Sarah Palin had breast implants, she's divorcing Todd, she bought a place in the Hamptons, and Trig is not her own child.

Things that are equally untrue, per Sarah Palin.

"Nooo, I have not had implants," said Palin. "I think a report like that is about as real and truthful that Todd and I are divorcing or that I bought a place in the Hamptons or that Trig is not my own child.

"And we still put up with that garbage, too."

Speculation was rampant after photos of the former Alaskan governor at the Belmont Stakes showed her looking a little more buxom than usual.

"'Boobgate' is all over the Internet, because there are a lot of bored, idle bloggers and reporters with nothing else to talk about," Palin said in the interview.

Come on, Sarah, don't put down bloggers generally. And don't put down talking about breasts generally. I reject the idea that breasts belong at the bottom of the list of things to talk about. Breasts are important. They mean something. Let's not minimize their significance in our culture. They are the subject of many journals, books, and movies. I have taken my knocks for talking about the meaning of breasts in politics (though, of course, the knockers were my political opponents, motivated to squelch what was a criticism of Bill Clinton, whose attraction to Lewinskis was well-known ). So I will talk about breasts, and it's not at all for lack of better raw material. Breasts are big! Let's talk about them!

Now, speaking of breasts and bloggers, what amuses me — aside from the endless obsession with Sarah Palin, specifically, and with the physical aspects of female politicians, generally — is the low level of knowledge of breasts on the part of the Boobgate bloggers. They didn't seem to realize that different bras and different kinds of shirts and jackets affect the way breasts look. A woman can draw attention to her breasts or downplay them. In professional settings and for political appearances, women tend to wear jackets. Even when jackets are fitted through the midsection, they flatten and disguise the curve of the chest. That's the point: to blunt the point.

By contrast, the contour of the breasts is accentuated by a knit top — especially if it's thin, clingy, and light-colored, like the one Sarah Palin wore to the Belmont Stakes. And when a woman wears such a shirt, it's particularly easy to perceive the existence of nipples. Everyone knows they are in there, but reasonably modest women — like Sarah Palin — try to avoid the nipple protrusion of the sort you can see in this photo of that woman who's suing her ex-employer for objecting to the way she dressed for work. The way to do that — and I laugh at people who write about breasts but don't know this! — is to wear a bra with a reasonably thick layer of foam padding.

I feel sorry for the bloggers who know so little about breasts that when they saw that Palin photograph, their first explanation was surgery. Before you think scalpel, think Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is most likely. Palin was wearing a t-shirt and a t-shirt bra. Now, go, get a life, and some real experience of your own in this fleshly world, you blogger losers.

ADDED: Thanks to Crack Emcee (in the comments) for pointing out my typo:  "a reasonably think layer of foam padding." Corrected.

"Cut deeper, pull harder."

Heard by a woman having her eye surgically removed.

Although normally a patient does not remember anything about surgery that involves general anesthesia, about one or two people in every 1,000 may wake up during general anesthesia, according to the Mayo Clinic. Most of these cases involve the person being aware of the surrounding environment, but some experience severe pain and go on to have psychological problems.

If not remembering is part of the process, do we really know how many people experience awareness during surgery? If you've ever had general anesthesia, are you sure this didn't happen to you? If you somehow, now, could find out that it had happened, but you still could not remember it, it wouldn't bother you as much as it should, would it?

"Chaz couldn't be happier."

"This is an important step in his transition and will allow him to change a variety of his identity documents to show who he truly is."

Marc Ambinder would like you to conceptualize obesity as social inequity.

"Think of a kid. A working class kid. Maybe he's black or Hispanic, or pale while."

Pale while... what? Pale while being white, I presume.

"She or he is standing inside a very dark room, so you can't seem [sic] her or him. Then she walks out the door. Suddenly, cymbals start to crash and the child becomes afraid and experiences stress; an unending inner monologue begins urging the kid to 'eat, eat, eat'; think of arrows sending pulses to the child's brain insisting that they consume more and more; think of a table of food in front of the kid, who has a few bucks to spend and can only buy the cheapest stuff; this new room is also a 360-degree high definition media experience, with television commercials tempting the kid by linking toys to the food on the table; think about the parents... where are the parents? They're at work; both of them; two incomes are needed to maintain a standard of living. Think of self-hatred and self-reinforcing stigma. The kid lives 24/7 outside the dark room, and grows up. Unless his or her genetic code has a lucky guanine where others have an adenine, there's a good chance — soon to be a better than even chance — that the kid will be fat or obese by the time he or she is in the second decade of life."

Ambinder is making an argument. It's an argument about the unfairness of obesity, an argument designed to justify new government policies and spending. Ambinder is disconnecting obesity from individual responsibility and tying it to race and disparities in wealth. After the quoted material above, he declares that "the social inequity is apparent." But where did that quoted material come from? His fervid brain? Ambinder is not being scientific. He's operating in a literary mode. Who is this kid, this he or she, in this abstract place in the world, this "very dark room"? He or she is an empty vessel, defenselessly filling up with information that pours in — from where? Ambinder is fumbling with the tools of the literary author. But he's no Charles Dickens. His literary character isn't a David Copperfield, but a nonentity, scarcely recognizable as human. Yet Ambinder calls upon us to identify or empathize with him. Or her. The methods and explanations of science and good journalism are needed, but Ambinder doesn't bother.

