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> Lol, I think why this topic is THE MOST circlejerky of all is that the "intactivists" know no bounds in refuting any claims that are pro female circumcision. This is literally some copypasta you and you friends post everywhere that makes a mere mention of female circumcision.
I mean Jesus Christ, no one here is exactly that strongly against female circumcision, we're just here to be more smug than whatever reddit thinks.

Note: I am against ALL genital mutilation of females, males and intersex. Please don't interpret this post as supporting any of these activities.

Everything I have posted below is factual; but it's supposed to be educational - to help folks clear up their confused thinking around this issue. Thanks

Genital Autonomy for all - Intersex, Male & Female

If the amputation of the mucus membranes of the male genitals results in a lowering of HIV infection; then it would not be unreasonable to assume that the amputation of the mucus membranes of the female genitals would produce the same effect. Indeed, as the total surface area of mucus membranes in females is so much greater than that of males, the effect may be even greater.

However, most western peoples will be repulsed by the idea of amputating parts of an infant female's genitals to obtain some future protection from a disease. All the more so, when nearly 100% protection can be obtain from HIV infection by use of condoms.

But this repulsion does not arise when the prospect of amputating parts of infant male genitals. This is clearly because such activity has become "normalised" in the west. This is the issue.

Like male circumcision, there are plenty of peer reviewed studies that show female circumcision is not a barrier to sexual orgasm and enjoyment. Some studies show that orgasm and enjoyment are reduced; and some show no effect.

You'll often come across members of the medical community saying that FGM has no "health" benefits, and if women have their clitoris amputated, then their sex life comes to an end. Then they say that MGM has lots of "health" benefits and that men's sex life is not affected.

But it's a myth that many women who have suffered FGM are unhappy and cannot have great sex lives. That's why they queue up to have their daughters' circumcised. Plus there are many so-called potential "health benefits" - such as a 50% reduction in HIV/AIDS.

The visible part - the glans clitoris - is only a small part of the whole clitoris. So when a woman suffers partial or total amputation of the external clitoris when undergoing FGM, only a small part of her clitoris is removed. Thus she often can enjoy a full and satisfying sex life.

The truth about the female clitoris

Learn how large the female clitoris is; and how the external glans clitoris is just a small part of it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/cliteracy_n_3823983.html
http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/sexuality/a/clitoraltruthin.htm

http://www.amazon.com/The-Clitoral-Truth-Secret-Fingertips/dp/1583224734

"Seven Things to Know about female Genital Surgeries in Africa"

— By the public policy advisory network on female genital surgeries in Africa.

"Western media coverage of female genital modifications in Africa has been hyperbolic and one- sided, presenting them uniformly as mutilation and ignoring the cultural complexities that underlie these practices. Even if we ultimately decide that female genital modifications should be abandoned, the debate around them should be grounded in a better account of the facts."

http://www.taskforcefgm.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/hast81.pdf

Female Circumcision & Health Benefits

"Stallings et al. (2005) reported that, in Tanzanian women,
the risk of HIV among women who had undergone FGC
was roughly half that of women who had not; the association
remained significant after adjusting for region, household
wealth, age, lifetime partners, union status, and recent ulcer."

Note: when it's found that circumcising female genitals reduces HIV/AIDS it's called a "conundrum" rather that a wonderfully exciting "medical" opportunity to reduces HIV/AIDS.

http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=11&abstractId=2177677

"Georgia State University, Public Health Theses" — a USA University of international renown:

The Association between Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the Risk of HIV/AIDS in Kenyan Girls and Women (15-49 Years):

"RESULTS: This study shows an inverse association (OR=0.508; 95% CI: 0.376-0.687) between FGM and HIV/AIDS, after adjusting for confounding variables."

"DISCUSSION: The inverse association between FGM and HIV/AIDS established in this study suggests a possible protective effect of female circumcision against HIV/AIDS. This finding suggests therefore the need to authenticate this inverse association in different populations and also to determine the mechanisms for the observed association."

