Excuses for Circumcision Don't Work for Anything Elsehttp://www.facebook.com/notes/joseph-lew
Circumcision is the only surgical procedure for which the following count as valid medical indication:
a) The parents want it done
b) He needs to match his father
c) He needs to match his circumcised (and not intact) peers
d) Boys (but not girls) will be too stupid to learn to wash their genitals
e) It prevents (already easily preventable) disease
For which other surgical procedures are any of the above, valid reasons that doctors would actually take seriously?
Does "his father had it done" work for say, a heart transplant? Knee surgery?
Does "his parents want it done" work for an appendectomy? Gall-blader removal?
Is a prostatectomy warranted because it prevents prostate cancer, which is worlds more common than penile cancer? What if the father had it done?
For all of these, the answer would be "no."
In fact, a doctor could be charged for malpractice if he is found to have performed any other medically unnecessary procedure for these reasons. It is medical fraud if he knowingly takes advantage of an unwitting individual to reap profit for performing a needless surgery.
But it is perfectly legal to take advantage of naive parents to ask them to hand over their child to perform medically unwarranted surgery, i.e. circumcision.
All of his actions are absolved with a stroke of a pen. Well-meaning parents sign the consent form and this makes the parents, not him, liable for their son's unnecessary surgery.
Doctors are absolved by the parents of the abuse of his patient who is too young to fend for himself, will be too young to remember, and, by the time the child is old enough to realize his abuse, too old to indict his perpetrator due to statutes of limitations.
What a perfect ploy for securing stable stipend from the systemized abuse of healthy, non-consenting individuals.
Why?
What is it that makes this list of excuses applicable only to this one surgery?
Why is it that for any other surgery, actual medical indication is needed, and not just speculations of dubious "medical benefits?" (Effectively, how does a healthy person ever benefit from elective unnecessary surgery?)
What keeps respectable medical establishments from calling out the circumcision of healthy, non-consenting individuals for the blatant and deliberate medical fraud, not to mention violation of basic human rights, that it is?
Went in with low expectations. It sucked. The headache from those bloody glasses wasn't worth it.
( Read the review + Avatar parodies )
Also I'd never imagined them playing actual gigs outside of the tv show before:
( Some more favourites under the cut... )
Now I've just come across another example of popular music being appropriated by a religious figure. This time it's a Buddhist Monk in Japan called Kansho Tagai who has started rapping instead of chanting. Check it out:
The extras on the DVD involved people raving about how "important" what they were doing was and how there wasn't enough drama that opposed the current political climate. I really have no idea how they thought that this was any better. There's a speech about supporting socialism at the beginning and Margaret Thatcher appears on tv at one point, but asides from that the tv series seems entirely irrelevant to politics.
( Read more... )
Yeah, I knew this was going to be bad and, to be honest, it could have been worse. Actually there were a few elements of it I thought were really good.
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So yeah, this was awful. Really really bad. Still I’ll give it 2/5 because it wasn’t entirely unpleasant to watch.
While Condell rants about how many Muslims want to make Britain an Islamic state, he completely fails to note that there are many many more Christians who want to make Britain into a Christian theocractic white-wash. Condell maintains his normal level of humour by suggesting that mosques be turned into pubs for the sake of community-cohesion. (The point being that Condell doesn't like community cohesion.) And he notes that Anjem Choudary is on benefits....
Now this last bit was where I just gave up. By that, I mean that I figured the best response was a clip from a stand-up act from Iranian comedian Omid Djalili about how glad he was that Omar Bakri was finally leaving the UK. (Omar Bakri was also a radical Islamist on benefits.) Omid's issue with Omar was that whenever the media wanted to include the point of view of Muslims in the UK they'd go to Omar Bakri, this raving nutcase with a hook for a hand. (If you're interested there's an article from Jon ("The Men Who Stare At Goats") Ronson about Omar Bakri.)
Anyway, having failed to find the intended clip, I ran into a lot of other clips and felt I had to share them:
In the following video the bit from 1:34 is just fantastic!:
And this is just classic:
( Even more vids under the cut... )
- Mood:distracted
Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way. His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.
(Source)
(Photographer's Gallery)
(Via _53)
White Lightnin'
This movie was number 10 in Mark Kermode's top ten movies of the year (2009) and I'm afraid I'm not sold on it. Kermode says "The best appalachian mountain dancing, psychotic, surreal, it's-true-but-it-isn't, fantasy of the year."
