Perhaps you’ve read about the new vaccine against cervical cancer? Apparently, it’s “virtually 100% effective” against the most common strains of human papilloma virus that cause the disease. Would you not expect the arrival of a vaccine against a deadly cancer to be heralded with joy and triumph from everyone?

Ah, surely you’ve underestimated the Christian right. You see, some people are apparently afraid that immunizing prepubescent girls against cervical cancer might send “a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage.”

Alas for the rougly 10,000 women a year who may develop the disease, HPV is sexually-transmitted, which means the guardians of moral purity in America have decided that its prevention is dangerous.

“Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teenagers that, ‘We expect you to be sexually active,’” said Reginald Finger, a doctor trained in public health who served as a medical analyst for Focus on the Family before being appointed to the ACIP in 2003, in a telephone interview.

“There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe,” said Finger, emphasizing that he does not endorse that position and is withholding judgment until the issue comes before the vaccine policy panel for a formal recommendation.

Let’s, for the moment, leave aside how realistic it is that vaccinating a 12 year old girl against cervical cancer really would encourage her to run out and have sex (since I’m pretty sure cervical cancer is near the bottom of the list of fears young people have about sex, somewhere below pregnancy, AIDS, herpes, and “am I doing it right?”).

Let’s also set aside the ridiculous idea that vaccination and abstinence are somehow mutually exclusive, as if vaccination somehow causes pre-marital sex:

“I’ve talked to some who have said, ‘This is going to sabotage our abstinence message,’ ” said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations…. “Parents should have the choice. There are those who would say, ‘We can provide a better, healthier alternative than the vaccine, and that is to teach abstinence,’ ” Rudd said.

For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that the tendentious proposition put forth by Dr. Finger (his actual name!) is true, and that providing a vaccination to young women somehow increases the likelihood that they’ll run out of the doctor’s office into the back seat of some guy’s car. To decide whether or not you favor vaccination, then, you must make a moral calculation about the risks involved in either providing or withholding the vaccine. On the one hand, there’s the possibility that a young woman might get vaccinated, have sex, and not get cancer. On the other hand, there’s the possibility that a young woman might not get vaccinated, still have sex (since no one’s claiming that withholding the vaccine guarantees abstinence), and, possibly, get cancer and die.

It seems to me that opposing mandatory vaccination is reducible to claiming that is worse for a woman to have sex and not get cancer than it is for that woman to have sex and get cancer.

What kind of twisted, punitive, misogynistic logic would lead someone to insist that cancer (cancer!) be a consequence of behavior they find objectionable? (Here’s a hint: it’s the same logic that insists that pregnancy be a consequence of such behavior.) Abortion, contraception, and now cervical cancer: what a world.

Update: Unsurprisingly, I’m not alone in my dismay. Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias weigh in.

NASA has developed a robotic “skin” that allows the robot to sense the presence of a human and move away from it. The idea is that robots so equipped will be able to safely work with humans on, say, a mission to Mars.

So far, no objection. Seems like cool technology.

The choice to demonstrate this technology by having a ballerina dance around the robot? Well, ok, it seems gimmicky, but I can kind of see what they might have been getting at. Quoth the designer, Vladimir Lumelsky:

“The astronaut must be able to turn his back to the robot and expect it to act adequately, like a dance partner. Our system does this; no other such systems exist.”

Yeah. Well, ok, whatever, seems a little odd, but I can let that go. You’re an odd duck, Lumelsky.

What I can’t dismiss so quickly is the decision to demonstrate the system by having a ballerina dance around a robot shaped like a giant penis. The thing even gets … well, erect and then flaccid as her hands flow around its… well, its shaft, pretty much.

There is no excuse to subjecting this woman to the indignity of fondling a giant robotic penis, and there is no excuse for foisting a video of the event on the general public.

Prepare to be disturbed.

As the leaves begin to turn, and the temperatures start to fall, a young man’s thoughts turn to stew. Is there anything more comforting and warming than a good hearty stew? Quite possibly the best meal my mom made for us as kids (or at least the one I looked forward to most) was her beef stew; mine has never quite come close. On the other hand, I make a pretty mean lamb stew.

Somewhere between home and the store to buy the lamb stew ingredients, however, I got an idea. It’s weird, but sometimes I get a craving not for a particular ingredient, but for a cooking method. Ever since the Harvest Postluck and Ken’s braised beef I wanted to fire up my own dutch oven, so I figured I could make some kind of a hybrid: braised lamb shanks with stewed vegetables. Or something.

