Doing it safely

Lowering the Age for HIV Prevention - The Atlantic

I don't think I've ever posted about the issue of the use of Truvada, a drug that is quite successful as a "pre-exposure prophylaxis" for HIV.

This article gives a good background to it, while noting in particular the very depressing figures about how much HIV is still spreading amongst Americans, especially young black Americans:

 The number of new HIV infections in the United States has stabilized at around 50,000 per year, according to the CDC, but new infections continue to increase among gay and bisexual men. The trend is particularly acute among black men, and even more so among those between the ages of 13 and 19. New infections among young gay and bisexual black men increased by almost 50 percent between 2006 and 2009, a rate the CDC has called “alarming.”  An estimated 6 percent of black gay and bisexual men in the United States under the age of 30 are HIV-positive, according to data from a longitudinal study conducted by the HIV Prevention Trials Network.

It then goes on to talk about the question of whether it is a good idea to actually start letting under 18 year olds use it.   (Even though the issue of its use amongst adults is still controversial, including within the gay community, where some complain about being stigmatised by other gays if they let it be known they are on it. There was a very lengthy article about this in Slate a couple of months ago.  I think I have read that the Australian authorities are trialling it with a view to its possible use here too.)

I find this issue very confusing.

On the one hand, I think:   what the hell?  You really want to take a powerful (not to mention expensive - $1500 a month, apparently)  medicine continually so as to be able to sleep around instead of doing the following:   do not have casual unprotected sex.  If you want to have regular sex with someone, do it with someone who will have a HIV test, commit to you, or if you have any doubt at all about your or their commitment to monogamy, continue using condoms until you split.  That's pretty much how most straight people live vis a vis sex without condoms. Is serial monogamy such a difficult concept for the gay community?  

On the other hand, as I have posted many times over the years, I just can't understand how straight men over the centuries continually risked having sex with prostitutes and getting the incurable, horrible, deadly disease of syphilis.   If their example is any guide, it seems to indicate you just can't really trust men to be sensible about safe sex at all.  But then again, reliable and cheap condoms were not around for most of that time, so I suppose I should factor the difficulty of having safe sex into the equation.  

And if syphilis was still incurable, would I oppose men who insist on using prostitutes using a drug to prevent them getting the disease, or feel that they were also kinda pathetic for not being able to let reason put some control on their libido?

Or is there an argument that straight people have become more cautious about sex?  Given that (I think) a well regulated sex industry has pretty much stopped prostitution spreading disease, there's at least partial grounds for such an argument.  (I mean, I assume men just accept that a visit to a brothel means they have to use a condom, don't they?)   On the other hand, the rates of chlamydia amongst the young in Australia is truly startling, and a sign that straight young people really are careless about safe sex.  But is their carelessness more excusable if it's a disease that is pretty readily cured if it is caught?  And should I feel differently about a 16 year old girl who wants to be sexually active getting a hormonal injection so as to be able to do it with low risk of pregnancy, compared to a horny 17 gay dude (potentially) taking an antiviral to be able to have unsafe sex without condoms?  I don't think either of them are of an age that they should be regularly having sex, but the question of drawing lines here as to how "practical" we are to be is arguably pretty fine...

I do not know the answers.  It's hard to not get the feeling, though, that in the space of 60 odd years, Western society has swung from being too hypocritical and judgemental about sex to (in some respects) not being judgemental enough.    Certainly, any science fiction of the 20th century that assumed that sex would be completely safe, plentiful and without consequences in some sort of utopian, libertine future have proved very naive. 

Mini Rudd

Down periscope: Abbott torpedoes himself | The Australian

I'm sure Niki Savva's column this morning is being re-tweeted all over the place.   The amazing thing about it is how it really confirms the picture of Abbott as a mini-Rudd:  believing his own publicity; a lack of insight into his own problems; and an office run so as to insulate him from the internal party criticisms.

Perhaps the Parliamentary PM's office needs an exorcism before the next PM takes control... 

