I just played a really fun game of speed chess:
Now I know what that book was talking about when it said that when you play good positional chess neat moves just materialize and you don't have to work for them.
Update: Hey, another fun one:
This was a fascinating article on AIDS prevention from Reuters: Abstinence, Condom Controversy Erupts at AIDS Meet
A controversy erupted at a global AIDS conference on Monday over whether abstaining from sex or using condoms was more effective to prevent the disease.
Duh?
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni brought the issue, which has set many AIDS activists at odds with Washington, into the open at the first full day of the AIDS conference by saying abstinence was the best way to stem the spread of the killer virus.
The remarks by Museveni, whose country is a rare success story in Africa's war on AIDS, were at odds with health experts who back condoms as a frontline defense against the incurable disease.
"I look at condoms as an improvisation, not a solution," Museveni told delegates on the second day of the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.
Instead, he called for "optimal relationships based on love and trust instead of institutionalized mistrust which is what the condom is all about."
Museveni added fuel to a debate within the AIDS community over the best way to halt the spread of a disease that has killed 20 million people and infected 38 million. Uganda's "ABC" method (Abstinence, Being faithful and Condoms) is a model for the AIDS policies of the administration of President Bush and which are under fire at the conference for advocating sexual abstinence to stem infection.
Official figures suggest six percent of Uganda's 26.5 million people are now infected, down from 30 percent in the 1980s.
But, this sensible approach has a minority of adherents at the conference, and crazy Representative Barbara Lee (from California, where else), argues that this approach is ideological nonsense and calls it "inhumane" because people can't control themselves and really don't have a choice in the matter:
"In an age where five million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence until marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane," Lee said.
"Abstaining from sex is oftentimes not a choice, and therefore their only hope in preventing HIV infection is the use of condoms," she added.
To me it seems much more inhumane that she thinks people are like animals that have no control over their actions.
Then Reuters quotes a guy from Planned Parenthood who calls "religious conservatives" an "extremist constituency":
But Uganda's success has been twisted by the U.S. government in an effort to keep the support of religious conservatives, said Steven Sinding, director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
"It appears that this is naked pandering to an extremist constituency," Sinding said.
Reuters points out that using condoms has been an effective measure for people in Thailand's sex trade (of course using condoms is more effective at preventing AIDS than not using condoms if you're having sex regardless, but that kind of begs the question of what this article is about) and mentions an alternative named-after-a-TV-network plan called "CNN" aimed at drug users and homosexuals:
Health experts point to countries such as Thailand where a heavily promoted condom campaign is credited with slashing infection rates among sex workers in the 1990s.
In Asia, where infection rates are rising among injecting drug users, young people and homosexuals, some NGOs advocate the "CNN method" which stresses condoms, needles and negotiation.
Finally, according to "Helene Gayle, head of AIDS programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", neither "approach" is superior. The logic is staggering. Say you live in Botswana or Swaziland (UN Statistics), where an astounding ~40%[1] of the population has AIDS. Of course, having sex with infected people with condoms that are only effective a certain percentage of the time is just as good as not having sex with infected people. Of course she's talking about which approach should be persued as policy, but it's certainly clear which one is more effective as a practice.
Footnotes:
[1]: Update: sorry, ~40% of the population ages 15-49
Monday, July 12, 2004
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Proud B-Cup: Aug 16, 2:59am