Edinburgh, 20-22 November

Details here

At least the Trolley Problem has been solved.  (Hat-tip to Brian Leiter for the pointer.)

This is a very strange story that’s been picked up by the Daily Telegraph: a German Aids charity has been attacked for launching an advertising campaign - and a pretty sexually explicit one at that - in which people who spread HIV are presented as Hitler.  I’m not sure whether the target is people who have unprotected sex knowing that they’re HIV+, or just the sexually careless more generally.  Whatever: UK Aids charities aren’t happy:

“This advert has absolutely nothing to do with us or World AIDS Day campaigns in the UK, which we coordinate,” a spokeswoman for the National AIDS Trust said.

“Nor does it have anything to do with World AIDS Campaign who coordinate international campaigns and this year are focusing on human rights of people living with HIV.

“Of course there are many HIV organisations that run their own campaigns, however I think the advert is incredibly stigmatising to people living with HIV who already face much stigma and discrimination due to ignorance about the virus.

“On top of this it fails to provide any kind of actual prevention message (e.g. use a condom) and may deter people to come forward for testing.

“The advert is also inaccurate because in the UK thanks to treatment HIV is a manageable condition that does not necessary lead to AIDS.”

The Telegraph story has a link to the advert, which is also available via YouTube was available on YouTube before it was taken down for a terms of use violation (because it was vaguely pornographic, maybe?). Be warned, though: it’s not safe for work (at least, not if you share an office with people you don’t know well), and probably almost certainly not safe for kids either.  The actual campaign’s site is here; it’s less sexually explicit (apart from the advert, of course, which you can watch there if you really want), but you might want to turn down the speakers if you’re not into vaguely industrial music.

For what it’s worth, I kind of agree with the National AIDS Trust on this.  The implication the people with HIV are genocidal madmen manqué doesn’t seem to be quite right.  And, while I think that HIV/ Aids is one of the (many) areas in relation to which the media ought to stop being so prissy and prudish, I’m not sure that this is much of an improvement.  I don’t have any problem with people being shocked out of HIV complacency - the “Don’t Die of Ignorance” campaign was a hell of a jolt at the time, and right on the money; and little gratuitous nudity here and there adds to the gaity of nations (anyone who denies this being either a sexless robot or a liar).  But somehow the two don’t sit together all that well.  Maybe it’s just because I kind of suspect that the ad will mostly be watched by teenage boys who’ll simply not pay any attention to the at-any-rate facile slogan.  They’ll be looking elsewhere.

Ho hum.

You may have heard last week about the Microsoft advert running in Poland that had been… um… how can I put it?… ethnically re-envisioned (and badly, too: even I could Photoshop an image more convincingly, and I’m like a blind monkey with scissors).  And Ford got into trouble a few years ago for doing something similar.

Well, it would seem that Lublin Medical School - or, at least, its web designers - has been doing the same thing, doctoring (geddit?) the ethnic makeup of its publicity bumf according to the audience.  (The link goes to Photoshop Disasters rather than the university itself, because something tells me that, even if the original page is still up as I’m writing this, it won’t be for long.)

I can see the defence here: advertising is about appealing to people, and different parts of the world will respond to appeals differently, demographics, culture, blah-di-blah-di-blah.  But - really - do you have to be so obvious in your tampering?  Y’know: at least make the buttons to switch from the Polish to English versions a bit harder to find or something…

*facepalms*

It’s all very well to vanish off to a conference and put faces to names… but that can’t help with the important questions, like What does the internet think of you?.  Fortunately, this little app can tell you.  Type in your name, and it’ll do the Google version of a genetic fingerprint.

In the interests of openness, here’s what the internet thinks of your humble editors:

Possibly by virtue of having a more frequently-occuring name than either of the other two, David seems to have the most interesting “genome”, and I’m really rather dull compared to both - although I’m about as illegal as social, which must be because of all those parties.

Fascinating, but perhaps not best viewed while eating…

It was only a matter of time before people started to come up with “evidence” that swine flu is all a hoax cooked up to allow the lizard illuminati Bildeberg New World Order freemasons to take over the world… and it’s happening now - this time courtesy of someone using the same name as a BMJ reporter (I’m not sure that it is the same person - but the page I’ve cited here makes the link).

(Actually, come to think of it, we’ve been here before… remember this?)

Here’s a sample of the claim: more…

The Guardian has a feature in its “Ethical Living” feature called “You Ask, They Answer”.  This provides a forum in which readers can put questions to firms, people and so on.  This week, the subject was Neal’s Yard Remedies, purveyor of… um… “remedies” to the kind of people who go in for aromatherapy and homeopathy and the belief that natural is best because there are no CHEMICALS in nature. 

The grilling supplied by readers is impressive and heartening.  A lot of it is along the lines of “Why do you sell pointless crap and, in doing so, undermine the scientific method, spout bullshit, and potentially put people’s health in danger?”  (I’m simplifying a bit, but the gist’s about right.)

NYR’s response is… well, it isn’t.  They don’t seem to want to play any more, and won’t be answering.  Or maybe the answers have been provided but, in the best tradition of homeopathy, not in any detectable way.

This does exactly what it says on the tin.  Stephan Zielinski has set swine flu to music:

The algorithm I used is a bit complicated, but just in case you’re curious: since the gene is expressed as a surface protein antibodies can sense, it’s considered as a string of amino acids.  Each beat corresponds to one amino acid, and the piece is in 3/4 time, so each six measures would correspond to five turns around the alpha structure.

I have next to no idea what any of this means.  But it looks impressive.

UPDATE, 30.iv.09: Stop the internet.  We have a winner.

A curious story from the Irish Times: a lecture by Len Doyal on euthanasia had to be cancelled after disruption from protesters: he’s now complained to the President.  The protesters apparently shouted obscenities and, er, the Rosary.

There are more details here.  In the meantime, I just can’t help myself:

 Thanks to Richard Ashcroft and Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh for the pointer.

UPDATE: The HSE - that’s the Irish version of the NHS - has issued a statement on the incident, available here.