These dumb topics all converged toward the end of the last week into some sort of controversy. I ignored it as best I could, but thanks to the constant news cycle and multiple info streams, I filled in the gaps. As predicted, the entire issue was irrelevant, inconsequential and forgettable, and remains so.

There are a hundred noisy, low-quality sources vying for my attention each day. Each one attempts to turn up the volume enough to interrupt what I am doing and get me to click or swipe.

Alarmingly, even the Google mobile search bar includes a news feed edging in underneath it that cannot easily be turned off. A Google product forums user named Patches23 echoed my feelings very well when he or she wrote, asking how to turn it off:

“I don’t ever want to see any news when I say ‘OK Google’ or tap on the search widget. I don’t want to see what’s trending, I don’t want to see anything about a certain politician. If I have to look at this shit every time I want to search for something I will throw the phone away. You will never see me asking for one news story from Android search so there is no history. How do I get rid of this, is the only way to disable feed completely and lose everything else that goes with it?”

(https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/ilfVtoqLCGo;context-place=topicsearchin/websearch/category$3Aandroid)

Knowing the details of the Trump-Twitter-NFL controversy against my inclinations served as a reminder to me that I must take control of my information intake. There is very little value to me in passive news consumption. And there are costs.

Taking control is effortful. To do it I have turned to podcasts, Feedly and Amazon’s Send to Kindle Chrome extension. I use the BBC’s primary news site to see the important global stories. Sadly, I abandoned The Guardian once they committed to their all-Trump-all-the-time formula. Active use of Reddit is a big part of my effort too. Although configurable, Reddit is too easy to scroll through, so it remains risky.

Am I part of the trend of people moving toward news sources that simply reinforce their own opinions? I don’t think so. I think that kind of self-sorting is an effect of scrolling through a tailored news feed that has a long history of your viewing habits, such as Facebook’s. I think a deliberate and selective approach is much better than browsing the feed. I’d rather hunt stories like a shark than filter feed like a whale.

The temperature in Minneapolis/Saint Paul reached 90 F yesterday. This coincided with the autumnal equinox of 2017 for the northern hemisphere, which occurred at 3:02 pm.

Equivalency

This means day and night are of approximately equal duration. That’s something anyone can remark upon if they’ve been enjoying activities outside. It’s something you feel on an animal level. Wikipedia puts it more precisely and objectively:

An equinox is the moment in which the plane of Earth’s equator passes through the center of the Sun’s disk.

You can count on Wikipedia for the above-named strengths in its presentation of facts. However, its readability is reduced in this trade-off. I often visit the Simple English version of the article to get a less hair-splitting perspective on the subject at hand. (Then if it’s really interesting I go to la version française de l’article.)

This dynamic map also illustrates the matter well:

(https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html)

Cyclicality

A pairing of equal night and day occurs twice a year, in spring and fall.

Since it occurs at the same times of March and September each year, you can make an occasion of it and plan a camping trip, a bike ride, or just a short walk to a place with a good view. To make a special event out of a cyclical solar event is to have your finger on the pulse of an artery in your local appendage of the cosmos.

I took the warmth as an opportunity to swim in Snelling Lake for what might be the last time this year. This place is a hidden gem. It is a small lake in Fort Snelling State Park. Because the lake is small and shallow, it stays warm well into fall. For those with a 7:45 to 4:15 job like me, it means you can hop on your bike when you get home, ride down the bike trails in either Saint Paul or Minneapolis, and hop in the lake just as the sun sets.

Although this beach is very noisy in the summer due to its proximity to the airport, the thundering jet traffic overhead becomes sparse after Labor Day. The place is very peaceful. The sun is directly ahead of you as you walk into the water.

Yesterday a guy named Pedro was splashing his two female companions while they screamed, “Pedro, no! Pedro no! I don’t want to get wet! Aaaaah!” and so on.

