Hail Selassie: The Old Testament-Style Emperor of AbyssiniaThere's a phrase from Auden's "Spain 1937" that I don't think I'll ever read the same way again: "Nipped off from Africa." The great poet of twentieth century political disillusionment was symbolizing continental shift ("soldered so crudely to inventive Europe" is what was done to the African fragment) but now we can associate another sort of nipping with the land of gazelles, Serengeti sunsets, and epidemic retroviruses:

A Ugandan paper reports that last year of 2,500 people circumcised at various clinics, half of them were male adults, compared to less than 400 in 2005.

And to think Haile Selassie's Solomonic iconography in Ethiopia used to be the be-all of Africa's love affair with Jewish custom...

The real question is: Will HIV-averse, bell-end dongs become selected for in the future without the need of circumcision? All the moyels in the room feel like humans after dolphins develop posable thumbs. "Oh shit," they say.