1431: Free to Go

[Keith]

"Sorry! This just in! Fuck Hitler!"


Jesse Joyce

[WSEIII]

I can't hate someone who's dead, but I do hate what he did to the jews.

[Gold Experience]

We all do what we believe is right and we don't let anyone stop us. Hitler is no different.

[Robotron]

For starters I hate Hitler. However I am more angry/disappointed with the people who allowed it to happen and were sub-servant in his cause. Plenty of people rant racist/prejudice/xenophobic tirades all the time but the supposedly educated masses usually just ignore them. That a first world country with relatively decent education allowed itself to go the way it did is disgraceful and saddening. Hitler was an objectively bad person and I don't think anybody can argue that. To be honest hearing people say "he was doing what he thought was right" is really sad. Seeing as how even his studies his scientists performed gathered evidence against his cause and he just brushed it under the rug. He was in it for himself for the conquest, not some ill-perceived greater good. Every bit of evidence and moral fiber pointed towards him being wrong, he had to know. I am hard pressed to believe that somebody who has the competence to run a regime going for the brass ring is so disassociated that he couldn't see the folly of his ways. But I wasn't there, I am no expert. If he was that crazy than that just says something about the general intelligence of the German people circa 1930s-40s. Their loss, they can keep hither, we got Einstein.

[Junkenstein]

yes.

[Sorin Markov]

thank god! jesse joyce is alive.. the other week i was like "hmm.. how is amy winehouse doing" and the next day i thought "hmm.. how is jesse joyce doing" and look what happened to amy...

[mcbane89]

Originally Posted by Robotron

For starters I hate Hitler. However I am more angry/disappointed with the people who allowed it to happen and were sub-servant in his cause. Plenty of people rant racist/prejudice/xenophobic tirades all the time but the supposedly educated masses usually just ignore them. That a first world country with relatively decent education allowed itself to go the way it did is disgraceful and saddening. Hitler was an objectively bad person and I don't think anybody can argue that. To be honest hearing people say "he was doing what he thought was right" is really sad. Seeing as how even his studies his scientists performed gathered evidence against his cause and he just brushed it under the rug. He was in it for himself for the conquest, not some ill-perceived greater good. Every bit of evidence and moral fiber pointed towards him being wrong, he had to know. I am hard pressed to believe that somebody who has the competence to run a regime going for the brass ring is so disassociated that he couldn't see the folly of his ways. But I wasn't there, I am no expert. If he was that crazy than that just says something about the general intelligence of the German people circa 1930s-40s. Their loss, they can keep hither, we got Einstein.

First let me preface by saying boo Hitler (I'm most definitely not saying boo-urns) so there's no confusion, but pretty much all of the evidence does point to him completely believing his own bullshit. If he really didn't believe that there were inferior races of people that needed to be eliminated, he would have stopped the death camps when Germany was in real trouble, when running these massive operations sapped supplies and manpower desperately needed for the war effort Germany was rapidly losing. When the US, Russia, and Great Britain were essentially at the gates, but he kept it all going right to the bitter end. Hitler really did go looking for the Ark of the Convenant, The Spear of Destiny, and on and on, because he really believed in the folklore about ushering in a thousand year reign for the chosen Aryan people. Hell, the only reason he invaded Russia was because he thought they were so subhuman the Germans would win the war in ridiculously easy fashion, and even told his advisors to fuck off when they explained the Germans would be outnumbered 10-1 in a country that's never been successfully invaded, so that may not be a good idea. Hitler was complete loon.

The article that brought this up on the show was about the banning of Wagner, Hitlers favorite composer, and the reason goes a little beyond just Hitler liking it, he literally based his entire regime off Wagner's work. Wagner's stuff was basically Germanic folklore about this noble race of people rising up and taking their destiny as rulers of the world. Hitlers entire war was essentially bad Wagner fan fiction. And as for the people, well, a lot were idiots, but in a very conventional way - they were proud and racist. Germany had been seething for years after WWI (I mean losing to the French is pretty embarrassing), and Hitler happened along in one of the most ridiculous, convoluted, luckiest paths to power ever, and became the poster child for all of this frustration. Really, the main reason he came to power was because Germany couldn't have an official army, which let him build his own private army, that ended up outnumbering the Germans by about 20-1. The French (again, fucking everything up) insisted on this no army clause, even though everyone told them it would cause WWII way back in 1915. People were so scared, because the government had crumbled, the economy had shat itself, and embarrassed because the French were taking their lunch money, that they pretty much allowed Hitler to whip them into a fervor and go do some insane shit. It isn't really an excuse, hell I'd fully endorse shitting on the Germans as much as possible, except that they'd probably enjoy it.