And another thing about this Abbott government

Since Parliament resumed, it is spectacularly clear that Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker is damaging the  Abbott government - there simply has been no more biased and witless Speaker who cannot control Parliament than her.  Sycophantic with the unpopular Pyne, their double act is routinely cringeworthy; she deserves no respect and gets little. 

She is a major contribution to the dire public image of an incompetent government.

Raymond is against it

NRC geoengineering report: Climate hacking is dangerous and barking mad.

Wow.  One of the most prominent climate scientists around,  Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, has come out swinging hard against even trying geoengineering. 

I think he is probably right - at least on the dubious prospects for ever deploying it in a permanent and useful way.  As to whether all forms should never be the subject of trial work - not so sure about that.  

If you ask me...

*  The Abbott and Hockey interviews over the last 2 nights of 7.30 have both shown nothing has changed, and they are both incompetent sloganeers with no substance and need to be replaced.

*  The submarine issue is a running sore and a matter of potential great embarrassment to this government.   Even the Japan Times is reporting that some officials there  seemed to think they had a deal (sealed by a handshake?) which Abbott is now backing away from.   Would be amazing to think if Abbott was making deals on the quiet like this - would put the Rudd NBN plan on a napkin to shame (given that the NBN at least involved work for lots of Australians.)

*  Oh look.  The LDP had its conference on the weekend, and it looks like every voter who actually intentionally voted for David Leyonhjelm was in attendance:

Listen up, stupid: you're being conned by idiots

What an exercise in the disingenuous nature of the climate change "skeptics" and lukewarmists.  

For the umpteenth time, Graham Lloyd at The Australian runs a story promoting the "science" of lone, home based bloggers as parsed by wildly discredited and unreliable denier columnists like Booker and Delingpole.

Within the body of the story will be the response by actual scientists, denying there is anything to it, so that Lloyd can (presumably) hide behind a cloak of "balance".   (Entirely false balance, of course.)

I see that  Judith Curry has a guest post  (on the entire question of homogenisation) by those who worked on the BEST re-working of the temperature record, which, using different methods, entirely confirmed that the homogenisation and adjustments make very, very little difference to the big picture as worked out by the pre-existing groups.

And - Judith Curry makes no comment in support of the post.  She will make a vaguely "I wonder if this is right, it might be important" for any speculative papers about cycles and what not, but for a straightforward one in support of the science, she won't.   How pathetic.

Richard Tol then makes an appearance in the comments to the effect "oh, that's right, homogenisation is needed, but maybe the question is whether it is done right.   In any event, the more important thing is why people believe Brooker instead of scientists.  And it's because of alarmists, you ought to attack them!!"

Yes - as with Curry, he will not call out those who are actively and gleefully distorting (some of) the public's view of the science of climate change, because they actually help with his own pet view that nothing major need be done and everyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.   Pathetic.

The best response to this whole spate of climate denialist rubbish about temperature adjustments is from Stephen Mosher (from BEST) at the ATTP blog.  (It is much better in a general sense than the Curry post he contributed to.)    He makes it clear the frustration that he is  finding with "skeptics" who spent years demanding adjustments, and are now spending years criticising adjustments and refusing to believe them.  (And also ignoring that on a global scale, using the raw figures makes not much difference anyway.)

Sometimes, people just to be told:   if you believe Booker, Delingpole and Monckton, you are simply too stupid to know you are being conned by idiots.

All your national security problems solved!

I've had a brilliant idea:  instead of mandatory data retention, the government could just offer a free,  Samsung TV to all Muslim families who migrate here as a special "welcome to Australia" gift.  (And any single Muslim male gets one as a coming of age gift at 18.)

Why I'm not a consultant to some politician or other I'll never know....

Foreign view

Asia Unbound  - Tony Abbott Has To Go

Found this harsh but fair assessment on Abbott via the Lowy Institute  Interpreter blog. 

Can you imagine it?

Kevin '17 and the race to be the next UN Secretary-General

Some think Rudd is positioning himself to be a candidate for UN Secretary-General.  

