/* Gerb’s Sphincter */
I usually don’t cheer for PETA, but in this case I’ll make an exception:
The sheep farming lobby fears PETA because it is hard to argue that mulesing is anything other than what the US-based animal liberationists say it is: “A gruesome procedure in which farmers use gardening shears to carve skin and flesh from lambs’ upturned, trussed backsides, without using painkillers.”
Poor Aussie sheep!
Well, duh. I wonder how long it took to reach this conclusion:
The most effective treatment for severe hemorrhoids is surgical removal, according to a new study.
The finding contradicts the widely-held belief that rubber-band ligation — the practice of cutting off circulation, causing the hemorrhoid to wither away — is better.
Hmm, let’s see. A blood vessel around my anus is swollen. I’m supposed to clamp it off with a rubber band, and hope the problem goes away? How utterly barbaric.
Okay, you’re probably asking yourself what this is all about. My goal (aside from the basic goals of every other amateur, wanna-be blogger in the world) is to capture thoughts or facts which interest me.
Sphincters, to me, are the ultimate gateways of the body. They control the passages between the inside world, and the outside world. I consider myself well-versed in the operations of my own sphincters, and I want to leverage my talents in this field into a new, valuable resource - a blog.
Part of my goal for this experiment is to examine the concept of the human mind as a sphincter. My posts to this blog will help me to examine and critically understand my thought processes, and apply the metaphors of sphincter to the selection of posts which I submit for the perusal of you, dear reader, in this very forum.
The other main goal (for the moment) is to capture and interpret various other news blurbs, writings, or works of art which specifically pertain to other sphincters in our world. Both metaphorical and physical concepts of sphincters, passageways and methods of control will be examined for study.
I welcome the contributions of others, as comments (and for a select few of you, in the form of posts) and I look forward to an enlightened disourse on the subject of the sphincter.
Found this today:
The dugong gained weight fairly well. Starting from 18.5 kilograms on 3 May, the dugong weighed 19.6 kilograms on 7 May. The calf would often pass out air through the anus, sometimes expelling soft, brown feces together with the air. Laboratory examination of the feces did not reveal anything significant. The calf suddenly went off-feed on 8 May and hardly moved its right flipper. After an hour observing rapid, jerky swimming movements and refusal to take milk, the dugong was found dead at about 5 AM on 9 May 2004.
Read more about the fascinating sphincters of Sirenians.
Hope this works. I’m using a Dashboard wigdet in Mac OS X 10.4, running on my PowerBook G4, to add this post. Woo-hah!