"This study investigated whether there is a direct association between FGM and HIV/AIDS. Surprisingly, the results indicated that the practice of FGM turned out to reduce the risk of HIV. While a positive association was hypothesized, a surprising inverse association between cases of female circumcision and positive HIV serostatus was obtained, hence indicating that FGM may have protective properties against the transmission of HIV."

http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1113&context=iph_theses

"National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania - 50% reduction in HIV/AIDS in women who have have parts of the genitals amputated:"

http://www.tzonline.org/pdf/femalecircumcisionandhivinfectionintanzania.pdf

Female Circumcision Does Not Always Reduce Sexual Experiences

"International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Female genital cutting in this group of women did not attenuate sexual feelings:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2002.01550.x/abstract

"The Journal of Sexual Medicine" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Pleasure and orgasm in women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17970975

"The New Scientist" (references a medical journal)

Female Circumcision Does Not Reduce Sexual Activity:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2837-female-circumcision-does-not-reduce-sexual-activity.html#.Uml2H2RDtOQ

"Journal of General Internal Medicine" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Female "Circumcision" - African Women Confront American Medicine

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497147/

Medical benefits of female circumcision: Dr. Haamid al-Ghawaabi

http://islamqa.info/en/ref/45528

"Pediatrics (AAP)" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Genital Cutting Advocated By American Academy Of Pediatrics

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/102/1/153.short

Genital Autonomy for all - Intersex, Male & Female

We really have been outjerked by Reddit. For all the XBONE jokes and Snowden this, Obama that, atheism memes the other, they are now jerking about how a baby born dangerously premature is neither a hero nor a heroine. Yet when they throw some change to someone to buy a Mountain Dew while rocking some scruff, they are the world's greatest hero.

Fuck it, I'm going on a rant.

Search 'Hero' in Reddit, sort by Top. #3 result: A Redditor brings a power strip {extension cable} with him to the airport, calls himself a HERO for providing others with the facility to charge their mobile phones.

pic

What's that you say, this self-aggrandising wannabe was downvoted to hell and back for misusing the word, and every comment called him out in Reddit's characteristic snarky and pedantic manner?

>You sir, are a great humanitarian.

Not in the top comment he's not.

Nor in the next 5 top comments, then we hit this:

>You could be a capitalist and charge money for the use of the outlets.

And our hero's response:

>> I was thinking the same thing. I figured I could get at least $5/outlet. And maybe $20 for my chair that was within cord's reach.

>>I could probably have got $30-$40 for the strip when I left and let the next person charge people to use it. My concern would be that i will be flying through the airport next week, and I might see my power strip still being used in one unbroken chain since I left it, only now it would $20/outlet and I would really need a charge.

Our hero would price gouge people at the airport. Oh teh downvotes. lol jk, [+204, -26], they love him and his gouging.

And I promise, the praise continues.

>I, too, travel with a power strip and am thus hailed.

Now others want to be praised for their heroism too!

Ctrl+F 'Hero': let's find those comments quoting the dictionary definition of 'hero', and how this guy doesn't qualify.

>Ok so we call them power boards in Australia. I was imagining you striding through an airport ripping your clothes off. I couldn't imagine why. EDIT: I could understand the hero part though.

Stripping off your clothes in the airport = hero. Premature baby successfully fighting for her life = fuck you.

>Be a real hero and get this one...

The size of the power strip determines the size of the hero.

>Most of that is just USB cables plugged in. If you really want to be the hero at the airport, bring a multi-port USB charger too.

Multi-port charger = heroic. Just more of the same. No-one calls him out.

This is just... I'm just baffled by this. She was a little baby girl at death's door, and the pedantry over the word 'hero' is everywhere, and upvoted to the top. He let people charge their fucking iPhones so they could play Angry Birds on the plane for slightly longer, and everyone agrees he's a hero.

Now we move into /r/theoryofreddit territory: why? Here's my theory: these kids can't ever be a premature baby girl, so they don't want that to be associated with heroism. They can, however, bring an extension cable to the airport, so they want that to be the mark of a hero.