[fashion is danger]

A different take on the gay penis size study discussed during the show.

"Junk science" that could save lives - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com

"But contrary to all of these reports, the NIH did not pay researchers to measure gay men's penis size. The data for the study -- 'The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men' -- were 'collected as part of a larger survey of the sexual health of gay men,' says researcher Jeffrey Parsons, a psychology professor at Hunter College. That survey was funded by the college's Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training -- not the NIH. What's more, they didn't even measure men's penises: 'We simply asked men to self-report if they felt their penis was above average, average, or below average,' he tells me."

--

"Christian Grov, one of the researchers, and an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, says they found that men who reported having above-average size penises were more likely to have sexually transmitted infections that are 'passed via skin-to-skin contact,' like genital warts and herpes. But this increased risk was not a result of lesser condom use. The team speculates that 'these men were experiencing improper condom fit (not being able to roll the condom all the way down), condom breakage, or irritation (caused by wearing a condom that may be too tight),' says Grov.

This has crucial implications for disease prevention and research. 'At the moment, the male latex condom is the best barrier to prevent transmitting HIV and STIs," he explains. 'Our findings suggest that the 'one size fits all' approach to condom distribution may not meet the needs of men who fall outside the range of the 'typical' condom.'"

[Keith]

Does it make sense that that cost $900,000 to find out?

[DWarrior]

From this article: Thousands of tax dollars funded a study on penis size in the gay community | Mail Online

It has not been ascertained how much of the $900,000 grant went to he 2009 report, called The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men, but the coalition release stated that at least $9.4 million went to a ten-year study that included the penis-size research.

None of the stories I've found on this link to this "coalition release" or gave any more detail about either the 2009 NIS grant breakdown or the 10-year study.

I found the original paper: The Association between Penis Size and Sexual Health among Men Who Have Sex with Men

Method:
A cross-sectional, street-intercept method (Miller, Wilder, Stillman, & Becker, 1997) was adapted to survey 1,065 gay and bisexual men at a series of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) community events in New York City in the fall of 2006 through the Sex and Love Study, version 5.0.

So it basically sounds like they did a survey to get some random statistics on gays. Then a postdoc, Christian Grov, crunched some numbers to get a paper out of it, as I'm sure the other team members have done.

I glanced through the study to see anything of note, but I don't really care about GLBT issues, so it wasn't very interesting to me. I'm sure it won't be interesting to gays either, since research papers are not intended for the general public.

So based on this study and the reluctance of newspapers to release more detailed breakdowns of the grants, I have made two conclusions:
a.) there's good reason to believe this "penis study" was only a small fraction of the 2009 grant (one of many papers the postdoc has to publish to justify being there, for a whopping $40,000/yr salary)
b.) there's good reason to believe it was a very small part of the 10-year study, whatever that is.

Anyway, direct your hatemail to:

Christian Grov, PhD, MPH
David S. Bimbi, PhD
Jeffrey T. Parsons, PhD
To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Hunter College, CUNY, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY. 10065. Email: jeffrey.parsons (at) hunter.cuny.edu. 212-206-7919x226; 212-206-7994 (Fax)


The authors acknowledge the contributions of other members of the Sex and Love v5.0 Research Team: Michael R. Adams, Virginia Andersen, Anthony Bamonte, Jessica Colon, Armando Fuentes, Catherine Holder, James P. Kelleher, Brian C. Kelly, Juline Koken, Jose E. Nanin, Brooke E. Wells, Jaye Walker, and the DIVAS (Drag Initiative to Vanquish AIDS).

Why did I fucking write all this?

* Part of the 2010 Tax Break funded this post and the responses that follow.

As far as Hitler goes, I don't think I hate him. Even though he committed the atrocities only 60-70 years ago, it wasn't in my time and I'm too far removed from its effects to have an emotional association to him. I'm going to reserve "hate" for people who have a more local/immediate impact on my life. The Downfall parodies don't help, either.