Weblogs: An American obsession

(via Pesky Apostrophe) "Last night I finally got my box of books in the mail from Amazon and immediately started reading A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis [by David M. Friedman]. I?m learning all sorts of interesting things. For instance, I didn?t know that the Bible was so full of references to making an oath by putting the hand on the penis. Bible translators exchanged the word 'thigh' for 'penis'...as in, Jacob?s children sprang from his thigh. And, something I hadn?t considered, 'testify' comes from the Latin testes. So when you testify under oath, you?re paying homage to the ancient practice of men taking an oath by placing their hand on a penis, most of the time not their own. And that?s kind of funny when you think about [it]. Who are most homophobes? Most of the ones I know are conservative religious types who constantly go around trying to prove their manliness and saying stuff like 'my word is my bond' and bullshit like that. And the idea of another man touching their penis is so stressful and yucky to them...yet it was common practice for quite some time, even in the Bible which informs their lives.