I'll stop here because the only thing left to write is how Redditors are the lowest form of - you know what, don't start me. </rant>

I can tell you there's circlejerking among the fine arts and performing arts (I have a degree in the latter), but there isn't any gross dismissal of what it is that scientists do. If anything, there's a deep amount of respect for it. You'll find that the more well rounded STEM people studied advanced mathematics, or chemistry, but also...you know...play classical piano, and there's a lot of interesting research that bridges the creative fields with the scientific.

Actually, Iannis Xenakis' dissertation was about this precisely.

Arts-Sciences: Alloys

>In this fascinating essay Iannis Xenakis succeeds in unraveling the intricate web between the arts and sciences, thereby demonstrating their interdependency as in the components of an alloy. A complete list of works and bibliography are included. In this translation Xenakis explains not only his musical and theoretical writings - but also the role of mathematics as a philosophical catalyst in both his musical and architectural works. He discusses in detail his unique use of computers as a graphic tool in the composition of some of his scores. Unexpected aspects of his character are gracefully revealed in these highly readable exposés.

>Xenakis is responding to a panel of noted French masters from the various disciplines in w which he has worked and cleverly manages to answer specific questions in one field while simultaneously addressing perhaps less-initiated exponents from other, seemingly unrelated areas. He succeeds in unraveling the intricate web between the arts and sciences, thereby demonstrating their inter-dependency as in the components of alloys.

Well, this comment made me a bit angry (I get butthurt easily about these topics):

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/w3daf/only_a_little_racist/c59zx2c

Here is what I don't like about this post: It is an oversimplification of the trends around the entire world. China is growing as an economic powerhouse, but it is not going to REPLACE the United States as the world's foremost superpower! For more insight into this, I would recommend The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/039306235X ). What he explains in this book is that America is not IN DECLINE. It is just that the rest of the world is catching up. In this world, America is not the ONLY superpower in the world. Hence, it is called the Post-American world!

Also, there is a lot of things that China has to overcome before it can become a superpower. For example, it needs allies. Even though China has a lot of economic alliances with other countries around the globe, its influence is making its neighbors weary. For example, South Korea, Japan, and even VIETNAM are starting to have closer ties to the only other country with major pacific influence: the United States. There is a great article talking about America's influence in the pacific ( http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century?page=full ). Think about this: if Vietnam is becoming allies with the country that used to bomb its own people, you know you messed up (in China's case, it happened with with the South China Sea problem). China's navy is also dwarfed by that of the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_warships_in_service_worldwide) This is key in power projection in the pacific, because the country with the more power in the seas gets to dictate the rules (up to an extent, of course). China tried to exert its power in the South China Sea, so countries like Vietnam and the Philippines asked the U.S. for more naval support. This has put China in a spot where it can't dictate the rules to the smaller nations.

Another thing that China has to fix is the problems with its economy. Just like the United States, it has a considerably debt problem. Even though the public debt is lower than that of the United States, China has a TON of major state-owned companies. The debts that these state owned companies have make China's national debt as a percentage of its GDP much higher than that of the United States ( http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/09/jim-chanos-china-has-tons-of-contingent-debt-via-state-owned-enterprises.html )! China also has a problem with making ghost-cities. China is building a lot of buildings that aren't even inhabited. Some people are even saying that this is a housing bubble that may burst (here is a great video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM ).

Another problem that China faces in the future is its aging population. This problem is its aging population( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/china-next-generation-ageing-population). China's population is getting progressively older, which may cause a slowdown for its economy. This has already happened in Japan, which has partly caused the slowdown in its economy. This is happening in European countries as well (like Germany). What makes the United States so different? Immigration! Immigration is the thing that makes America so unique, and will continue to make America a vibrant place ( http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/29/a-reason-to-be-optimistic-in-todays-economy/ )

Don't get me wrong, China will have the world's largest GDP by 2030, ( http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/China-2030-complete.pdf) according to the World Bank. However, its GDP per capita is considerably smaller than that of the United States ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita ). On top of this, the United State's hdi is pretty high, which means that its standard of living is high as well: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HDI). Therefore, what we can see is that China will have to catch up A LOT if it wants to surpass the United States of America (fuck yeah).

TL;DR: What you have just seen is me being butthurt to the fullest extent. I basically states the reasons why China won't become the world's largest superpower in the near future.

