Charles on… anything that comes along

OK. This one is really quite delicate. Look at the advert on the right of this Google search (for “devotee Gogarth” - since you ask, I was trying to find out what climbing grade a route called Devotee is and on which of Gogarth’s cliffs it is).

If you can’t be bothered, the ad is for “amputee world” with videoclips and other stuff. (Boy, I’m really going to get some weird Googlejuice on this one.)

The reason this jogged my brain was that I’ve recently been reading a book called Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets The American Dream by Peter Kramer, who is a sort of philosopher of society.

Anyway, in the book he describes how we have so many more medical procedures that can make us look or feel different. Then he explains that there is a group of people who want, really want, to have a limb or limbs amputated; that they don’t feel right in their body with two legs and two arms. (And there’s another group that gets off on those people, or people who are accidental amputees, which is the corner of our sexuality that that ad points to.)

In fact, a British surgeon did once agree to one of these peoples’ requests, because he said that the person was completely rational, but just wanted a different body layout. So he amputated, at their explicit request, a leg.

Shocked? Bet you are. I was. But then you start thinking about it. Here’s a question to which I don’t have an answer: what’s the difference between one of those would-be less-limbed people and a would-be male-to-female transsexual? (There’s an amputation involved, after all..) And given that the latter group has become accepted(ish) in our society over time, does that mean the former will too? And is that a good, bad or indifferent thing?

I’m already beginning to wish I’d just known the route’s grade. I think it’s HVS.

(PS: if you’re going to comment, please - I’m not making a judgement, just asking the question.)

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Ah-ha. We have a letter from AOL UK saying that the majority of its broadband customers do more than a gig per month. To be published tomorrow (in the letters page), space permitting.

I think I’ll take that as a confirmation of my previous calculations. I’ll put more text up when there’s something to link to. Or just copy it.

This isn’t to diss Metronet, just to point out how these 1GB caps are a subtle bait-and-switch, where you the customer do the switching for them,

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• Dialup is a pain (5 July 2006; score: 50.21%)
• Underpromise and overdeliver: thanks, Freedom2Surf (8 July 2006; score: 44.23%)
• The slow train to BT Broadband (16 July 2004; score: 43.48%)