Quotable: Levy on the Macbook Air
The opening paragraph from Newsweek's Steven Levy's Macbook Air review:
Early in my writing career, I had an assignment to follow around a mohel--the guy who does ritual circumcisions in the Jewish tradition. My subject learned the trade by watching his dad, a renowned figure in the field. One day, father told son he was ready to handle the tools himself. Why now, the son wanted to know. "Most students ask me how much to take off," the senior explained. "You asked me how much to leave on."Any writer would be proud to add that to their clips.Apple faced a similar question when designing the MacBook Air, the subnotebook computer that goes on sale next week.
The Skinny on the MacBook Air [Newsweek.com]
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Comparing the design of consumer electronics to genital mutilation. That's edgy journalism.
Comparing circumcision to genital mutilation is irrational, reactionary, and serves to dilute the impact of the actual act itself. Genital mutilation involves a lifetime of pain and infections and reduction or elimination of all sexual pleasure. Circumcision involves none of those things.
That's just making a Mountain out of a Mohel...
What a disturbing way to start a review. It immediately filled me with equal parts of revulsion (at the sheer barbarity of act) and moral outrage (genital mutilation is a human rights issue). I see no sane or sensible argument for any infant to have any part of their body summarily OR ritualistically cut off (without anesthesia, no less). I can equally see no reason why the editors couldn't have asked Mr. Levy to revise his review to be less offensive to those of us who aren't inclined to take knives to newborns.
Ha ha! Those of you afraid of getting "cut" can suffer foul smelling smegma for the duration of your lives. Circumcision is saving people from AIDS in Africa. Way to spread FUD.
Get over treating Jews and Muslims as 'others' you haters!
#5 POSTED BY SANTOS:
You better pay attention to Santos, he's an expert on spreading FUD.
Anonymous, while I agree that male circumcision is a pointless and potentially dangerous ritual, the comparisons to real genital mutilation or calling it a "human rights issue" only make you look absurd and foolish.
I was circumcised as an infant, and I can assure that my genitals are not only functional, but admirably so.
I then to attack FUD. There's a reason there's a word for dirty penis that also is used for especially stupid people in Yiddish.
From Wikipedia:
“... Circumcision is most common in the Middle East, the USA and parts of Africa and Asia. According to WHO 30% of men worldwide have had the procedure, mostly in developing countries where it is common for religious or cultural reasons.
Opponents of circumcision condemn infant circumcision as being medically unjustified and an infringement upon individual bodily rights, while advocates of circumcision regard it as a worthwhile public health measure, particularly in the control of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In March 2007 the World Health Organization and UNAIDS stated that male circumcision is an effective intervention for HIV prevention, but also stated that male circumcision only provides partial protection and should not replace other interventions to prevent the heterosexual transmission of HIV. ...”
1. http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/infopack_en_2.pdf
2. http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/MCrecommendations_en.pdf
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smegma
#6 NEX? Do tell?
If writing is about catching a reader's attention then the circumcision reference is perfect. But then again he could have gone further and made us truly sick to our stomachs.
The ">MacBook Air is impossibly thin. And that's both a thing of beauty and practicality. I think Apple hit the right note with the MBA.
Stickler Alert:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_blockquote.asp
Foul smelling smegma? Saving people from AIDS? Haters?
If this is what passes for discourse on this board I am very disappointed. Here are a few novel concepts for you, SANTOS.
Soap. And water. When combined, while taking a bath or shower... can have this amazing effect of CLEANING your body really nicely. It's actually quite easy, and I would recommend it for anyone, male or female, cut or uncut. This Smegma thing has little to do with circumcision and everything to do with basic sanitation. If you're cut, you probably have no idea how incredibly easy it is to keep yourself clean if you're uncut just by taking a regular shower or bath and, well... cleaning yourself.
Saving people from AIDS? SANTOS, there's this really neat thing you should be introduced to. I'm sure they'll cover it in BoingBoing Gadgets one of these days - it's just the neatest new invention. I hate to be a spoiler in case they've got an article lined up for publication, but here goes. It's called a... condom. You put it on your erection, whether you're cut or (heaven FORBID) uncut, and it is a MUCH better defense against AIDS than anything else except abstincence, of course. Really. Look it up.
Haters? This is why I am writing this post. To be opposed to circumcision does not mean you are "afraid" of it, nor does it mean you hate anyone. It means you are able to make some very basic logical steps and follow them through to their logical conclusion. Cutting the foreskin off a penis. Cutting = mutilation. Penis = genitals. Whether you like it or not circumcision is a form of genital mutilation. The rights of a child argument is an equally easy one. There is no OTHER body part you would allow parents to whimsically lop off of their infant boy, so why allow the foreskin to go either? Why not start with an earlobe or the little toe on the left foot, eh?
I'm not sure a dogmatic anonymous "person" should be lecturing anyone on discourse.
I already clearly laid out why I believe circumcision is not genital mutilation. You haven't presented a compelling argument yet. It may be odd, but it's not mutilation. "Cutting = mutilation" is not true. If that was true, then you could call open heart surgery mutilation. The functionality of the penis is unharmed. And again, cutting off the foreskin cleanly is far removed from digging out a woman's clitoris with an unsanitary utensil or sewing her labia shut from end to end. If you really think the two are equivalent, you are seriously mistaken.
I do think it is unproductive and silly to put male circumcision into the same pigeonhole as severe mutilation of female genitals that results in a lifetime of pain and misery. (Though I'm not assuming this was the intent of #11.) I fully agree with #2.
However, there is no good reason to do it to infants who have no way of forming their own opinion on the subject matter and give consent. The smegma argument is FUD. If you're a normal, healthy man with hygienic habits that aren't too far below average, you'd never find out smegma even exists if no one told you. Yes, if you're a filthy pig, foul smelling stuff will accumulate on parts of your body. If you're in that situation, having a bit more foreskin than strictly necessary isn't one of your major problems. It's certainly not a problem for children in developed countries, so why not at least wait and do the procedure later, with proper (local) anaesthetisation? The HIV argument is also bullshit. Infants don't have sex. Even for adults, the advice is dubious. What some organisation recommends for sub-Saharan Africa isn't necessarily true for you. And imagine you really live in an area where there's a 50% chance of you becoming infected with a disease which is a guarantee for an early, yet protracted and extremely painful death? Assuming these studies will turn out to be correct (there have been other studies saying that circumcision _increases_ the risk of becoming infected), would you really think, "oh, since I happen to be a heterosexual adult male, I'll cut the risk of acquiring HIV through sex down to a third, and then it'll be totally acceptable"? Or would you rather take proper precautions and cut the risk down to practically zero? Granted, the latter isn't always easy when your access to condoms is limited, but safer sex is the only effective solution, and when you practice it, the presence or absence of some foreskin becomes pretty much irrelevant.
Presenting these flawed arguments seems like grasping for straws to me. The allegation of religious bigotry is mean and completely unfair name-calling with no rational justification. Just because someone wishes to choose for himself which parts of his body he'd like to have cut off, that person isn't necessarily afraid of anything, and it certainly doesn't make one an anti-Semite or Muslim-hater. Stop trolling or STFU, plskthx.
As if people reading Boing Boing are afraid of body mod articles. You are hiding being phony regard for the foreskin to mask your real self. Because you know, we're the ones without the dick-cheese.
Kids grow up. And have sex. WHO and others are saving lives with their projects.
You couldn't argue your way out of a paper bag ...