A couple of things:
Re: Machiavelli- This is what historians do, when they are doing a good job of adapting their work to a mass audience. So in that course, you will be led through a (riveting and fun!) deep read of Machiavelli's seminal works, provided with the historical context of his life and world, but all towards thesis-driven analysis of what he was doing, what it meant to him, what it meant in his world, and what we might make of it now. He talks explicitly about the historical method as he applies it, and you are encouraged (but not required, it is a course for everyone!) to read alongside his progress through the works and strengthen your capacity to interpret primary sources, to a basic level.

Re: Cotton: Cotton is a huge topic. Good history books about it look like this, which is to say, the author adopts a critical lens that seems like it's from another field, but is in actuality the historical, historicized application of a way of looking at things. Peer and popular reviews both find it to be a deeply persuasive way of destroying the myth of slavery as some kind of pre-capitalist institution, and rather a foundational institution of American and global capitalism. He also illustrates how cotton didn't become "de-enslaved" as a result of the American civil war, but rather simply encouraged extraordinarily aggressive extraction and colonial-style exploitation by Europeans of diverse existing and new colonial holdings, notably the "Slavery is illegal buuuut" British in India. Now, you may find none of these persuasive or useful, in the end, but it is undeniably a provocative, thesis-driven examination of the topic that works towards important questions, and with a topic like cotton, there are just a ton of good books out there by historians doing other things with it.

To give you an example, one of my specialties is legal history. So when I work on an issue (for instance, corruption), one of my default starting points is to organize the facts in a legal-historical manner, not to be confused with a legal analysis that a law professor would do even though it might integrate such analyses at various points. But it will be in service of a historical thesis ("x argument about the role/change over time/effects of corruption in a place"), and while it might not wind up answering a question you care about personally, you can rest assured it bears little resemblance to the "Stuff happened! Here are some stories about it with a tenuous connection to current evets!" things that clog bookstores.

Another example: Intellectual history sounds like philosophy, but it's not about debating the merits of the ideas per se even if it integrates analyses of the ideas at some level; it's about the historical context, the place of the ideas in a given time, and so on. You would share ideas between a 17th Century European Intellectual History class and its Philosophy equivalent, and would likely have many of the same readings, but what you would do with them and how you would think about them would be quite different, and if you specialized in it as a historian your papers and books would be quite different from a philosophy professor's even if you have common ground. Does that make sense?

tl;dr-I would say what you are looking for is not popular history so much as history geared towards non-specialists, and a great way to get recommendations for that is to look at the askhistorians book list and, of course, ask questions about potential sources towards the questions you are interested in (because there may simply be an article or whatever you'd miss that covers a lot of the ground). It's the same way that you wouldn't want to mistake pop science writing as a sign of what the particular scientific field is up to or what it can offer you or me as a layperson.

That's right. I enjoy the theatre experience, but on my own terms. I like being able to pause a movie to get up and take a piss without missing anything. I also like not hearing the sounds of teenagers making out or being loud in the row behind me, which is my biggest gripe with theatres. I like having leg room. I like not overpaying for snacks and beverages. However, if I lived in a city that had IMAX, I'd probably go more often.

And yes, not having good sound quality is a big thing for me. Having a good 6.1 stereo system adds so much to the entire experience. Most digital downloads only have stereo sound. When you turn on your receivers surround sound processor, it only gives you matrixed sound using Dolby Pro Logic. That's where it takes the stereo signal and attempts to distribute it to all seven channels. Pro Logic sound as good as Dolby Digital and DTS, it doesn't provide true surround sound, and it sounds muddy. When I watch a movie, I want to be engrossed in it. Which is why I wish I had a bigger TV.

Like I said, if I enjoyed a movie that I've pirated, I will buy it. And I usually buy the edition that comes with all the extra frills. Shit like this.

I'm an avid music and film collector. I've been collecting for 2/3 of my life. I have close to a thousand CDs, around 200 LPs, several concert performances on VHS and DVD, countless movies, and even cassette tapes. Do I pirate some things? Yes. Am I a pirate? No. I buy shit.

