I've heard Zittrain interviewed while promoting this book and broadly agree with him, and hate to see a Zittrain vs. Apple argument dominate this thread, so maybe it's worth pointing out that this particular excerpt is an unfortunate one considering that as of tomorrow (we think) you'll be able to buy 3rd party apps for your iPhone. Whatever you may think of Apple/Jobs, they do appear capable of learning from experience: there's a bloom of 3rd party development for the Mac OS going on right now because they did, finally, open it up; and less than a year after the introduction of the iPhone and the accompanying wails of dissapointment from everyone who wanted to develop for it, Apple announced an SDK.

Surely this isn't the best blurb with which to introduce Zittrain's thesis, provocative though it may be.

dramatic, yet common, circumcision damage

can you put some numbers to that "common?"

I really just posted 71 to prove that I can write a short comment. But as long as I'm talking about myself, I'll also note that in 61, "bases" s/b "basis," and "justifies" isn't really the right word.

But nobody cares, so let me do something more interesting and give us something else to fight about: Evil Jim, I don't believe that you really believe what you think you believe. Making decisions for children that may have lifelong consequences, physical and otherwise, is pretty much a parent's job. Elective surgery might seem like a special case until you consider how many other decisions a parent might make for his child that can easily have far greater *physical* consequences long term than circumcision.

And whether you meant it to be or not, this form of argument against nonconsentual circumcision is effectively a back-door argument against circumcision as a whole, since it's a considerably more serious surgery for an adult, with a different set of risks affecting the likelihood that he would choose it.

the repeated use of the word "unnatural" in the material quoted in 67 raises a red flag

Awesome. The inevitable flame wars that break out whenever somebody mentions circumcision fascinate me, because it seems like the passion expressed on either side is far out of proportion to the actual impact of circumcision on health and quality of life, for better or worse. It's not that there's nothing there to argue about - if you feel that it's unnecessary mutilation, I can understand wanting to see the practice stopped. But even so, it's an unnecessary mutilation that leaves the vast majority of circumcised men capable of normal and gratifying sexual function. On the other hand, if you feel that it's a valuable countermeasure to health risks, I can understand urging that the practice be continued, but compared to condoms, health education, and a socioeconomic environment that supports sanitation and hygenic behaviors, its positive effects are minor. If you want to fight about it, compare the real costs on either side. On the circumcision side, those costs would be the fortunately few, though certainly terrible, incidents of botched circumcision that cause impairments; the worrisome but largely unknown effects of surgery on newborns, and the presumed but unknowable partial loss of sensual experience during sex. (It's worth mentioning, too, that these costs should be weighed differently when discussing infant vs. adult circumcision). On the anti-circumcision side, the costs are higher rates of STD's, penile cancer, and a number of uncommon problems involving abnormal growth of the foreskin. I don't know how much circumcision effects the incidence rates of these things; that's something you'd want to know, and something you'd want to weigh differently for different risk groups.

One thing that probably makes it harder to have a reasoned argument on the subject is that the risks weigh heavier on an individual bases, while the benefits accrue more on a population scale. If you're the poor bastard who got his willie ruined during a botched surgery, it doesn't make you feel better to know you're one in 100,000 (or whatever). On the other hand, the anti-infectious benefits of circumcision are surely greater in a population where it's a majority practice, which you could argue justifies social pressure (e.g., religious rules) for everyone to accept the risks.

I would suggest that keratinization has little if anything to do with the infection prevention effect of circumcision purely from a common sense perspective.

Fortunately, we have the scientific method to help us differentiate common sense from knowledge.

I really don't know how circumcision produces its anti-infection effects and your hypothesis sounds completely believable. And for all I know, there's wads of evidence to support it. I was just noting an interesting effect these two interventions have in common, which is keratinization. That's where new hypotheses come from, and they're handy to have around if common sense doesn't work out.

It's interesting to read so many people damning the science here, when I don't think we know very much about the actual science here, unless anyone's read the journal article?

2 points:
First, considering a disease countermeasure in terms of its wisdom as a personal choice may not produce the same evaluation as when considering it in terms of public health policy. Condoms, inarguably, are effective at minimizing transmission of HIV, and if you're deciding what to do with your own penis to stay free of AIDS, then do put one on. On the other hand, if you're trying to decide what to do with all the penises in a regional population with varied sexual mores and low literacy rates, the better part of wisdom is to consider and encourage all available options. Human behavioral patterns are really hard to change, especially when they're socially reinforced. So if you want to, say, get an entire population to stop smoking, telling everyone that cigarettes will kill them won't get nearly the same results as telling everyone that cigarettes will kill them, and piling on taxes to make them expensive, and offering nicotine gum, and nicotine patches, and hypnotism, etc. will. Multiple approaches, in other words.

Second, I don't know much about how this estrogen-keratinizing effect is supposed to work, but since circumcision also has some degree of preventive effect, it's notable that one of the results of circumcision is keratinization of the glans.

Whereas animals such as elephants, dolphins, and whales have larger brains, humans have the most developed cerebrum.

What means this, "developed?"

This is going to be one of those annoying comments in which I, a pseudonymous commenter too lazy and late to the game to have a highly-read blog of my own, take it upon myself to tell someone else what they should be posting to their own blog. Just wanted to be up-front about that; okay, ready? Here goes:

Aaaaaaaaaghhh! Enough with the frickin' steampunk already! And while I'm at it, enough with that one guy's steampunky clocks!

Whew, I know *I* feel better now. Thank you for your kind indulgence.

jimjambandit: hahaha, that's *exactly* the look.

notjackobrien: those things are CRAZY, and indeed steampunk. Just saw one in action for the first time at Grumpy Cafe in Manhattan.

gtmoogle: I have an answer: some, but not all. Coffee/wine lovers, like hobbyists of any sort, quickly wear out the obvious features of flavor and so, to keep our pursuit stimulating, have to make ever finer degrees of discrimination. Sooner or later, we get to a point where the sensorium alone can make no further discriminations, and so pass into abstraction. But that doesn't mean that finer discriminations are all abstract. For a great read on what we're really doing when we drink wine (applies to coffee, too), I can't recommend highly enough Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece, "Through a glass darkly," which is googlebly available online.

Huh, I've never heard them called "siphons" before. But, yeah, adding another voice to the chorus, vacuum pots have been around for a long time. I have a Cona which makes the best brewed coffee I've ever had, although the slowness of heating and impracticality of cleaning prevent it from being my standard daily method. S'great for pulling out for after-dinner coffee with company, though.

I don't know what all this talk upthread is about filters... the whole point of vacuum pot brewing is temperature control, as previously mentioned, and the ability to make a clear brew without a filter - your coffee only ever touches glass, but isn't silty like with a French press. That's like, the whole point. If you have to use a filter, too, then you haven't got a very good pot.