This week ends on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, my time has been limited this week. It appears I am not alone in having a lot going on this week. There are fewer intactivist posts to report.

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, December 18, 2011

End Routine Infant Circumcision: Friend Speaks to Best Friend Against Circumcision
A mother whose son is intact informs her friend, who has a circumcised son, of the benefits of leaving a baby boy whole, just as he was born. Circumcision is unnecessary. And circumcision is harmful both during the surgery and afterwards when the baby sits with a wound in a dirty diaper.

Dr. Momma Peaceful Parenting: Urine Samples and Catheter Insertion for Intact Boys
Far too often, intact baby boys have their foreskins forcibly retracted. An infant's foreskin is fused to his glans. The average age where the foreskin becomes naturally retractable is around 10 years. But many falsely believe that the foreskin has to be forcibly retracted for cleaning. Leave it alone! But sometimes it is necessary for a clean urine sample to be taken from an intact baby boy.
 

Monday, December 19, 2011

The WHOLE Network: Jewish Intactivists Write on Circumcision
A collection of quotes from prominent Jewish intactivists. They collectively provide much information on male infant circumcision and how, as a ritual, it is time to find a replacement.
  Read more . . .

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In addition to Restoring Tally.com, I also run the RestoringForeskin.org website. RestoringForeskin.org offers foreskin restoration information to everyone and it has a private on-line community for restorers. The private side has restoring blogs, foreskin restoration progress pictures uploaded by our members, a chat room, and a forum.

Restoring Foreskin.org is growing by several hundred members a month. We have over 1,000 visitors to the site every day. Drupal is the content management software that makes the site work. As popular as the site has become, we have outgrown the shared web server we had been using.

For the past several weeks I have been setting up a virtual private server (VPS), which is a virtual machine (VM) dedicated to being a web server. A VPS is like a bare-bones computer that has to setup. It is powerful, but requires knowledge and work to install and configure everything. In contrast, a shared web server is like oatmeal. All you have to do is add the website. It will work, maybe not well and maybe not fast, but it works.

Late Saturday night (early Sunday morning) I finished my testing of the VPS. I was satisfied everything worked well enough to move the site. It was after 2am and only a few were on the site. They were all in the chat room, so I announced that I was going to move the site. The chat room would still work because it is hosted on another server.

It took me less than an hour to move the site to the new VPS. As part of the move, I had to change the DNS information for the restoringforeskin.org domain name. The new web server has a private name server and I had to change the DNS to refer to the new name server.

When you go to a website on the Internet, the address or domain is sent. The ISP (Internet service provider) that provides internet service also has a DNS name server that looks up the IP address from the domain address. The IP address is needed to travel the Internet. If the ISP cannot find the address (because of change like we made), you are at the mercy of the ISP. The ISP can pass the request on to another name server, return an error page, or put up a spammy parking page in the hopes they can make some money if anyone is fool enough to click on one of the links. Read more . . .

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Foreskin-Restoration / Intactivism Network: How Male Circumcision Harms Women
A forum post reprinting Ronald Goldman's story about How Male Circumcision Harms Women. Marilyn Milos was converted to intactivism after witnessing an infant circumcision in nursing school. She saw firsthand the pain suffered by the baby boy as the most sensitive part of his body was cut up. Male infant circumcision affects the bond between the baby boy and his mother. Male circumcision also affects the sex life of the boy who grows up to be a man, even though many men refuse to admit that there is anything wrong with having less than the whole penis they were born with.

The Guerrilla Intactivist: Printable Fliers - fixed!
Intactivist information card suitable to post wherever people can see it. Intactivist K lists many places and ways for posting the information card. Lots of good ideas on how to get the word out that male infant circumcision is unnecessary and harmful.
 

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Guardian: Infant male circumcision is genital mutilation
"Men should have the right to choose circumcision, not have the choice forced upon them. Infant circumcision without consent or immediate medical justification is an unjustified violation of basic human rights, that shares more in common with ancient coming-of-age rituals than responsible medical practice."

Awesatious: The evolution of activism
A mother blogs about her evolution as an intactivist. A year ago she thought that all it would take to convince others was to present accurate information on the harms of infant circumcision. She has since learned that many are firmly entrenched believing the various myths of circumcision.

Intact America Blog: The Problem with a Religious Exemption to an Anti-Circumcision Ban
Georganne Chapin discusses the many reasons why there should not be any exemption to a ban on genital cutting of children. She argues that the rights of the person with the genitalia supersedes everyone else's rights. After all, it is the child's body, not anyone else's. Read more . . .