Transition

The autumn equinox is not just a cycle and not just an equivalency to remark upon but also a transition, because it marks off the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Although many of its attributes are calculable eons in advance, each equinox, when it happens, has never happened before. The same goes for jumping into the water and feeling the lake weeds between your toes.

No one can predict the limitless branching possibilities for me as I transition, with effort, into a friendly, approachable person. In fact I spoke with a few bird and nature enthusiasts on this very bike ride. It was easy, and they provided more evidence for my working hypothesis that other people are good and beneficial and fun. I will find more nature people during the winter solstice roughly three months from now, when most of the landscapes at my northerly latitude will have transitioned into winter.

There are many solstice events to choose from. Between now and then Three Rivers Parks District will also host many hike and ski by the light of the full moon events with hot cocoa and luminaries.

Fall is a special time and a lot of people’s favorite season. I am determined to spend as much time outside in it as possible. And I promise to photograph and write about it here!

Included: some free stuff I found on the ground

I encountered a northern walkingstick. This insect is perfectly camouflaged as a small branch of living maple twigs.

It crawled across me on a beautiful Sunday afternoon as I sat at a park overlooking the Mississippi River. So far, September in Minnesota has had several sunny, warm days and the month has been very dry.

I am planning my next Hawk Ridge trip for later in the month. I will drive to Duluth to witness the peak of the hawk migration, when there is a possibility of seeing thousands of raptors pass overhead in this geographic/biological bottleneck on their way south.

It is a delight to talk with the nerds enthusiastically sharing their bird knowledge and honing their identification skills and exalting in the enjoyment of nature. It is great to see the banded birds up close and to see the less common ones such as northern goshawks and merlins.

I learned yesterday that my pre-teen nephew is undergoing an additional surgery to correct problems directly related to the circumcision he was subjected to as an infant.

As my sister explained, part of the skin of his penis is fused unevenly one side. In addition, he suffers from meatal stenosis, meaning his urethral opening is uncomfortably narrow.

The personal

Of course, this disclosure saddens me. The infant circumcision was unnecessary. My nephew was subjected to physical pain that no newborn deserves. Now, as a preteen, he must undergo more cutting, not just on one part of his penis but on two.

Teenagers are often wracked with body angst, especially surrounding their intimate parts. Having been cut and then re-cut, my nephew may be left with even more doubts than usual about whether his penis is normal and acceptable. And he will never know what it might have looked and felt like had it not been surgically altered without his consent.

He is also growing up in a society where circumcised boys are at last the minority. What kind of effect does that have on an individual? This is not to mention the global perspective: only 10% of the world’s non-Muslim males are circumcised.

My sister is a regret mom. Like so many others, she did not think much about circumcision. Now she is left to wonder about these avoidable harms.

The objective

“Though uncommon, complications of circumcision do represent a significant percentage of cases seen by pediatric urologists.”

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3253617/)

Meatal stenosis is exceedingly rare in intact boys:

“After circumcision, a child who is not toilet-trained persistently exposes the meatus to urine, which results in inflammation (ammoniac dermatitis) and mechanical trauma as the meatus rubs against a wet diaper. Loss of the delicate epithelial lining of the distal urethra may then result in fusion of the epithelial lining in the ventral meatus, leaving a narrow orifice at the tip of the glans. Because this condition is exceedingly rare in uncircumcised children, circumcision is believed to be the most important causative factor for meatal stenosis.”

(Emphasis is mine.)

(http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1016016-overview#a5)

What next?

I have nothing to offer but the following plea: because current US law allows forced circumcision of male minors by anyone, whatever their training or qualifications, for whatever reason, under whatever conditions, with whatever outrageous customs the family wants (including oral suction), it is up to individuals to take a stand.

Mothers should say no to forced circumcision. Fathers should say no. Insurers should say no. Nurses should say no. Doctors should say no.

The only person who should get a circumcision is an adult who consented after being fully informed, or an infant or minor (or incompetent adult) who has an internationally recognized disease or disorder that cannot be treated with less invasive means.