Meanwhile, the solution he found for his own obesity was bariatric surgery. Abdominal surgery fits snugly with the idea of obesity as the result of social and economic forces playing upon helpless humans (though Ambinder himself was not economically deprived in life). In calling us to make obesity the government's business, Ambinder says "It will involve some money, but not all that much." But do you feel confident that the government will not force insurance companies to cover bariatric surgery and spread the cost to all of us? Somehow I don't. I see big emotional manipulation pushing the democratic majority to take responsibility for every overeater in America and beneficently fund the scarily invasive procedure.

Ironically, after the drastic surgery, you only lose weight because you eat less. All it does is disable you from eating more by removing your stomach. It's based on the idea that you can't be expected to eat less on will and choice alone. You can't handle freedom. You need to be physically incapacitated. And, sadly, there are many people who need medical procedures that are in no way substitutes for things they could do for themselves. When health care is rationed — and it will be rationed — something will need to be withheld. Do you think it is possible that some people will be asked to go without heart surgery or hip replacement surgery while others get their stomachs removed so they can't eat so much? I certainly do, and I think writing — flabby writing — like Ambinder's is mushing up minds so that's what the democratic majority will clamor for.

Once airline security uses its machines to see us all naked...

...the terrorists will have compensated by having their bombs surgically implanted.

"[M]ale bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants. Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal. A shaped charge of 8oz of PETN can penetrate five inches of armour and would easily blow a large hole in an airliner. Security sources said the explosives would be detonated by the bomber using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through their skin into the explosives sachet."

So all we passengers need to do is keep an eye out for other passengers aiming hypodermic needles at their big breasts (or asses), and everything will be just fine. Unless you care that the authorities saw you naked. Better get used to it! This is war.

Do you think the National Health Service in the UK is denying people the treatments they want?

Think again.

"If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd pay for the operation straight away. But we don't have the money. People can have their own beliefs on whether they think this is a good use of NHS money but I just want what will make my child happy."

This is the case of a 16-year-old boy who "began researching sex change operations last year" after the kids at school "taunted him for being gay and... he was excluded from school after getting into fights."

"The psychologist said she was satisfied that Bradley knew his own mind and was eligible for a sex change and immediately put him on a waiting list for an operation."

What an insane way to solve problems! I suppose it's easier for the government to pay £10,000 for an operation than to deal with the harassment of a gay kid at school. The poor mother is eager to "make my child happy," but why would surgery be the first choice or even any kind of choice if the truth is that the child is gay and surrounded by people who don't know how to behave with any sort of decency? 

Notice how this is a problem with the government running everything — not only the school, but also the medical treatments. When it's all a matter of economics, look at how evil it can get. It's easier to lop off body parts that to persuade groups of young people to treat each other kindly. There is one victim, and there are many harassers, so go after the victim, but call him "patient," and keep up the pretense of a caring, all-embracing government-parent... who only wants to make us children happy.

"The stomach is just a swelling in the gut - it's primarily a vessel."

"You can manage very well with no stomach and the sisters will live perfectly normal lives."

2 sisters have their stomachs removed as a precaution against a rare form of cancer that runs in their family. The stomach, I'm surprised to read, is not essential, and the young women will still be able to eat. They must eat tiny amounts, but they can still consume and digest. They've just lost the holding tank for food.

Surgery.

I'm getting surgery tomorrow. Nothing serious. It's completely confined to my right toe. It's as far as possible from my head, where — it seems to me — I mainly reside. Surgery anywhere near the head is dire. Even a yanking out a tooth is a great intrusion. But a toe.... How concerned can you be about a toe? But a toe can hurt quite a lot. I know that. For the pain, I've had steroid shots right down into the joint, and now, instead of more of that, some grinding down of bone is planned. I won't be pirouetting for a while.

"Please stop spreading disinformation! We do not chop off people’s tonsils and feet. Or, rather, we don’t chop off only tonsils and feet."

"Or, rather, we don’t chop off only tonsils and feet. We chop off lots of other stuff, too."

What if your adorable family dog is an incurable biter?

If the only other choice is euthanasia, would you have the dog's teeth surgically altered? Like this:

[Dr. David Nielsen, a veterinary dentist]cuts away 4 millimeters of tooth using a CO2 laser. He acid-etches the live pulp within, fashions a bell-shaped cavity that he packs with two kinds of human-grade composite, and light-cures the top for a smooth, flat finish. He also blunts the extra set of pointy incisors....

For all the technology, Nielsen says the most profound effect of canine disarming is psychological. "You can see it in their eyes almost the moment they wake up from the anesthesia," he says. "It's like they're wondering, 'who took away my knives?' " An epiphany that humbles and subdues them for all time....

