We participated in our third Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Run for the Cure in Burlington this morning. We walked the full 5 km — well, just like last year, Gail and I walked the full 5 km, while the boys rode in the wagon most of the way. We did make them walk some of the way; Ryan walked about 1½ km, while Nicholas split his kilometre between walking (and whining about the fact that he had to walk) and being carried on Gail’s back. Maybe next year we’ll get them to actually walk — as I told Ryan, it ain’t the “Ride in the Wagon for the Cure”.

We raised $400 ourselves, which beat our total from last year (I think we had $350 last year). I’m pretty sure you can still make donations after the event, so if you want to sponsor us, please click here. Great reasons for doing this are twofold: not only will you be helping out a great cause, but you also get to see a nice (two-year-old) picture of my family, taken at the Whispering Canyon Café restaurant at Disney World’s Wilderness Lodge Resort. Thanks for your support!

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breast cancer

I read an article on a blog yesterday, where the guy talked about circumcision
— how he needed to get it done to his son when he was about 5, and he
wished he had gotten it done when he was born. He says “I listened to all
that nonsense about butchering and psychological
damage and curcumcision being unnatural. What a mistake.” I couldn’t disagree
more. I don’t believe that circumcision causes psychological damage, but in
general, there is no anaesthesia used, so (I’m guessing – I don’t actually
remember) it really freakin’ hurts. Do you want to cause your son that much
pain, even if there won’t be lasting psychological damage? Not without a damn
good reason — and thus far, I have not been able to find one.

The main argument that people use when arguing for
circumcision is that it allows the child to avoid painful infections that could
require circumcision later in life. When Gail was pregnant with Ryan, we asked our
family doctor about this, and she said that most of the time, proper washing of
the penis eliminates this problem. When Ryan was 3, he could wash his penis by
himself, so it’s not a difficult thing. She (our doctor) also said that people get
ingrown toenails all the time, but nobody advocates removing them at birth.

Another argument I’ve heard (this, to me, is unbelievable) is that if the
father is circumcised, it’s important for the child’s penis to look like that
of his father. Hogwash. If that’s true, then you’d better hope that your kids
all have the same eye and hair colour as their father as well. Quite simply,
people look different — my kids know this. Neither of my sons have ever
asked why I look different than them.

It’s true that in some cases, infections or inflammations or whatever may
cause circumcision to be required in older children, or even adults. But that
doesn’t mean that we should just do the surgery in advance just in case
it’s necessary later. Hey, the tonsils and appendix
serve no purpose in the human body, and they may also get infected (and if an
infected appendix ruptures, it could be life-threatening), so we should
remove them at birth too, right? Gail had her gall bladder removed 12 years ago
because of gallstones, and she’s just fine now, so should we remove all gall
bladders from babies so that they avoid the pain of gallstones? The logic is the
same.

Bottom line: it’s painful for the child, expensive (health insurance doesn’t
cover it), and generally unnecessary. So why would you want to do this to your
child? I don’t believe that circumcision is butchery or psychologically scarring,
I just don’t understand why you’d elect to have it done to your child.

Note: Some people have the procedure done for religious reasons. That is not
an issue for me, which is why when Ryan was born, I simply looked into the
medical reasons to get it done (and found none). As an atheist, I can’t say I
understand it, but if your faith dictates (probably using the wrong word
there) that your male children must be circumcised, then it doesn’t really
matter whether or not it is medically necessary. If you honestly believe that
God wants your infant son to feel that much pain for no medical
reason, then nothing I say in this article will mean anything to you.

Aside: I wonder how many more google searches will hit my blog now
that I’ve used the word “penis”. Maybe I should rewrite this article using
various other words for penis, and watch my readership numbers skyrocket!

Update (Dec 2006): As Yappa pointed out in the comments, there have been studies that show that circumcised heterosexual men are less likely (some studies say half as likely) to get HIV than uncircumcised men. John mentioned in his blog (also in the comments) that Wikipedia lists other advantages, including lower incidence of penile cancer.

Here’s a link (thanks John) to an article saying that the results were so striking that they actually ended the study a year early, saying that it would be unethical not to offer circumcisions to all the men in the study. These results are certainly interesting, and if I lived in sub-Saharan Africa, I would have to seriously reconsider having it done to my kids. However, incidence of HIV among heterosexual non-drug-using men is far lower here than it is there. I don’t regret my decision not to have it done (and if I had another son I probably still would not get it done), but I must take back my (implicit) assertion that it’s pointless and has no benefits.

I still don’t generally agree with removing something just because it might cause problems later. Doctors believe the appendix serves no purpose, and later in life it can become infected, causing pain and if it ruptures, possibly even death, but doctors don’t remove them at birth “just in case”.