Check out the ingredients, in proud array:

I ended up using 2 medium onions, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, 2 medium sweet potatoes, a handful (maybe 6-8?) new potatoes, 2 carrots, a red and a green bell pepper (plus some other little random bell peppers from our CSA), 3 green onions, and a bunch of flat leaf parslet.

For seasoning, a tablespoon of curry powder, a tablespoon of dried oregano, and a half-teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

Once diced and chopped, it looked like this:

Oh, yeah. Lamb. Gonna need some lamb. I got 4 lamb shanks …

… and seared them (in two batches) in my big ol’ dutch oven with just a tablespoon or so of oil.

While the lamb enjoyed a well-deserved rest, I heated another couple tablespoons of olive oil in the dutch oven, and added the curry powder and oregano. The spices get a chance to bloom a bit in the hot oil, and it makes the kitchen smell darned good. Once the spices opened up, I added the onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and stirred things around until everything was heated through and the onions started to take on a little color.

Then it was time for the braise. Two 20-oz cans of diced tomatoes went into the pot, and as it heated up, I nestled the lamb snugly in the liquid.

I turned the heat up to a fairly aggressive simmer and let the longer-cooking ingredients get a 5 or 10 minute head start. Then I stirred in the peppers, turned the heat down to a low simmer, covered the pot, and let it ride for at least an hour.

Things smelled good. They smelled very good. When it was finally time to eat, I evacuated all (ok, most) of the solids: the lamb to one bowl and the veggies to another.

I added the sliced scallions to the remaining liquid, and cranked up the heat to thicken and reduce the sauce. This liquid, folks, let me tell you, is pure concentrated delicious-ness.

Anyway, I served it with some simply prepared couscous. Just a lamb shank on each plate with a generous spoonful of the vegetables, and then a healthy dose of the reduced sauce over top of it.

I thought this was a pretty delicious meal. It was pretty damn hearty, if you know what I mean. I probably wouldn’t want to eat it on a nice summer day, but when it’s raining and cold, it’ll hit the spot.

(Oh, and here’s the best part: after we ate, I pulled the meat off of the other two bones, chopped it up a bit, and tossed the meat and all of the veggies back into the pot: voila! Lamb stew leftovers.)

Our friends Janie and Ken invited us over for a “Harvest Potluck” dinner, and since it was getting autumn-y outside, I started thinking about squash and about soup. I’m not a huge fan of squash as a general category of foodstuffs, probably because I never really had it that often as a kid. I do, however, like Alton Brown’s butternut squash soup, but I decided (just to shake things up, because I’m a rebel, you see) to make it with pumpkin, and to make a few other changes.

It’s a pretty simple recipe, and it starts out with roasting the pumpkin. It’s much easier to get pumpkin out of the skin when it’s cooked, and it’s a chance to add flavor. So, here it is, quartered, brushed with melted butter, and sprinkled with a little salt, pepper, and brown sugar.

When it comes out of the oven, I chunked it up, and simmered it in the chicken broth with the ground ginger and, instead of honey, maple syrup. Wasn’t that clever? Maple seems like a more seasonally-appropriate flavor somehow. Anyway, once everything looked nice and soft, I buzzed it with my fancy stick blender. That thing is awesome.

Once it was smooth, I stirred in some heavy cream, and grated over some nutmeg. (At this point, I’d like to add a quick aside: I know that my cousins, the Rosenbergs, visit this site from time to time. Hi, cousins! I just want to let you know that, contrary to what you’ve seen posted here so far, not everything I cook is trayf. One of these days I’ll post something that won’t horrify you guys. I suppose you could make this with vegetable broth. There you go. Let’s just all agree that I made this with vegetable broth.)

Because I like to be all fancy-like, I decided to serve the pumpkin soup in … wait for it … a pumpkin. I know, I just blew your mind.

So, I’m not sure exactly where I got this idea. I think I must have seen another recipe on the web somewhere which is where I got the maple idea in the first place, but: maple cream. Think about it, is that not the most delicious thing you can think of? Instead of serving the soup with sour cream or some such thing, maple cream takes it further in the sweet direction, which is, honestly, what I associate with pumpkin. So, I just whipped a half-pint of heavy cream with a drizzle of maple syrup. (And isn’t this a cool picture?)

