Seasonal silliness from my family. I’d like to claim to be the stylish one on the ski-bob, that odd bike thing with skis where the wheels should be, but I’m afraid that accolade goes to my father. He’s on the bike in the final video clip (I precede him on the sled). But for the fact that he dropped his cigar in the snow, you’d never know he was 75…

Happy Christmas to everyone kind enough to read this blog, whatever your religion, thoughts about gift-giving, tolerance for sappy music etc. Extra thanks to people who’ve taken the time to post responses (including and perhaps especially critical responses) , or to write to me with comments and suggestions.

Though I don’t have a musical bone in my body, I’ve been thinking recently about how to code statistical data about people into melodies. Now I find that there’s a whole industry out there of people who are turning DNA into music. If you know anything about your own DNA, you can plug your genes into a programme a play yourself. So maybe I do have music in my bones after all.

One of the people who has been working on this is a young composer in the States, Alexandra Pajak. She’s been busy setting the HIV genome to music. Here’s what she says about her project, courtesy of Bertalan Meskó at ScienceRoll

Sounds of HIV is a musical translation of the genetic code of HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Every segment of the virus is assigned music pitches that correspond to the segment’s scientific properties. In this way, the sounds reflect the true nature of the virus. When listening from beginning to end, the listener hears the entire genome of HIV.

In English, the nucleotides Adenine, Cytosine, Uracil/Thymine, and Guanine are abbreviated with the letters A, C, T, and G. Since A, C, and G are also musical pitches in the Western melodic scale, these pitches were assigned to the matching nucleotides. To form two perfect fifths (C-G and D-A), “D” was arbitrarily assigned to musically represent Uracil. I assigned the pitches of the A minor scale to the amino acids based on their level of attraction to water.

Question: would HIV sound different in a setting like Bali, which uses the seven-tone pelog scale?

Illustration by Wendy Stephenson

But this one, from a fount of indignation calling Himself “Derrail”, deserves its own post. The grammar alone will make you laugh. And the unwitting insights:

YOUR A FUNGUS AN EPIDEMIC AND OUTBREAKING SHOW OFF

Mental illness is an odd thing, isn’t it? By turns worrying: (YOUR A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHY WOMEN SHOULD NEVER BE FREE TO ROAM AND SPEAK OUT IN THE PUBLIC ARENA) and amusing (YOUR FATHER FOR WHATEVER REASON REFUSED TO CHERISH YOU OR ELSE YOUR A MARX’S).

The toxic whole, sent in response to a post about sex worker legislation in Illinois, is after the jump. Prizes for the best response.

If you’d like to copy your response to Derrail, he gives his email address as UG_FC@YAHOO.COM

HELLO, I JUST CAUGHT WIND OF THIS YOU WROTE. I KNOW THE LAW IN ILLINOIS IS A FIRST STEP IN CRACKING DOWN WHOREDOM. IN THE LAW OF GOD IT IS FORBIDDEN FOR FATHERS TO WHORE OUT THEIR DAUGHTERS SAYING THE WHOLE WORLD BE GIVEN OVER TO IT WHOREDOM. AND INDEED YOU PRETTY MUCH MANIFESTED THAT POINT YOU AND YOUR SISTERS. THE UNDERLINE ISSUE IS GOD IS AGAINST YOU SUBHUMAN BEINGS. THEREFORE THE WRATH OF GOD IS BEING REVEALED FROM HEAVEN. YOU DO MAKE A VERY GOOD POINT. WHICH IS THE MORE A MAN OR WOMAN LISTENS TO YOU YOUR WORDS BEGIN WINDING THEM DOWN. AS THE WINDS FROM YOUR TONGUE UNLEASH VOLCANO AFTER VOLCANO.

YOUR A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHY WOMEN SHOULD NEVER BE FREE TO ROAM AND SPEAK OUT IN THE PUBLIC ARENA. YOU PLAY ON SYMPATHY WHICH IS YOUR ERROR. INSTEAD OF JUST DYING! IF YOU DIDN’T COMMIT FORNICATION NONE OF THIS WOULD ENSUE YOU. THEREFORE THE LAW IS AGAINST US ALL SAYING IF YOU DO SO YOU’LL SURELY DIE.

YOUR FATHER FOR WHATEVER REASON REFUSED TO CHERISH YOU OR ELSE YOUR A MARX’S OR EVEN AN ORPHANE. BUT HOE’S ARE PECULIAR THERE AIN’T NO LIMIT TO WHAT YOU’LL DO FOR MONEY. YOUR GREEDY AND YOU JUSTIFY YOUR ACTIONS ON THE DEPENDENCY OF FOOD.

BUT IF YOU ALL SUBMITTED TO GOD THEN THE PULPIT WOULD INDEED REVEAL UNTO YOU ALL PREPARATION “FASTING”. SO STOP HIDING BEHIND CURTAINS OF DECEIT. AND OWN UP TO THE TRUTH YOU DESPISE THE RULE OF OUR FATHER WHO IS GOD.

HERE IS YOUR VERDICT YOUR ALL ABOUNDING TO SHOWCASE THE EVIDENCE OF GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY, YOUR ALL INCLUDING YOU NEED NOT WORRY ABOUT EATING. FOR THESE THREE TRESPASSES YOUR ALL ABOUT TO DIE. YOU SOLICIT YOURSELVES, YOU ENHANCE THY WORTHLESSNESS,AND YOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS. THESE THREE EQUAL DEATH WATCH AND SEE SAITH JEHOVAH’S WITNESS DEATH I TELL!

