Sometimes a straight answer helps

[redbird]

A pointer on metaquotes somehow turned into a more-heat-than-light discussion of circumcision. Somewhere in there, someone asked the reason for the Jewish custom of circumcision, and wanted to know whether it was in the Torah.

I decided they might be serious, and said yes it is and mentioned Abraham and Isaac. They thanked me. Apparently, despite knowing the word "Torah", they had never heard that story.

There's an awful lot to know--thousands of years of history, culture, technology, myth, science, and general weirdness inevitably lead to that--which in turn means that there's probably nothing that everyone knows.

Comments

[98.livejournal.com]

I am known for claiming that I really and truly do in fact know everything. Of course, I can't remember it all at once.

And it just gets worse with age.

help

[miless-apart.livejournal.com]

hi- you replie to my issue with not seeing my friends page updated? and theres been no improvement, its not working, or fixing? can you help me? miless_apart

Re: help

[redbird]

Please use the support board for this problem: support questions are not assigned to a single person.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Zorinth and I were horrified to discover last week that AM doesn't know the names of the planets of the solar system. The very funny thing was that Z and I both simultaneously came out with the same quote from Have Spacesuit and said that was like not knowing your way around the neighbourhood.

She now knows heaps about the moons of Jupiter, which is Z's current geography project, but still couldn't list the planets.

Yet she was born five years after the discovery of Pluto, and has lived through both Voyagers and Galileo, and she isn't at all stupid.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I think I learned the order of the planets at about..urm...age 4 or 5. Certainly before my younger sister was born in 1968, so figure 1966.

See, for Chanukah that year, my parents got me a copy of A Child's Introduction to Space (http://www.showandtellmusic.com/pages/galleries/gallery_k/childsintro.html), which had such memorable songs as "Meet Space Pilot Jones," "With A Great Big Noise Like Thunder" and (most directly germane) "The Planets Calypso."

The story of the planets began with the Sun, a very hot mass of liquid gas, too hot for anyone...

I still have the LP, but no working turntable.

[redbird]

I was poking around the Web tonight, for no particular reason, and came across a page that might interest zorinth, if he hasn't seen it already: the Jupiter irregular satellite page.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I want to know if it's possible to have a more-light-than-heat discussion of circumcision on the Internet. I've yet to witness it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I know I can't participate in one. I've decided that that is an issue on which I am entirely irrational, and facts don't matter to me.

I think that what would be useful would be if everyone could just decide what topics they are totally irrational about, and agree not to talk about them in public. . .

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I'd observe how that would eliminate about 2/3 of the political speeches people make, but that would actually be a good thing. So would watching some people's reactions as to who would have to shut up about what.

[avram]

It’s not exactly a light-generating topic. How much factual information is there to bring into such a discussion? You link to a few studies showing that some tiny percentage of circumcisions go bad and turn into nightmare stories, you get a few posts about whether it aids or impairs sexual function (mostly a matter of opinion anyway), and a few about a slight inverse correlation with cervical cancer in sexual partners (which turns out to be a matter of hygiene, which had a slight inverse correlation with circumcision at the time of the study), and that’s about it as far as facts go. The rest is all “It’s mutilation” (which is true) versus “It’s a religious obligation which does negligible harm” (also true). In other words, matters of opinion and axiomatic value, which are inherently heat-generating.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I've seen people presented with the fact of the rare medically necessary circumcision and watched them foam over to try to explain away someone's very real experience with the operation in the name of their beliefs.

And to completely change the subject, how many RASFFarians are on LJ, anyway?

Sincerely,
She who used to post as bdaverin@(several different domains here)

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Many, but not all. Yet.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

But we're working on it

torah

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

you know, it wouldn't surprise me if zir state of knowledge were the norm among non-jews.

[liv]

I think it would be extremely easy for a reasonably educated, but not religious person, to have very little idea what's in the Bible. I mean, if you followed the media at all (whether traditional or web-based), you'd probably imagine that the Bible was either the Little Book of Warm and Fuzzy, or a long polemic against homosexuality, depending whom you were more inclined to believe.

[redbird]

True, but I thought it was more widely known that the Jewish reason for circumcision is in fact religious (rather than a belief that it's hygienic, or purely "because our grandfathers did this").