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Headline of the day: Chickens "unlock allergy secrets". As ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghost_of_a_flea said, damned clever chickens.
Other news: a third of gay men who know they have HIV still continue to have unprotected sex. At least they quoted the THT pointing out that if you don't give the queer kids any appropriate sex education in school, what do you expect? But I'd like to see the stats for straight folk. (As we know, the world is divided into straight and gay people and that's it.) Last I checked, condom usage was far higher amongst MSM (men who have sex with men) than it was amongst opposite-sex couples. I have no idea what the relative stats are for how many people don't know they're infected with HIV, percentage using condoms after diagnosis, but I'd be interested to see them. I certainly get the impression that STI testing is more accepted in the gay male community, as opposed to the "all we have to worry about is pregnancy" mindset which is still worryingly common (and usually coupled with poor contraceptive knowledge too).
To cheer us all up, and I'm not even going to mention Zimbabwe as depressing news goes, more unutterably cute cross-species fostering. You see that tiger cub? That's serious scrimbling she's doing there.
ghost_of_a_flea and I have started watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which is by the West Wing folks and shows it in some odd ways. As well as borrowing several of the cast, crew and the font for the credits at the end, the last episode was basically "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" done in the studios of a comedy sketch show. Anyway, one episode featured Sting singing, "Come again, sweet love doth now invite" with a couple of lutes. The show evidently thought this was a sweet, romantic, even slushy love song, and had various shots of a not-quite-couple gazing into each other's eyes. Someone should have told them that this is one of the filthiest early modern songs I know. I can never sing the whole thing without breaking down in giggles. For those of you who aren't well up on innuendo c. 1600, "die" was slang for "orgasm", but even if you don't know this, there are the lines about "more hot than are thy shafts", "the springs that makes my joys to grow" and so forth. Really, it's not a subtle song. Bless it.
Now that we have the internet back, we've been catching up on Doctor Who. Episode 7, "The Unicorn and the Wasp", was a fairly light-hearted episode set in an Agatha Christie-type situation and starring the writer herself and a dreadfully unscary giant wasp. When Christie is doing the usual thing of going round the room revealing everyone's secrets, one chap jumps guiltily out of his wheelchair and admits that he can walk fine, he just pretended to be disabled in order to keep his wife's love. Now this is pretty fucked-up. For starters, trust me, disability is not a good way to attract someone - and the few people who are actively attracted by disability are usually weirdos. Disability makes it harder to attract a partner and sustain a relationship, not easier. For seconds, this feeds into the whole "they're just putting it on to get attention, there's nothing really wrong with them" myth which helps feed so much of the prejudice against people with disabilities. For thirds, who the hell thought all of this adds up to a good joke?
Then we get to "Forest of the Dead", the second in the best-written pair of episodes Doctor Who has aired for some time, which I am now about to whinge about nonetheless. The first, "Silence in the Library", must be making Audrey Niffenegger weep for its wholesale plundering of The Time Traveller's Wife, and we're still arguing about whether Kingston is likely to guest star in any future episodes (we reckon not). The second reminded me of Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven and Dick's "Frozen Journey", both of which point up how hellish this sort of ever-changing reality is, and if anyone would care to discuss these I'd be thrilled as I found the differences fascinating. Anyway, Donna ends up in a weird virtual reality where she speedily is hooked up with and marries her Ideal Man. In her own words, he is ideal because he is "drop-dead gorgeous and can't say a word." When she first meets him, she remarks on his severe stammer in the kind of rude way that had me cringing. His stammer makes him a non-entity. He has difficulty communicating, so he has practically no personality. This is downright alarming. Do they really mean to say that Donna wants a man who can't talk, and that a speech impediment is not only hilariously funny but negates the other human aspects of a person?
ghost_of_a_flea said, damned clever chickens.Other news: a third of gay men who know they have HIV still continue to have unprotected sex. At least they quoted the THT pointing out that if you don't give the queer kids any appropriate sex education in school, what do you expect? But I'd like to see the stats for straight folk. (As we know, the world is divided into straight and gay people and that's it.) Last I checked, condom usage was far higher amongst MSM (men who have sex with men) than it was amongst opposite-sex couples. I have no idea what the relative stats are for how many people don't know they're infected with HIV, percentage using condoms after diagnosis, but I'd be interested to see them. I certainly get the impression that STI testing is more accepted in the gay male community, as opposed to the "all we have to worry about is pregnancy" mindset which is still worryingly common (and usually coupled with poor contraceptive knowledge too).
To cheer us all up, and I'm not even going to mention Zimbabwe as depressing news goes, more unutterably cute cross-species fostering. You see that tiger cub? That's serious scrimbling she's doing there.
ghost_of_a_flea and I have started watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which is by the West Wing folks and shows it in some odd ways. As well as borrowing several of the cast, crew and the font for the credits at the end, the last episode was basically "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" done in the studios of a comedy sketch show. Anyway, one episode featured Sting singing, "Come again, sweet love doth now invite" with a couple of lutes. The show evidently thought this was a sweet, romantic, even slushy love song, and had various shots of a not-quite-couple gazing into each other's eyes. Someone should have told them that this is one of the filthiest early modern songs I know. I can never sing the whole thing without breaking down in giggles. For those of you who aren't well up on innuendo c. 1600, "die" was slang for "orgasm", but even if you don't know this, there are the lines about "more hot than are thy shafts", "the springs that makes my joys to grow" and so forth. Really, it's not a subtle song. Bless it.Now that we have the internet back, we've been catching up on Doctor Who. Episode 7, "The Unicorn and the Wasp", was a fairly light-hearted episode set in an Agatha Christie-type situation and starring the writer herself and a dreadfully unscary giant wasp. When Christie is doing the usual thing of going round the room revealing everyone's secrets, one chap jumps guiltily out of his wheelchair and admits that he can walk fine, he just pretended to be disabled in order to keep his wife's love. Now this is pretty fucked-up. For starters, trust me, disability is not a good way to attract someone - and the few people who are actively attracted by disability are usually weirdos. Disability makes it harder to attract a partner and sustain a relationship, not easier. For seconds, this feeds into the whole "they're just putting it on to get attention, there's nothing really wrong with them" myth which helps feed so much of the prejudice against people with disabilities. For thirds, who the hell thought all of this adds up to a good joke?
Then we get to "Forest of the Dead", the second in the best-written pair of episodes Doctor Who has aired for some time, which I am now about to whinge about nonetheless. The first, "Silence in the Library", must be making Audrey Niffenegger weep for its wholesale plundering of The Time Traveller's Wife, and we're still arguing about whether Kingston is likely to guest star in any future episodes (we reckon not). The second reminded me of Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven and Dick's "Frozen Journey", both of which point up how hellish this sort of ever-changing reality is, and if anyone would care to discuss these I'd be thrilled as I found the differences fascinating. Anyway, Donna ends up in a weird virtual reality where she speedily is hooked up with and marries her Ideal Man. In her own words, he is ideal because he is "drop-dead gorgeous and can't say a word." When she first meets him, she remarks on his severe stammer in the kind of rude way that had me cringing. His stammer makes him a non-entity. He has difficulty communicating, so he has practically no personality. This is downright alarming. Do they really mean to say that Donna wants a man who can't talk, and that a speech impediment is not only hilariously funny but negates the other human aspects of a person?
