Twin Towers Simulation

Scientists and engineers simulate jet colliding with World Trade Center
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

The simulation could be used to better understand which elements in the building’s structural core were affected, how they responded to the initial shock of the aircraft collision, and how the tower later collapsed from the ensuing fire fed by an estimated 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, said Mete Sozen, the Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering in Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering.

Circumcision

While so many of us are so outraged by female circumcision, or “female genital mutilation”, where is the outrage at the sexual abuse of boys by the barbarous act of circumcision still calmly practised in this country by doctors who assure loving mothers (and fathers, for god’s sake!) that it is painless and prophylactic?

There is no normal medical indication for circumcision. Except the medical fee.
^{[My father used to tell me that for some of his less scrupulous colleagues the primary medical indication for a lucrative tonsillectomy was that their patients still had tonsils.]}

Where did it come from, in this country at least?

Well, wouldn’t you know it: The Christians!

By dulling genital sensitivity circumcision could help to control men’s sinful lust and depraved urge to fornication as well as making them more amenable to social (i.e. priestly) control.

But at what cost? There are psychological effects as well as the physical. It has been described as “low-grade neurological castration.”

The foreskin is rich with nerve-endings which feed into the pleasure centres of the brain. It increases the pleasure of both men and women. Amputation of the foreskin can cause premature ejaculation and other sexual dysfunction.

Happily, it is a dying trend, but when I was a child, it was done to almost every Australian boy. Now it’s less than 10%. What parent, knowing what we know now, could possibly inflict such pain and the future psychological and physical consequences on their own child? And yet some do. And doctors, nurses and hospitals are willing accomplices. Let them continue to do so at their growing legal peril.

Warning – graphic

Here are some excerpts from a Bond University paper:

Infant male circumcision continues despite growing questions about its medical justification. As usually performed without analgesia or anaesthetic, circumcision is observably painful. It is likely that genital cutting has physical, sexual, and psychological consequences too. Some studies link involuntary male circumcision with a range of negative emotions and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some circumcised men have described their current feelings in the language of violation, torture, mutilation, and sexual assault.
…
However, no national medical association anywhere in the world that has studied the issue recommends routine circumcision (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1999; Australasian Association of Paediatric Surgeons, 1996; Australian College of Paediatrics, 1996; British Medical Association, 1996; Canadian Paediatric Society, 1996). Recently, the American Medical Association (2000) has gone even further, confirming that infant circumcision is nontherapeutic. It is now generally acknowledged that any potential medical benefits of routine circumcision are outweighed by its risks and drawbacks
…
In the English speaking world, circumcision was introduced as a medical procedure in the late nineteenth century (Hodges, 1997). Victorian notions about the “ills of masturbation” influenced some physicians to endorse amputation of the erotogenic foreskin as “preventative therapy” since circumcised boys could not use their foreskins for masturbation (Moscucci, 1996)

According to medieval Jewish rabbi, Maimónides,

“one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible….In fact this commandment has not been prescribed with a view to perfecting what is defective congenitally, but to perfecting what is defective morally. The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished. The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and has had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened.”
[...]
Evidence has also started to accumulate that male circumcision may result in lifelong physical, sexual, and sometimes psychological harm as well. A variety of forces are converging from fields as diverse as psychology, medicine, law, medical ethics, and human rights, all questioning the advisability of circumcision which originated millenia ago and was promoted in the Victorian era.
[...]
Immerman and Mackey (1998) described circumcision as “low-grade neurological castration.” They argued that the resultant glans keratinisation and neurological atrophy of sexual brain circuitry (due to loss of sensory input to the brain’s pleasure centre) may serve as a social control mechanism which produces a male who is less sexually excitable and therefore more amenable to social conditioning.

Read more here at kindredmedia.

Waterloo
Remember Clutch Cargo?
This is funny. In an awful kind of way…

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