This is going to seem like a strange little amassment of stories, but they all seemed blogworthy and I don’t want to wait until I’m less busy to mention them.

• (By way of the Drudge Report) So it turns out that circumcision may help prevent AIDS? Okay, I’m not a man, nor have I ever represented one on television, so I don’t know a whole lot about circumcision. But hasn’t there kind of been a push on for years to say that circumcision is a useless procedure at best and a traumatic and unhealthy one at worst? Well, I’ll leave others to argue that point. I just thought this was interesting.
• (Referenced by Greg, as are the rest of these) London gets the 2012 Olympics! This was a mini-drama I got involved in while I was Over There. London had signs up everywhere adjuring Londoners to “Back the Bid.” (It’s worth pitching it to the natives, Greg explained, because the Olympic committee takes local support or non-support into account. Ohhh.) And then when we went to Paris, they were staging a big deal event on the Champs Elysees to promote their bid for the Olympics. Sacre bleu! I’m probably prejudiced, but I’m glad London got it. It’s really a fabulous city, and I think it deserves a little bit of the world’s spotlight as just that. But um, London people … get yourself more trash cans. And public toilets. With paper towels, not blow-y things. Thank you. [Later follow-up note: After the bombings on 7/7, I heard that the reason London cut back on the trashcans and public bathrooms because it was too easy to leave bombs in both. Oh, heh heh. Sorry about that.]
• And speaking of the 2012 Olympics, New York Daily News sports reporter Flip Bondy tosses out a thought on why New York City didn’t win the bid that I bet will get much more popular in the next couple days:
  

  The bid’s downfall could be more complicated, involving an international slap at George W. Bush’s unilateral attitude toward the world.

  Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. Oh brother.

• A couple in China is battling for custody of their online game accounts. No, really. Read it here Now, there is something a little scary about serious Asians are about game-playing of any sort (hence the proliferation of Asian-style games in Vegas), but I’m not sure this couple isn’t an extraordinary example of an ordinary problem. These games are more interesting, more active, more engrossing and make people feel better than anything they do for real. So the question isn’t, “Don’t they know it’s just a game?”, but “Why would they care?”
• Garry Trudeau, being a jerk about bloggers. Still, you can’t blame him, right? We bloggers are crazy people who think we might be entitled to our own opinion, whereas Trudeau is pretty certain we’re only entitled to his. Jerk. (< -- Just my opinion, of course.)
• And I almost forgot this one. Just in case you were unclear on why it is that PETA should win the 2005 Self-Righteous Hypocrites’ Award — they kill animals.