the straight porn industry has managed to fool itself into believing that regular HIV testing by an industry-funded clinic – rather than mandatory condom use – is good enough to keep its performers protected from disease.

as they recently found out, it might be better than no testing at all, but it doesn’t hold a candle to condoms. the companies are blaming the condom-optional policy on the performers.

a much better rundown of the situation – and the stupidity that led to it – is over at sugarbank.

in related news, i see that lifestyles is now marketing a polyisoprene condom. there’s a review (6 months old) over at the condomunity.

on my way into work on this morning’s second-to-last 3Y metrobus. (i originally wrote “penultimate,” but that just sounded pretentious even though it’s correct.) on E street, a woman in a black coupe pulls into the bus stop as we’re approaching, and opens the driver’s side door… right into the front of our bus. my quick view of the scene suggested no major damage to either her car or the bus. IMO, however, she was at fault.

i was so engrossed in my current reading (straub’s if you could see me now) i barely noticed the lurch as the bus driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, and when i did look up from my last-row seat, the bus was echoingly empty. we all transferred to a 16Y that was right behind us. i don’t envy what the 3Y driver’s day is going to be like.

and i’m still glad i don’t drive in the district.

hey, judy, wherever you are – the president signed the FDA tobacco bill. i think you’d be pleased with most of it.

miss you.

whether the weather be hot
or whether the weather be not
we must weather the weather
whatever the weather
whether we like it or not.

i’ve never spent any significant time in africa, other than a week in the canary islands, so it should come as no surprise that i am totally ignorant of the size and number of slums on that continent. which is why the map below was quite an eye-opener for me.

you’d think that someone who lived in lima for as long as i did would know there were not just one, but two large slums there. but i did not.

and now i do.

hat tip: justin

despite having a startling similarity in appellation, i’m pretty sure that janet napolitano is no relation to johnette napolitano. which kills any chance of hearing the DHS secretary sing joey anytime soon.

###

in reproductive health news, it’s looking likely that the FDA will be making it easier for 17-year-olds to buy plan B. the u.s. district court for the eastern district of NY has told them to, at least. (PDF of the memo & order in tummino v. von eschenbach)
i like the judge’s straightforward approach:

…the gravamen of plaintiffs’ claims is that the FDA’s decisions regarding Plan B – on the Citizen Petition and the SNDAs – were arbitrary and capricious because they were not the result of reasoned and good faith agency decision-making.

Plaintiffs are right.

…

Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency’s normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use, referred to as a “switch application” or an “over-the-counter switch.” For example, FDA upper management, including the Commissioner, wrested control over the decision-making on Plan B from staff that normally would issue the final decision on an over-the-counter switch application; the FDA’s denial of non-prescription access without age restriction went against the recommendation of a committee of experts it had empanelled to advise it on Plan B; and the Commissioner – at the behest of political actors – decided to deny non-prescription access to women 16 and younger before FDA scientific review staff had completed their reviews.

somehow i don’t think the rank & file up in rockville are too broken up about the district court’s decision.

it wouldn’t be this cold out if i hadn’t put my winter clothes away last weekend.

spring daffs.

2 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

i think it’s because i don’t wear red nail polish.

last week i was kvetching about monday’s late-winter snowstorm and subsequent single-digit temps. today it’s nearly 65 degrees at 9 a.m. yay, march.

###

atheists are responsible for the dwindling percentage of christians in the united states. (maybe they’re eating them?) and i should move to vermont. except for that cold thing.

nifty charts here.

###

almost everything i read online this weekend was about death and dying. one friend’s father passed away in late february. another friend’s mother, over the weekend. my great-uncle, on thursday. g’s grandmother was hospitalized with chest pains. then a friend’s dog had to be put down. isn’t spring supposed to be a time of rebirth?

###

as i tweeted on saturday, the best time to watch watchmen is the 9:00 showing. with the coming distractions and a run time of 163 minutes, it means you’ll be out of the theater at five to 12:00. freaky. even freakier: billy crudup’s blue CGI dingle, which doesn’t dangle much.

great flick, btw. and fantastic use of leonard cohen on the soundtrack (and muzak tears for fears), but other people differ. (contains some spoilers.) although i have to ask: how do you put together a 3-hour movie set in 1985 without a single duran duran song? they’d released duran duran, rio, and 7 and the ragged tiger by that point!

###

i’m not much of a batman fan, but the first issue of neil gaiman’s two-part “death of” is storytelling at its finest. and what a story it is.

###

and finally, in news of the sane, today obama will “issue a presidential memorandum aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence.” the circular argument about that itself being political influence that will affect scientific decisions aside, it’s good to see obama continuing to dismantle the politicoreligious machine of the bush administration.

from his prepared remarks:

“This Order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let’s be clear:¹ promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

_______________
¹ am i the only one who would be happy if obama excised “but let’s be clear” from his vocabulary? i’m getting tired of being lectured at.