Israeli mom fined $149 a day for refusing son's circumcision.

Cutting hair has more in common with removing feces from your ass than with the mutilation of an organ.

All I know is I like my fireman's helmet, and am thankful (hey! It is Thanksgiving too - how convenient) I don't have an aardvark, nor does my son, and hopefully his sons etc. etc.

no, but he has insurance, a 2-inch deductable

The 2-inch deductable would total me out!

I met this beautiful young lady and we went back to her place. I didn't want to be too forward, so when things got heated and the lights went out, I slipped my manhood into her hand. She said "no thanks, I don't smoke."

I wonder how many circumcisions are based on medical or religious reasons and how many are based on "I want my son's dingdong to look like mine."

Third option for me. I had never even seen an aardvark (public bathrooms and showers) until I joined the military. Now I see why - the fireman's helmet is a superior design, period.
Circumcision is the Stratocaster of peni aesthetics/functionality/versataility. Four our of five male porn stars recommend it, so who am I to second guess their professional opinion?

It depends upon where you live. In certain countries, its done for religious reasons a majority of the time. In places like Africa, its being done because it reduces the transmission of HIV (circumcised heterosexual males have a lower rate of infection). In the States, it was originally done for religious reasons, and now its mostly done to have a "matching set" as it were.

Really? I didn't know that. What religion would that be that had such an influence on what became the majority?

Puritanism. A bunch of nutters that still taint American thought today, even though they're not longer around.

Puritans practice circumcision? Live and learn. How did that happen?

With a knife, of course!

Seriously, though, its not uncommon amongst fundamentalist type Christians, which the Puritans surely were, to dig up something from the Old Testament and adopt it. IIRC, Paul's dictum against circumcision was that it was something which wasn't required if you converted to Christianity, but could be done if you were born into it. The Puritans wanting to get rid of the various trappings of Christianity that they felt the Catholics (and then later the Church of England) forced on it, dug a whole bunch of things out of the Bible that we'd consider screwy these days.

Wow. Learned something amazing. Amazingly stupid, but still historically amazing. Thanks.

They also thought it would keep boys from playing with themselves, but that's obviously not the case (a point made especially clear by the Penn & Teller video).

Although I don't have any particularly strong opinions on the broader question either way, I think it's pretty mind-blowing that the "matching set" thing would actually be a consideration for anyone. Talk about a spurious reason for a medical decision...

I thought it came about in the Victorian age when docs thought dudes would jerk the gerkin less if they were snipped.

In any event, it's something that's just about cosmetics these days. The miniscule health benefits of circumcision are achieves by hosing the helmet with soap and water. ...basic hygiene that people should practice anyway.

And who do you think was more uptight about jerkin' than the Victorians? Puritans. And why were people so terrified that kids might be jerkin'? Religion.

In developed nations, you're right. In places like Africa, where heterosexual transmission of HIV is common, the health benefits are fairly large.

IIRC, the studies purporting to show that were really bad. In particular, circumcision is not routine in the areas studied, and the circumcised men studied were men who 1) were very recently circumcised as adults and, for obvious reasons, having less sex in the immediate aftermath and 2) were, unlike the pitiful attempt at control groups, given sex education and condom access along with their snippings.

I could be totally misremembering, but I don't think I am.

^
No, I think that's the gist of it. There are no decent control groups for those studies from Africa - the cultures that practice circumcision also tended to be the ones with more education, access and willingness to use condoms, less fornication, etc.

Both the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control still advocate it as a preventative measure. I know that later studies have shown that the benefits for HPV prevention aren't as great as originally thought.

Mind you, most studies of circumcised males tend to show them as far more willing to engage in "riskier" sexual practices (i.e. unprotected sex, more sex partners, etc.), so if there were no HIV transmission benefits to being snipped, I'd think that they'd show up fairly quickly.