Wait, does unidan have his PhD now? Last I heard he was just a grad student. I'm being honest, I don't know. But I do know plenty of grad students with heads much, much bigger than their accomplishments. I would hesitate to call some professors "experts" so I don't think unidan should really be considered one either. That's just my two cents, though.

There's an excellent book on the recent (past 100 years or so) history of chemistry and it's surprisingly rich with drama. I bring it up because there's a theme running through the book that echoes what you mentioned. It details several examples of brilliant, famous chemists stepping very slightly outside of their own field and making complete fools of themselves because they didn't bother learning the fundamentals of the field they were stepping into. For example, multiple Nobel laureate chemist Linus Pauling stepping into biochemistry to solve the structure of DNA. People don't seem to realize that being brilliant in a specific area doesn't automatically make you brilliant in any other area, not even necessarily a closely related one.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4003531/entire-jon-stewart-interview/

I absolutely love this interview. Sadly, people don't take the time to watch things and get the full context. The exchange at 9:30 is pretty funny.

There's a great book that I'm working through right now called Amusing Ourselves to Death which gets into a lot of problems that we see with news media - namely that the ease of information transfer has been a double-edged sword. While we can disseminate more, there are certain things you lose when you transition to new media. In the case of tv - it was that more of the message is transmitted through how things look/soundbites/etc. You don't get good debates - you get a series of soundbites. You don't get topical news - you get whatever draws eyeballs for ads. Etc, etc, etc.

• When Religion is an Addiction - Robert M. Minor PhD
  
• Various books and studies headed by John Bradshaw, another PhD clinical psychologist (clinical means that he's more interested in large sample, multi generational testing testing and statistical analysis vs individual 'therapy') who once a member of the clergy.
  
• A study showing that Religious Observance can have a late onset shrinking effect of the Hippocampus. We also know that the Hippocampus is strongly connected to the process of chemical addiction in the brain.
  
  It's really not a long bow to draw either. Most forms of addiction involve a substantive element of ritual. Ritual is how we train our brains to make the neuronal connections which remind us how we can easily remember and repeat the things we need to and want to repeat. Religion also has a very strong and significant element of ritual too and almost every form of addiction breaking context recommends that we break the rituals to aid in fighting the addiction.
  

the album which is called () which the song "Untitled 6" is from is a concept album where neither the tracks or album itself has a real title, and the booklet that comes with is blank, and the idea is for the listener to interpet the songs for themself.

The language is what the band refers to as Hopelandish, which is a made up language.

But I could recommend pretty much any album of Sigur Ros, also lead singer Jónsi Birgisson's solo album is really good.

Both albums are avaible on Spotify as well.

"It's literally impossible to see the theatrical cuts on video because they've never been released" is the biggest lie that I hear every day on the internet that I'm most sick of hearing. The theatrical editions of all three films were released on disc 2 of the "Limited Edition" DVDs in 2006.

Yes, it sucks that they're long discontinued and copies are super expensive. Yes, it sucks that they haven't been restored and remastered. Yes, it sucks that Lucasfilm only thinks of the original films as "special features." But if you're willing to spend some money or do some legwork (I've found them readily available at public libraries, and maybe people have had luck at yard sales and used record shops), you can watch the original theatrical trilogy at home, yub nubs and all.

It might be badly sourced ("according to /r/TIL"... smh) but the poop microbes + babby theory has some weight behind it. This was a pretty good book about the symbiotic human-microbe relationship I had to read for intro bio in college, and it mentions poop exposure as one of the ways humans get exposed to microbes in infancy.

• Start at AntennaWeb.
  
• Buy the type of antenna it recommends. If an indoor antenna is enough, get a $10 one from Radio Shack first. The Mohu Leaf gets excellent reviews.
  
• Connect it to any TV made in the past decade or so.
  
• ???
  
• Profit!

I'm not an Anthropologist, but I found this book really interesting. It's specific to the meal in America though. Sort of along the lines of what you're asking about though.

Yeah I didn't really have a clue about how it was in North Korea until reading this book. As an american who has never gone more than two days without food, it was hard for me to even imagine what they went (and go) through. Thanks for the link

It would pair well with this toaster. Be sure to read the reviews.