[After the surgery, Cotton] seems to be in denial. When he gets the opportunity, he still pounces at any man who ventures onto our property. A few days after the disarming, our gardener Guadalupe Davila obligingly offered his booted foot for Cotton's delectation. After 30 seconds of ferocious gnawing, Cotton had only succeeded in lightly scoring the thick leather.

The next day, when Cotton bolted out the door to discover handyman Julio Miranda building a new handrail, he grabbed a mouthful of cedar post. After some unbridled gnawing, he only lightly scored the soft wood.

Hmmm.

I'm going to have to use a household drill to make a hole in your boy's skull.

Said the country doctor, who'd never attempted such an operation before but was following the directions of the neurosurgeon on the telephone.

Blood clots liberated, the boy was saved.

"I just want to say that, when somebody has a disfigurement, or don't look as pretty as you do..."

"... don't judge them, because you never know what happened to them."

Connie Culp, whose husband shot her face off, speaking after a face transplant.

"You never know what might happen to you and you might get into a car wreck and think you are beautiful one day ....and don't look the same as you did, you never know, one day it might be taken away."

Human lungs, breathing.

For the assessment of transplantability.

Via Metafilter.

IN THE COMMENTS: kynefski said:

Is this with or without fir trees?

Transgender bathroom rights in New England.

The Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes bill.

It is one thing for a person born as a man who has been surgically altered to become a woman to be allowed to use the women's bathroom. It is something else entirely to allow a man who has had nothing altered, but simply claims he "identifies" as a woman, to use the women's bathroom.

That is a recipe for embarrassment, fear and even confrontation — the kind of things most legislators would probably say they want to prevent. The New Hampshire House of Representatives, which passed a similar law recently, may find it has been hasty....

[T[he various definitions of transgender are so amorphous and broad. According to one, it is "a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies that diverge from the normative role (man or woman) commonly, but not always, assigned at birth, as well as the role traditionally held by society."...

In short, it can mean virtually anything that doesn't fit so-called "normative" gender roles....

Organs the surgeon removed from a 7-year-old girl's body: stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver and large and small intestines.

Surgeon Tomoaki Kato redefines "inoperable."

"Thank you for giving me back Heather... Everyone said, 'She'll end up dying on the table.' He was our last hope..."....

The surgery resembled a multiple-organ transplant, Kato said, except that the young patient served as her own donor and did not need anti-rejection drugs. Her organs were removed and chilled in a preservative at 4 degrees above zero. Those that the cancer hadn't destroyed were replaced in her body.

Kato's biggest fear was that her liver might fail. He asked her father, a volunteer firefighter, to serve as a live donor, if need be. Fortunately, the organ survived, and the call never came.

(Via Jac.)

Justice David Souter describes the Supreme Court term as "sort of annual intellectual lobotomy."

That slipped out along with some lofty comments about how people need to read more and how he's forced to do his serious reading in the summers between Court terms.

That makes some people, like Tony Mauro, the author of the linked article, wonder about rumors that he may be leaving the Court:

If he thinks of his work on the Court, even sarcastically, as a nine-month-long, brain-evacuating experience, it is easier to see why he would want to leave it behind -- if nothing else, to catch up on his reading.

Others I'm sure would put that more harshly: If you don't appreciate the great work of the Supreme Court, get the hell out.

Me, I would speculate that he's fine with the Supreme Court work and he was just being funny — and effusive about the value of serious literature.

ADDED: On reflection, I think the problem he's talking about is something I experience as a law professor. I love the work, but it requires me to devote most of my reading time to judicial opinions and lawprof articles and books. This kind of reading is useful raw material for doing what one loves to do, but it isn't enriching on a deep enough level.

My main problem with Souter is that he is one of the judges who writes the long tedious opinions that I have to chew my way through. May I suggest that if he wants more of a challenge during the Court's term that he devote himself to writing better sentences? Just on the Strunk and White level, could you please edit the hell out of those damned things?

If you don't like what reading that stuff does to your brain, why do you do what you do to my brain? If the Term for you is a lobotomy, consider that you are also the lobotomist!

"Having his testicles removed, he said, was like draining the gasoline from a car hard-wired to crash."

"A large, dough-faced man, he is sterile and has forsaken marriage, romantic relationships and sex, he said. His life revolves around a Catholic charity, where he is a gardener."

Castration for rapists. Offered in to some criminals in the Czech Republic and condemned by the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee as "invasive, irreversible and mutilating."

The emotional man.

Did Rose Get More Than Her Eyes Done?

Former 'Charmed' actress Rose McGowan recently said that she had to have plastic surgery after a piece of glass cut the bottom of her eye open in a car accident. She said that is the only reason why she had plastic surgery. But it looks like Rose has had a lot more done.

She doesn't look as good as she used to.

Source: DListed

Britney Visits Liposuction Clinic

Britney Spears has visited a liposuction clinic as she prepares to make her music comeback.
According to DigitalSpy, the troubled popstar was spotted at the Advanced Lipo Dissolve centre in Las Vegas, which claims to help patients to permanently remove fat with a series of injections.

Britney is also taking strict dance training in LA. It is believed that she hopes to lose extra weight which remained after she gave birth to sons Sean Preston and Jayden James.