"In the last few years, the rise of free online porn — content-rich sites that tease viewers to subscribe for more — and pay-site juggernauts like Brazzers have put the L.A.-based adult-video industry against the ropes. Its answer, in part, has been the high-dollar parody, designed to attract ComicCon nerds, science fiction fans and other pop culture aficionados who must collect everything within their target oeuvre." -- The troubled US economy affects pornstars too, so
"Porn Defends The Money Shot" (NSFW)
[more inside]
posted by bardic
on Sep 29, 2011 -
80 comments
In 2009,
Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth
initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films:
1000 Voices,
HIV: The Musical,
Man Made,
No Way Through and
War School.
(All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 24, 2011 -
3 comments
An NIH clinical trial
has shown that early treatment of HIV with antiretroviral drugs reduces the odds of the virus being transmitted to an uninfected sexual partner by 96%, with only one new HIV case recorded out of the 1,763 couples participating in the trial.
posted by schmod
on May 12, 2011 -
31 comments
"Anyone who was around New York City in the late 1980s and early '90s couldn't have missed the work of the
AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, better known as
ACT UP. Its group's activism reached a fever pitch during the early '90s, when the iconic black '
Silence=Death' posters and t-shirts seemed ubiquitous downtown and served as somewhat more defiant symbols for the Gay community than the rainbow flags that took over to serve that role slightly later. ...
So what were we to think as we wandered through
Barneys Co-op in Chelsea yesterday when we spied a whole shelf full of
T-shirts featuring ACT UP's famous imagery [priced each at $50 ... 'a portion of that price tag will go to the activist group'] as if they were magically transported there from 20 years ago?"
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 14, 2011 -
48 comments
There is
Housing Works in NYC, which raises money for community based AIDS/HIV treatment and housing for the homeless. Here in Chicago we have
Open Books, who uses the money raised from selling donated books to run literacy programs and tutoring programs for children.
Now Minneapolis is getting
Boneshaker Books; an all volunteer run radical bookstore that will house the
Women's Prison Book Project and offer bike book delivery.
posted by bibliogrrl
on Jan 11, 2011 -
17 comments
There is no question that HIV is an ugly virus in terms of human health. Each year, it infects some 2.7 million additional people and leads to some two million deaths from AIDS. But a new album manages to locate some sonic beauty deep in its genome. Sounds of HIV (Azica Records) by composer Alexandra Pajak explores the patterns of the virus's nucleotides as well as the amino acids transcribed by HIV, playing through these biologic signatures in 17 tracks. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Nov 12, 2010 -
20 comments
"In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college,
he had purchased his own health insurance. Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis [now
Assurant Health], revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that."
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 17, 2010 -
139 comments
A new
HIV vaccine is showing promising results, reducing the risk of contracting the virus by 32 percent. While further tests are still needed, the vaccine is a combination failed HIV vaccines
AIDSVAX and ALVAC, based on the Canary Pox virus.
The study itself faced
criticism from the outset.
posted by borkencode
on Sep 24, 2009 -
41 comments
Intended Consequences. It is estimated that 20,000 children were born as the result of rape during the 1994
Rwandan Genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 Tutsis. Many of these women also contracted HIV/AIDS as a result. Not only do the mothers have to live with memories of this incredibly horrible event, but they along with their children are shunned by other Tutsi survivors.
[more inside]
posted by itchylick
on Apr 20, 2009 -
22 comments
New Scientist:
What if we could rid the world of AIDS? The notion might sound like fantasy: HIV infection has no cure and no vaccine, after all. Yet there is a way to completely wipe it out - at least in theory. What's more, it would take only existing medical technology to do the job.
[more inside]
posted by andoatnp
on Feb 21, 2009 -
49 comments
New Scientist reports today that inhabitants of the former Roman Empire have much lower levels of a gene variant that protects against the virus that causes AIDS -
CCR5-Delta32 to be exact. Previously, this genetic mutation had been attributed to the spread of the
Black Death.
posted by Lizc
on Sep 4, 2008 -
16 comments
In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask -
Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called
"The Serial" which then became collectively known as
Tales of The City.
It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and
lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s.
Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books -
Tales of the City,
More Tales of the City,
Further Tales of the City,
Babycakes,
Significant Others,
Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of
Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became
an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which
aired in the United States on PBS, but not without
protest or limitations.
[more inside]
posted by loquacious
on May 4, 2008 -
39 comments
"Some Florida teens believe drinking Mountain Dew or smoking marijuana will prevent pregnancy and that swallowing a capful of bleach will prevent HIV/AIDS."
* As a result, lawmakers are pushing "for an overhaul of sex education in the state. State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida's
abstinence-only sex education"
* "On Tuesday, a bill that would 'require a more comprehensive approach' to sex education narrowly won approval from a state Senate committee."
*
posted by ericb
on Apr 4, 2008 -
61 comments
Austin Gutwein first became aware of the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS
from a pen pal in Africa.“‘My
pen pal [2006 video - 2:48]*...was the first one to open my eyes to the world outside of my own backyard,’ Austin says. One of the harsh realities that struck a chord with Austin was the fact that many kids become orphaned as a result of a parent contracting HIV. ‘I started to think about what it would be like if I lost my parents,’ says Austin. ‘I just felt called to help.’...On
World AIDS Day [
December 1] 2004, at age 10, Austin shot 2,057 free throws to represent the number of children who would be orphaned because of AIDS during that school day....Austin approached individuals in his community to sponsor his endeavor. That year [he] raised $3,000, which he gave to
World Vision to be used to help eight orphans in Africa.” Three years later his non-profit,
Hoops of Hope,
raised $100,000 [2007 video - 2:32] which was used to build a residential school in Zambia for those orphaned -- and many infected -- by HIV/AIDS. Next year's goal -- to build a hospital.
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Nov 30, 2007 -
18 comments
Three million long-haul truckers traverse India's 8,000-kilometer highway network for months at a time. According to studies, more than
two-thirds of those men are having frequent
unprotected sex, and
it's a big problem. Seena Taan Ke is a
campaign that's underway to create AIDS/HIV awareness among the truckers, featuring Bollywood celebrities as well as Hollywood celebrity
Richard Gere. It's a good thing for a good cause. Well, up until Richard got a little frisky onstage and
planted some kisses on Big Brother winner/Bollywood star
Shilpa Shetty. Crowds of Indians are now burning effigies of both
Gere and
Shetty in protest.
"Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition." said the spokesman for Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata. Well, so much for AIDS awareness for truckers.
posted by miss lynnster
on Apr 16, 2007 -
73 comments
Judy's tour diary (pdf, somewhat long) isn't your standard travelogue. The author is
Judy Porter, a professor of sociology from Bryn Mawr Collge. Her expertise in the fields of AIDS and poverty are apparent as she paints a vivid picture of life in West Africa, and the health and social conditions that come with it. She also set up a
web page that has links to a number of photo slide shows and hand shot video footage.
West Africa has been extensively discussed previously.
posted by The Straightener
on Mar 16, 2007 -
6 comments
