Illustration by Fernando Vicente This week, the Great and the Good of the AIDS industry gather in Vienna for the biennial AIDS circus. With delicious irony, the conference, held right next to the barracks of the UN’s Drug Warriors, will focus in part on getting more countries to do the one thing that really works [...]
I’ve been taken to task for posting TED talks from the UK’s new Fearless Leader, and neglecting to post my own. Here it is, if you have 18 minutes to spare. If you’ve only got four minutes, I would also thoroughly recommend spending it with comedian Julia Sweeney, as she has the “sex talk” with [...]
I was lucky enough to go to the TED conference in California last month. Many of the better talks are already on line. My own favourite was Sam Harris on the subject of science and morality. I may have liked it because it was squeezed in that stomach-churning moment between my breakfast with local cops [...]
The test-and-treat debate has been getting a bit hot and heavy of late. I think we all deserve some light relief. I offer this: Thanks to Txema, who is always ready to make a girl smile.
Yesterday, I sat at the TED conference in California and watched David Cameron pledge to make policies that support prostitutes. He didn’t say it in those words, exactly, but he did promise firmly to make policy that “goes with the grain of human nature”. That would be a massive change for the UK: Labour’s old [...]
Epidemiologists don’t often hit the headlines. While forensic scientists are celebrated in endless mini-series, the bug hunters merit just the occasional, mercifully long forgotten film (anyone remember Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak? I thought not). As a job, it’s just not very sexy, and most of us who plod away at it keep our wild sides [...]
The US voted for hope. It (we, I) voted for change. It (we, I) got a president who suggested sensible things like basing health policy on good science. The US even got some senators who followed through with funding for programmes that would teach young people that if you want to have sex and not [...]
Many Europeans think American beer is gnat’s piss. But the maker of the pissiest “Lite” version is turning our mind to another orifice. Anal sex, or the slang for it at any rate, appears to going mainstream in the US. Buy your lube stocks now. Thanks to IRMA, the bottom line in HIV prevention, for [...]
Further to yesterday’s post, stats-are-fun superstar Hans Rosling has calculated a coverage-per-death ratio for swine flu and TB. It clearly points to an under-reporting of the boring old pandemics that we’ve grown used to ignoring. But it also begs the question that plagues prevention efforts in health as well as in other areas — terrorism, [...]
In belated recognition of May Day, I give you these sensible words from sex workers in India, courtesy of my once-long-ago employers, Reuters. Funnily enough, one of the very first stories I ever wrote for Reuters was about sex workers in a time of economic meltdown. It was also the first to draw a response [...]
Look, Muffy, a new drug just for me! With thanks to Prof K, who I’m sure didn’t mean it personally…
There’s enough divorce in the world without forcing it on people who want to be together… “Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo. On the subject of America’s extaordinary relationship with homosexuality, I urge you to see Milk, an important film about an important era, which reminds us rather vividly that we have not [...]
Thanks to David
One of the joys of 2008 was the revival of swaffelen, an old English verb that describes swinging your wabber (another fine word; penis, to the uninitiated) in the open air and bumping it against something. Such as the Taj Mahal. The Dutch voted it word of the year. I thank Maarten Kok for bringing [...]
An experiment in technology. I happened to be chatting the othernight at the Frontline Club in Paddington. For those who are in London and don’t know it, check it out. A great hang-out for hacks, former hacks and those who just like telling stories, it also gives good restaurant. Graham Holliday, who writes the Frontline [...]
I wrote this post while in LA a fortnight ago, and found it lurking in my drafts just now. Belatedly, then, I feel compelled to celebrate my stay in Los Angeles by congratulating Judge Alex Kozinski for having a (somewhat sophomoric) sense of humour, incuding about sex. Kozinski is chief judge of the U.S. 9th [...]
They went down well with the breakfast crowd at Hay. Especially with the gay Bishop.
It’s been a busy day on the airwaves. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I managed to hit BBC World TV’s HardTalk interview and be on BBC Radio 4′s Start the Week, both in one day. On HardTalk, Stephen Sackur spent a lot of time quizzing me about my mafia connections. Comments have ranged [...]
The Wisdom of Whores is born tomorrow. This ad more or less sums up how I am feeling this evening. Thanks to the beyond cool Nicholas Gourlay for finding this for me.