Come on - the institution has enough trouble maintaining credibility without inflicting that upon it.

Joe Hockey takedown

Why the government is a brake on the economy

Peter Martin provides a detailed list of the obviously wrong claims Joe Hockey has made, and in some cases, repeated (despite their error being widely reported.)

It's clear that Hockey is a complete dud of a Treasurer, and really the job just seems beyond him.   He, with Abbott, is another living, breathing example of the Peter Principle.  (I suppose if there is one thing the government can be credited with, it's for reminding us that that rule of management theory is valid.)

 His hopes to be PM one day have completely evaporated.  That's life...

Snugglebunnies served raw fish

My annual guilty pleasure of reality TV - My Kitchen Rules - has started again, but my daughter has started to resent my running deconstruction of how its made.

One aspect which I am really starting to tire of is the "oh my God, how should we serve/cook our first home cooked meal - the one we've had about 8 weeks to rehearse?" line.

Last night, featuring the high school snugglebunny couple (well, they are "high school sweethearts", living in sin as us oldies like to say, from Adelaide) was a particularly annoying example.  They debated for about 10 minutes about their bream - whether to leave the tail on or not, what to do about the head, and at what point exactly to cut off the tail.  The final decision rendered it into something looking disturbingly like a Thalidomide fish - but seriously, such debates over the first meal served cannot possibly be serious, can they?  Surely all of them have rehearsed their dishes several times before this night.   How could they possibly be genuinely debating how to serve the sauce?

Last night's fish ended up being served half raw - they were fretting about not over cooking it, when it was basically being steamed in paper - a technique which I thought made serious overcooking actually quite difficult.

Their score was therefore very low, and I presume they will be leaving tonight.  I trust their relationship will survive...

I was trying to put my finger on why young Lloyd was annoying me, and then I realised - he both sounds and looks like a young version of Richard E Grant in the short cooking comedy series Posh Nosh:

Posh Nosh is worth catching up on Youtube, if you've missed it...

Jones reviewed

Alan Jones on Q

Here's quite a funny review of Alan Jones' appearance on Q&A last night.  I liked these bits in particular (about the Liberal guest's difficult position):

The Liberal MP Jamie Briggs didn't fare as well, exhibiting the familiar terror seen in conservative politicians when Jones is in headmaster mode and thinks they should pull their socks up. When Tony Jones pushed Briggs to sign on to some of Alan's economic prescriptions, the MP had the look of a man who wished he was somewhere more relaxing, like a burning house.

"Say yes, Jamie," Alan exhorted him. Later he advised Briggs: "This is really hard-nosed stuff, Jamie!"

All one could think was: Poor Jamie. All avenues of escape blocked by a scary Jones to the left of him and a scary Jones to the right, Briggs settled on a one-liner. "We're always told we have to agree with Alan," said the Assistant Minister for Letting the Cat Out Of
The Bag. Poor Jamie. He'll be hearing that one on a loop for the rest of his days.

And Jones' incredible gall in his big statement is noted:

This advice followed an admonition to the nation to get behind Tony Abbott. "I think it's incumbent on us all to support the Prime Minister", no matter who they were, he declared.

I started watching it last night, but a reclining position and two glasses of wine meant that I slept through most of it...

Shark alert

I see that a man has apparently been killed by a shark at Ballina.   Wasn't it just yesterday that a man was bitten by one at Byron Bay?   I'm not sure how many have been attacked in Western Australian this summer, but it seems a few.

Is it just me, or do Australian sharks seem to have become hungrier lately? 

Fantastic result...

....for Bill Shorten, the Labor Party, and those of us who couldn't decide what would be more fun - being able to say that Abbott survived as PM for a shorter period than Rudd or Gillard, or watching him struggle in the job for another few months knowing that (in reality, if you reassign votes from cabinet members who didn't vote honestly) about half of his party think he's a dill who needs to go...

Update:  one of the most wryly amusing tweets I've seen on this, just a short time ago:



Update2:  I see that the climate change denying commentators all lined up against Turnbull - Bolt, Blair, Jones, Devine.  Oddly enough, Piers Ackermann says it was probably a mistake not to make Turnbull Treasurer from the start. 

