Apparently, I’m not the only gay man trapped in a straight woman’s body.

Thanks to RH for the tip.

Tom Scott has produced a series of handy-dandy stickers to put on newspaper articles. Here are a couple of my favourites, but you can see the whole set here, and even print out your own set.

What I’d like Tom to get on to next is a set of stickers to help me quickly find the crap research in peer reviewed journals. He could start with “Warning: This paper was reviewed by someone who has applied for a job with the first author” and “Warning: Reprints of this article ordered by Big Pharma will account for 18 percent of the journal’s income this month”.

Thanks to CB for bringing Tom to my attention.

Thanks to Seif, who has yet to take me shoe shopping…

The other night, I was dining with someone who didn’t know their acronym from their elbow. I had to explain MSM (mice that have sex with mice; no, wait…) and had a special rant about LGBT. For the unitiated that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. It just trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? And it is just about as elegant conceptually as it is linguistically. Those groups don’t actually want to hang out together very often (except, perhaps, where they’re bidding for HIV funding). It’s a bit like forming a trade association for Doctors, Actors, Farmers and Tailors — DAFT.

Inspired by Indonesian petrol stations, which sell “Elpiji” (LPG, liquified petroleum gas), I’ve started writing this most annoying acronym as “Eljibiti”. But The Onion has done it better, in this hilarious spoof report on Gay Pride. LAGALABATATA — the Los Angeles Gay And Lesbian And Bisexual And Transvestite And Transgender Alliance. Like so much else in The Onion, it is so funny because it is so close to the truth.

Thanks to Roger for the smile.

And from my best side:

Thanks to dkj for driving me to them.

So we’ll have more pregnant teenagers, more ill-equppied child-mothers, more kids being poorly raised by resentful single parents whose own opportunities in life were cut short for lack of a pill or a condom. None of which leads to great health outcomes for either mother or child. Is it any wonder that the world’s wealthiest country trails the likes of Cypress, Morrocco and the Dominican Republic in health care?

If this depresses you, this gem from Paul Hipp might cheer you up.

Thanks to Txema and Kim Thomas.

For a larger version, visit Jorge Cham at PhD comics. It’s worth it. Especially if you are killing time not finishing your thesis (Sara…)

This comic came to me by way of Laura (thanks) and Language Log, where the true nerds among you can go for an illuminating discussion of the difference between ρ and p. Really.

So I was especially delighted when Dag Brück sent me this wonderful piece of Word Art. Dag put “The Wisdom of Whores” into Wordle, and here’s the result:

Wisdom World Art: Click for larger version

I love the random “headline”: happy health risk. Better yet, within the giant ARV component, creep the two little words: big caveat. It took me 8,000 sciency words to say this in a paper I sunmitted last week. Art does it in three.

Thanks to David