account from wherever I am. I see how the convenience can lure people in, but the overwhelming use of the free services in the spam industry is going to render them completely useless as more admins get sick of the torrent of Yahoo & Hotmail spam and block them. Like Brian said, they are an entire spam category themselves. Neither service is doing a remotely reputable job of screening accounts for outgoing spam. There is really very little that they offer legitimate users that can't be gotten somewhere else, either free or at a miniscule cost. As the ratio of spam:legitimate mail from those providers continues to worsen, more admins give in and block them. We get virtually no real business e-mail from anyone using them. Out of the non-business Yahoo and Hotmail messages, about 90% are junk. That is a lot of burden on our network and on me to keep the remaining 10% available to my users, considering it isn't even work-related anyway. I haven't blocked those services, yet, but I really do think it is in people's best interest to steer clear of them, at least until they shape up their act. An e-mail account that has intentionally-created connectivity gaps to millions of recipients isn't really that effective.