Even funnier is the commentary coming from some at Catallaxy that this win means Abbott must head stronger right and immediately make savage cuts to the ABC.   What a fantasyland they live in, blaming the ABC for the person who will almost certainly go down as the country's dumbest Prime Minister.

Update 3:  Apparently, Tony Abbott's statement direct to camera from his office (already labelled the "broadcast from the bunker")  ends with an very weird looking bit of eye movement from our beloved leader.

Can't wait to see...

Tony's Sunday

Annabel Crabb has some more details.

In ancient temple news

A Zite story led me to look a bit more at the ancient Turkish temple site Göbekli Tepe, which has impressive stone structures, apparently used for some form of worship, dating back 11,000 years.

I think I had briefly heard about it before, but the site certainly contains more stunning work that I had realised.  Have a look at these photos from Smithsonian magazine:





And a couple of photos from elsewhere:

Not entirely sure what he's meant to be doing here, but it could be that male past times haven't changed much in 11,000 years.  Perhaps he's just taking a break from playing his three note pan flute?






And here is the site overall:

Impressive work all done with stone tools, apparently, and way, way before the pyramids. Wikipedia has more.

In futuristic weaponry news

Have a look at this video with lots of cool shots of the US Navy's rail gun weapon, which is well on its way to ship board testing.  (Apart from awesome slow motion projectile shots, watch for the wide-eyed, somewhat "mad scientist" look of excitement from a Navy officer.)

Wachowski fail

'Jupiter Ascending' Falls Flat - The Atlantic

Christopher Orr can be pretty acerbic in his reviews, and he doesn't care for this latest attempt at science fiction by the Wachowski siblings. 

20 year late review

Amongst the DVDs I kept out of my late mother's vast collection was Rob Roy, the Liam Neeson movie from 1995 (I'm getting old).  Being vaguely aware that some critics thought it quite good, and a friend actually mentioning last year that he liked it, I gave it a go last night.

It is, in my opinion, a terrible movie.

Right from the start, it makes it clear that it is of the "earthy historical film" genre:  the type where dirtiness and bodily functions feature prominently (and men go around bluntly talking about their sexual predilections in all sorts of odd ways that apparently men used to do 3 centuries ago).   But it feels overdone and fake in this movie - as indeed is the acting.

Apart from Neeson, whose character is meant to be noble and honourable and is therefore somewhat restrained, most of the rest of the cast seem at various points to be chewing up the scenery as if they are from the Bette Davis School of Exaggerated Acting.   Tim Roth got awards for his role?  Must have been a slow year.  And as for Neeson himself - because the script has him delivering many lines in which he is telling others how they should be fine and noble and do what's right, they tend to be delivered in a style that immediately put me in mind of his Aslan voicework in the Narnia movies.  Not his fault, that, but overall I still thought his acting was a bit stilted and unconvincing.  

I just found it an unpleasant story too, with the stabbings and deaths  done in over the top fashion, with the immediate gush of blood in the mouth, blades erupting from chests, and things like that.

In terms of historical accuracy - it seems to score no higher than Braveheart on the "conning modern audiences that they are seeing something more or less accurate" scale.   (The main problem being that the main villain is completely invented.)     I also see that one of the key plot points in the movie - the rape of his wife - is based on a story circulating at the time the accuracy of which there is very good reason to doubt.

Even the climax, which quite a few critics seem to describe as one of the best swordfights ever shown on screen - I was completely underwhelmed.  Is it just that I had also decided I didn't the film after about the first half hour, and was resenting that I was hanging in there to see if it got any better?   I don't think so - I just can't see why the fight was meant to be impressive.

I see that Ebert thought it was a terrific movie, which confirms my earlier opinion of him that his reaction to movies was nothing I could consistently rely on.

So count that as a big disappointment.   And Neeson was better as a lion. 

Photoshop fun

For monty, really....