But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains

Recently I took a quiz on the BBC website, which supposedly tells you the ‘sex’ of your brain. As a premise that is a bit ridiculous, but it turned out to be an enlightening quiz anyway. It is broken into different sections which test different things. To get the good out of the way, I am wicked awesome at mental rotation tasks. Give me some sort of Lego-like blocky shape and I can imagine it from whatever arbitrary viewpoint you like. Nice.

Now the bad news. I am totally incompetent at interpreting facial expressions. The quiz section in question presents a series of faces, cropped tightly around the eyes, and asks you to interpret the emotions of the owner of the face (e.g. happy, sad, angry, jealous). Going through this section I was convinced the test makers had messed up. There was simply no way anybody could interpret these expressions. They are cropped too tightly around the eyes, and the eyes themselves can’t possibly tell you anything. Nevertheless I did my best, and ended up getting 3/10, which is pretty much what somebody would get picking randomly. I didn’t feel too bad, until my rationalization that the test was flawed was shattered when my friend T independently sent out an email about the test, announcing that the “eyes” section was “so easy!” that he had scored 9/10, and only missed the one because he didn’t think the emotion was genuine.

So, what did I learn? Well, I’ve got skillz pretty much where I knew I had them. However, I am totally incompetent in a pretty darned important area. Mentally rotating objects is nice and all, but isn’t communicating with other people one of the more important and rewarding aspects of life? But I suck at this (or at least one component of it), and now I shudder to think. I must have messed up so many times over the years. Remember that one time you were glaring at me because I was being an idiot? Yeah, I had no idea. Maybe I thought you were flirting with me. And that time you were flirting with me? I was probably distracted by the thought of the sandwich I was going to make later. Oh well.

Come to think of it, maybe there’s a product here. I could mount a little camera on my shoulder which interprets people’s moods and lets me know so that I have an idea what’s going on.

I was browsing www.fark.com and there was a flash ad for Skoal smokeless tobacco. Now, smokeless tobacco is not something that I think about frequently, but this ad really made an impression on me with the sheer magnitude of its grossiness. How much more unappealing can something be? It’s a sack full of gooey looking brown stuff that you suck on. And this is ignoring the fact that it can kill you or make your tongue fall off.

Unfortunately I was unable to take a screenshot in time when little sacks of it were flying around suggesting situations where smokeless tobacco might be fun. One suggestion was “shopping with the wife.” Now, to me, munching on tobacco while shopping with the wife is a double-dose of suck. If I’m going to be stuck shopping, I want to suck on something fun. How about jelly beans!

I was recently saddened to learn that one of my more liberal/feminist friends didn’t feel at all challenged by my opinion piece on abortion. I feel obliged to stir up some controversy, so my next effort deals with another touchy subject, circumcision.

Recently in the news was the announcement from the UN that they recommend male circumcision for the purpose of decreasing HIV infection. You see, they did a study where they went around Africa cutting the foreskins off of guys, and then later visited the guys to see if they had HIV. They discovered that the foreskinless guys were less likely to contract the infection.

So I wonder, did they do a similar study with women? Did they ride around in their trucks telling women “hey we’d like to do this medically unnecessary and invasive operation on you to see what happens?” No, they didn’t, because they are vehemently opposed to all forms of female circumcision.

But you may protest that female circumcision is a horrible painful mutilation whereas male circumcision is but a tiny clipping of useless flesh. Well, that is a commonly held belief, but it is false. The more extreme forms of female circumcision are indeed extremely heinous, but the lesser forms (Type I, refer to wikipedia) are roughly equivalent to male circumcision, and constitute around 85% of all female circumcisions in Africa.

So, on one hand the UN is entirely opposed to all forms of female circumcision, but endorses equivalent forms of male circumcision, and even went so far as to travel around performing circumcisions for experimental purposes. This is an extremely hypocritical standpoint, and one of the many reasons why the UN has lost all credibility in my eyes.

So, what do I think? Glad you asked. No medically unnecessary circumcisions should be allowed on anyone unable to consent, such as children. Only adults who go into the procedure with full knowledge of what they are doing should be able to cut chunks off of themselves. I don’t care if the procedure is a long held tradition in your culture, be it African, or Jewish. I don’t care if you are an adherent to John Harvey Kellogg’s beliefs in eugenics, circumcision, and corn flakes. Just don’t do it.