Sprinkle a little crystallized ginger over it, and voila. It’s a harvest potluck dinner. (Ken, by the way, made a braised beef dish that was succulent, and Janie made a scrumptious potato lasagne. So, so good.)

As usual, all these beautiful pictures were taken by Rachel.

I admit it, it all started with me being snippy. I was in the upstairs bathroom brushing my teeth, and getting annoyed at the state of cleanliness in the tooth-brushing area. I’m kind of neurotic about the level of sterility I require around my dental implements, and there was just way too much hair on the sink and on the cabinet where the Sonicare lives.

I shouted something passive-aggressive to R— about how “we” need to get better about wiping up after “we” brush “our” hair, and could she please bring me up a roll of paper towels from the basement?

Because my wife is a saint, she did get up to get a roll of paper towels instead of a sharp knife. A few seconds later, I heard her shout, “Fuck!” R— doesn’t use strong language like that often, so I pelted down the stairs, through the kitchen, over at least one cat, and through the basement door. I found her standing on the bottom step of the basement stairs and overlooking a shallow but wide lake where once there was concrete floor.

I think we both just stared in shock — “It was dry last night!” — for a minute or two before (gingerly) leaping into action. We rescued the leaves for the dining room table (a very nice wedding gift), four wooden kitchen chairs, my guitar and recording equipment, the cat litter box, and the vacuum cleaner and then surveyed the damage. Two rugs were total losses as was a ludicrously large pile of empty cardboard boxes. A few other boxes were damp, but their contents were undamaged. Everything else was in plastic bins or on shelves, which just goes to show that my manic affection for shelving and storage paraphernalia is not without benefit.

We called everyone in the Yellow Pages under “flood” and got pretty much the same answer from each. “Hello? Yes, our basement is flooded.”

“Yeeeah. No kidding.” (Apparently we were not alone.)

It had been the day’s plan to drive up to New Hampshire to visit with R—’s mother, and we dithered for a while about whether or not to go. It seemed somehow irresponsible to leave our house while the basement was flooded, but at the same time, what were we going to do about it? Was it going to get any worse? Could we do anything about it if it did? We decided that staring intently at the water level wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so, into the car we went. We’d been driving for about fifteen minutes when we got a call on R—’s cell phone from her step-father, inquiring about the state of our water heater and, more specifically, of its pilot light. The phrase “house filling with gas” was bandied about. I’m pretty sure I overheard him say something about “exploding.” We turned around, turned off the water heater (”Wait, do you know how to light the pilot again?” “Um… let’s go with ‘yes’?”) and set out again.

By the time we returned home that night, the rain had stopped and the streets were eerily dry. I took a peek at the basement (still wet) and spent the next morning running from Home Depot to Home Depot, trying to find a wet/dry vacuum or a pump. (Sample exchange with the Home Depot guy at the tool rental counter: “Do you have a wet/dry shop vac available?” “Ha! No.”) We did purchase a fancy dehumidifier and a shiny new bucket. I admit I was expecting something more dramatic from the dehumidifier. I plugged it in, pushed the “on” button, and listened with satisfaction to its powerful hum. I went upstairs, ate some leftover Thai food, and came back downstairs to find maybe a quarter cup of water in the bucket. I’m not sure what I was hoping would happen, but I think something Moses-like, with the parting of the waters, would have impressed me more.

Sunday afternoon was spent lugging disgustingly wet bits of rug and cardboard out to the curb, opening every available window, and turning on a fan. And now? Now we pretty much just wait for it to dry.

The whole experience was essentially an initial burst of horror followed by a mounting sense of relief. Yes, the basement was flooded, but it was only a few inches. People elsewhere in the state were dealing with feet of water, sometimes up onto the first floor. Nothing that we cared about was damaged. The cleanup took only an hour and a half, and we expect it to dry out in a week. And, oh, yeah, I think things were a little worse down New Orleans-way.

There’s really been far too much water in the news in the past year, and while watching footage from the Katrina/Rita cleanup effort I’d been saying that I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to deal with the mess. Well, now I can begin to imagine. Our completely minor flooding problem was a pain in the ass, and it was kind of gross, and it took a fair amount of effort to deal with what was ruined, and yet we’re just talking about cardboard. Cardboard! We weren’t dragging out ruined clothes, furniture, and photographs. We don’t have to worry about where we’ll sleep. Our house is livable. It isn’t even all that musty.

We already knew how lucky we were, but the reminder didn’t hurt.