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The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas - I thought it was good, but with strong reservations. It depends on whether you think "it's a children's movie" lets it off the hook.
Daybreakers - I liked it. For a spoiler-free explanation read on!
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"I concluded from this that it's not feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and myself who are responsible for the idea that all men are potential rapists - it's sometimes men themselves."
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sabrina_il noted that it was actually quite a prevalent misogynistic perspective in the ninteenth century to say that men "cannot help themselves" (that post continues from a previous one about TAs btw).So yeah, I guess all men are potential rapists in the same sense that all men are potential burglars. However, the idea that rape is something we ought to expect from men seems like it's actually tied up with quite a misogynistic perspective. We shouldn't expect men to be rapists any more than we should expect women to be chaste and saintly. It's a stupid expectation which we should do everything in our power to challenge.
As an analogy, what kind of idiot involved in black rights would want to encourage everyone to expect white people to regularly use racist slurs? "They need to say n***er. They just can't help themselves!" *facepalm*
And finally here's an interview with Jack The Ripper:
"I really need to get off my chest why I kill prostitutes."
Ah really? Go ahead.
"Well y'see. I have this urge to kill, so I feel it's better that I express that urge on prostitutes, else I might start killing 'real' people."
Oooh that is interesting. I guess this backs up that old idea that all men are potential murderers.
Did I miss anything? If you interview people who regularly go to prostitutes, it's hardly going to be representative of all men, is it? The main thing the interviews revealed to me was that men who regularly go to prostitutes know that prostitutes aren't enjoying it. The moment someone has recognised this, that ought to be enough to put most men off of prostitutes for life. That men continue to use prostitutes in spite of this suggests some worrying issues in the background.
Yes, you should double-facepalm mr prostitute-user. BTW if you want to keep your anonymity, I suggest you buy a new watch. (In case anyone is confused, the photo on the right comes from the Guardian article which my Jack the Ripper interview is intended to parody.)
"Pretty like Drugs" - Queen Adreena (2002)
"Try Honesty" - Billy Talent (2003)
"A Favour House Atlantic" - Coheed And Cambria (2003)
"Laid To Rest" - Lamb Of God (2004)
"Birds Elope With The Sun" - The Agonist (2009)
"An Arrow From The Sun" - Therion (2003)
"Cute Without The 'E'" - Taking Back Sunday (2002)
"Date With The Night" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2003)
"One Armed Scissor" - At The Drive-In (2000)
"All Medicated Geniuses" – Pretty Girls Make Graves (2003)
As per usual, music videos are not terribly helpful as the bloody video links inevitably go wrong and grrr, LJ p**ses me off so much sometimes aaaaagh!
This movie has dated badly, but nevertheless it appears to have pushed some interesting ideas forward in the scheme of urban fantasy movies. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they are really big into urban fantasy vampire movies since asides from a few key scenes you are likely to find it disappointing.
Warning: After the review there's a clearly marked 'spoilers' section where I consider some of the ideas in the movie which I feel it would be unfair to reveal. Just don't scroll down too fast and you'll be fine. :)
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One entertaining aspect of his site I've never commented on before are his selection of different posts where he is unambiguously opposed to all the Roman Polanski apologetics Working backwards:
( Read more... )So yeah, I think that gives you a fair idea of his style of humour. Without further ado, all further quotes will be concerning Avatar. Those who actually like it (and, unlike me, have actually seen it) you'll be able to recognise that this is all going to be rather tongue in cheek. On your f-list the subtitles and images are visible, but the vast majority of the text is under cuts.
Plagiarism?
Naturally after the trailer was released there were a number of comparisons and claims of plagurism. By the time the movie was on the verge of release Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo had come up with "Dances With Wolves in space", "Ferngully in space" and "Smurfohontas".
Filmdrunk comes up with a novel, a previous animated movie flop and a comic:
Overly Self-Congratulating Production Team
( Read more... )Announcement For Two More Sequels Before Avatar Is Even Released
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Filmdrunk's Actual Review (Finest Piece Of Trash Since Titanic)
( Read more... )
Right Wing Nutcase Backlash
( Read more... )Box Office Analysis Lulz!
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(”They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom, because this, this is
our independence day, meow meow I’m king of the cat-monkeys, coo coo ka choo.”)
Avatar Fans Are Bloody Crazy!
( Read more... )
Oh And BTW Avatar Is About Videogames...
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So, with all this in mind, is it actually worth going to see it?
Cross-posted to moviebuffs