We went to a circus on Saturday. The Shriner’s circus was in Burlington, and some friends of ours had tickets but couldn’t go, so they gave them to us. There were your standard trapeze artists, clowns, jugglers, and stuff (though not a single pair of stilts to be seen anywhere), and they were all good. The things I wasn’t so impressed with were the animal acts. Oh, the animals were all trained very well, and the performances went off without a hitch, but something about applauding because six horses were running single file in a circle, then switched directions because some woman with a whip twirled her arms just didn’t sit well with me. At least once (I think twice) the MC said that elephants are an endangered species and that they hoped that the opportunity to see the elephant at the circus would cause us (the audience) to become interested in helping do something about it. He also said that elephants in the wild generally live around 45 years, but elephants living in captivity can live up to 80 years. I read over the web site for the circus company, and they do say that they are they take “great pride in the care that [their] animals receive”, and I’m sure that the animals are generally not mistreated. The elephant act didn’t bother me — one elephant standing on a little stool while some gymnast climbed around on him — and the trained poodles were very cute, but the only time I saw a whip (which was not used on the animals — in fact, she never cracked it once) was during the horse act, and that bothered me.

I’m no tree-hugger, and I do eat meat, but cruelty to animals really bothers me. I cannot envision a scenario involving these horses and a whip that does not involved some cruelty to the horses. They were also tied up in such a way that the horses could not lift their heads beyond a certain point. This was probably for the safety of the performers, but the horse is a very majestic animal, and seeing them with their heads constantly pulled down made them look subservient and humiliated, and I really felt sorry for them.

Weirdness: the MC looked a lot like Wil Wheaton, who writes one of the best blogs on the ‘net. His latest entry (ironically about writer’s block) is a great example of why blogging was invented.

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Circus
Animal cruelty
Wil Wheaton

I found out today that one of the people I work with has the middle name “Quiet”, which I’ve never heard of as a name before. I asked her where the name came from and she said simply ” child of the sixties.” I also work with someone whose first name is Dove, which is also kind of neat.

The name “Graeme” is not nearly as uncommon in Britain as it is here. I know that because when I’m over there, I only have to spell my name once – to them, it’s just another one of the spellings. Over here, I have to spell it slowly, and usually twice. I’m sure people have just assumed my parents were drunk when they filled out the birth certificate form. I’ve even had people ask me “Are you sure?” when I spell my name. Yes, I usually get it right. In high school, there were three of us in the same year – one Graeme, one Graham, and one Grahame. One year in math class, we all sat in the same corner of the room, which cause the teacher no end of confusion, but was fun for us.

When I was at Western, I knew a guy whose first name was “A” (he went by his middle name, Warren) — his brother’s first name was “B”. Them some mean parents.

There was a Judy Garland at my high school, and my sister knew a guy named Todd Sweeney. A friend of mine whose last name is White swore he was going to call his daughter Vanna. Luckily, he had 2 sons.

Gail’s stepmother’s name is Jackie, short for Jacqueline. Her first husband’s surname was Smith, making her Jacqueline Smith.

Update: Fixed link.

I went to my buddy Jeff’s place last night to hang out – Gail and the kids are up north visiting Gail’s dad, so I’m solo this weekend. It was Jeff’s birthday yesterday, so a bunch of us went out for dinner, then went back to Jeff’s place to relax in the hot tub, then catch the Rock game on TV.

While watching the game, I’m not exactly sure how it came up, but someone, either Steve or Lynda, made the point that one shouldn’t criticize something if he or she can’t come up with something better. Kerri mentioned a similar policy at work – if you’re going to complain about something, you must have a better solution. I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Just because you personally cannot do a better job, that does not mean that you cannot criticize something or someone.

If this were true, then there only four people alive who would be “allowed” to criticize George W. Bush in his role as President – former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. And yet millions of people all over the world criticize him every day.

This comes up in the lacrosse message board that I belong to all the time – people criticize the refs, and then someone who maybe refs minor league lacrosse, or knows an NLL ref or something asks “Do you know how hard reffing is? Could you do better?” No, I couldn’t, and that’s totally irrelevant.

A lot of art critics can’t paint to save their lives. Many music critics can’t sing. People who suck at sports criticize athletes with far more talent than they have all the time. I don’t need to be able to replace someone in order to criticize them.

I got one of those HotWash things for Christmas – you know, the thing from Canadian Tire that you hook into your windshield washer system and it heats up the fluid before it gets squirted onto your windshield. Supposed to clean it better, and melt ice and snow faster, and get rid of bugs better in the summer, all that good stuff.

Well, it’s supposed to be easy to install, but I’m no mechanic (anything requiring more skill than changing the air filter is beyond my capabilities), so I brought it into the Canadian Tire in Burlington to get installed. The installation cost me $45, so big whoop. So then we have the warmest January ever, and I never get to try it on ice and snow. Just to make sure it works, I wash the windshield and feel the fluid temperature. Cold.

So I take it into Canadian Tire in Waterloo (near work), and tell them it doesn’t work. They fix it, then I come home and try it again. Cold. (Stupidly, I decided to wait until I’m home before trying it again, instead of trying it in the CT parking lot.)

I took it back in again this morning, and they told me that the fluid is only heated to about 70°F, so it’s not going to be super-hot, and that the unit is indeed working. So I check the manual and it says “…allowing the windshield washer fluid to be heated to 60°C (90°F).” Well, first off, 60°C is not 90°F, it’s actually 140°F. Secondly, if the thing only heats the fluid up to 70°F, then both numbers in the manual are wrong anyway. Good to see Canadian Tire’s quality control department is working overtime.