IF INDEED YOUR WORTH WAS IN HARMONY WITH MY PRECEPTS I WOULD INDEED ENTREAT YOU TO DINE IN WITH ME. BUT I DID NOT SAY FOR YOU NOR DID I AT ALL APPOINT YOU JUDGES. YOUR A VAGRAINT LYING HYPOCRITE AND YOU KNOW IT. THEREFORE SAITH JEHOVAH I SHALL DO UNTO YOU AS YOU IMAGINED TO DO UNTO ALL MY INHABITANTS WITH THY TRIFLING SELF. YOU TRULY DO DISGUST ME AND I CAN’T STAND YOUR NASTY SELF SAITH THE LORD. NOTHING IS WORST THAN A SMELLY ONION SHOWBOATING.

YOUR A FUNGUS AN EPIDEMIC AND OUTBREAKING SHOW OFF. WHO HEARS VOICES ALL THROUGHOUT THE DAY AND INTO THE LATE NITE. SAYING HE’S GONNA COME AND GET YOU. REMINDING YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN OF ALL YOUR FORMER SINS AGAINST ME. SAYING GOD WILL FORGIVE ME GOD WILL UNDERSTAND. BUT YOU’VE MISTAKENLY MISUSED YOUR LAST HOPES OF GETTING INTO MY FAMILY SAITH JEHOVAH. I DON’T WANT YOU EVER SAITH JEHOVAH. I HAVE WATCHED YOU HURT ME AGAIN AND AGAIN. SAYING IF YOU FORGIVE ME I PROMISE TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN BUT YOU DIDN’T DID YOU EVEN LAST NIGHT. EXPECTING AND UNDRESSING FOR MANY OTHER NEW LOVERS I’M FINISHED WITH YOU SAITH JEHOVAH F I N I S H E D WATCH AND SEE ME DO THIS I AM THE LORD

The British press will doubtless be awash with obituaries of this remarkable woman. The Times was one of the first, and The Telegraph, which also wrote a profile of her which caused her endless amusement, was quick off the mark, too. The Times is good on her steely determination; the Telegraph better at conveying her sense of humour. Neither focus on the more boring, old-fashioned values that she embodied: an extraordinary sense of duty, an unparalleled talent for discretion. She was actually cross about being “outed” as a spy, though simultaneously pleased that she got to tell some of her extraordinary stories to a wider and often incredulous audience. Though she broke laws regularly in order to save lives and, arguably, civilisations, she had no time at all for flouting of everyday rules and conventions. When she was principal of Somerville College, she made me pay £180 in library fines for a single 2/6 paperperback that I had borrowed, lost, and not fessed up to. Tut tut. Then she allowed me to say what books the money should be spent on.

Above all, Lady Park was fiercely loyal. It was this last that made her such an inspiration to me — she found time always to be interested in the twists and turns of a much younger friend’s life, she was properly sympathetic about real setbacks but correctly pull-your-socks-up about self-indulgeance. She gave practical advice (laced with good single malt Scotch), and made us want to step up to the mark. The mark, with Daphne, was always set high. Some of us have taken our time, but all aim to be worthy of her faith in us in the end.

I’m not given to personal posts, let alone sentimental ones. But while I’m pulling my socks up, I hope some of you will discover Daphne.

The Guardian on Saturday ran a review of The Wisdom of Whores, which is newly out in paperback in the UK. In it, Nicholas Lezard suggests I sound like a fun person to go for a drink with. By conincidence, I spent the weekend with someone who was at university with Nick. He was, aparently, nicknamed The Mole by those who had a grudging admiration for his almost entirely nocturnal existance.

That may rather explain both why he enjoyed the book and why he thinks I might be up for a drink. For a book that pretends to be about epidemiology and public health policy, an awful lot of the activity in The Wisdom of Whores takes place with a beer after midnight.

The Association’s real site is, at a glance, not fantastically more informative than the squatters. We have “men-with-bad-haircuts-in-front-of-red-banner-at-conference”, which film directors will recognise as the statutory Chinese Location Identifier shot (example from my own archives of bum-numbing boredom below). We have a dandelion, an oak tree and a happy Western couple. None of it really relevant to the gay party scene that is currently driving the epidemic in Beijing. I ran a search on the site for the word “gay” (同性恋) to see if I was missing something, but no.

UNAIDS’s cyberslip-up was brought to my attention by Aimee Barnes, who also has an interesting post on China’s (in my reading of the data unsubstantiated) obssession with migrant labour as a driver of the HIV epidemic in China. What Aimee did not point out was the deliciously apposite tagline at the top of the bjaidsass.com site: Look for the ridiculous in everything!

” I did not ask my students to give a definition of pornography. I asked them to give examples of what they considered pornographic. … Some examples my students gave: Playboy magazine (which is so puritan here that more skin can be seen in the Indonesian version of Cosmopolitan), prostitution and striptease (there are already laws concerning these), pornographic movies, photos and literature, adultery (in the sense of pre and extramarital sex), kissing in public, Inul’s form of dangdut and miniskirts. From these, we cannot deduce a clear definition. Many students gave examples concerning male desire for the opposite sex and the consequences of this desire, like rape, for example.”

Read the rest here.

If you don’t know what Inul’s form of dangdut is, you’re in for a treat. (It’s so compellingly trashy that I’m not allowed to embed the viedo.)

Thanks to gleefully rediscovered jeff Ballinger for the pointer.