nunodelisboa Nuno Mendes
Jaikus from nunodelisboa
Friday, 16 January 2009
Friday, 12 September 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
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@nunonunes high temperatures = less clothing, even guys with constitutively high libidos are bound to be more aroused by that
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It is not a surprising statement though. And given the current temperature reading it's certainly not surprising that this thought pops to mind.
Monday, 23 June 2008
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Thursday, 5 June 2008
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The long-standing policy of excluding homosexuals from donating blood (a policy that has been officially dropped in many countries but which is still widely practised) has several problems.
It is true that statistics, however unreliable, show that men who have sex with other men (notice that self-identification as a homosexual is not a requirement) also generally engage in more risky behavior with a higher number of partners than the general population.
Now, automatically excluding all homosexuals from donating blood embodies the kind of reasoning behind all forms of discrimination. In those forms they do not ask you whether you are a manwhore, they just ask you how many partners (presumably women) you have been with in the last 6 months. But if you say you are a homosexual you are immediately excluded regardless of the number of partners you have had, which they could have asked you directly.
It is true that 20 years ago the prevalence of HIV in the homosexual population was dramatically higher than in the general population so even if you had had only a few partners you would have been at a much higher risk. This difference has substantially dropped in the western world.
Also, it took a while to develop serological tests that enable very reliable testing of all blood but now we have them and we have practically erradicated transfusion-related transmission of the virus.
Even if you do the math and break down the population in subgroups with different rates of prevalence of the disease and consider the residual risk of a false negative on serological tests used in contaminated blood you get risk levels whose difference, even if statistically significant, is completely offset by the uncertainty of the answers to those forms.
Therefore this sort of discrimination is unjustifiable. I wonder, if the prevalence of HIV in the black population were higher, would anyone accept a policy of automatic exclusion?
Now in sociological terms. What is the profile of your average blood donor? Who gets out of their way to donate blood? Do sex-hungry homosexuals with lots of partners and irresponsible sexual behaviour actually make a pause on their daily perpetual orgy to save some lives by donating their blood?
The way I see it, there are two kinds of donors. 1) Those who are sincerely engaged in helping others by freely contributing with their blood, and which are or can very effectively be made aware of the responsibility they are taking in their hands and be urged to be sure about their health conditions before committing. 2) Those who use the donation of blood as of way of getting free, uncomplicated blood health monitoring, and these will not be discouraged by some freaky little form as you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know the right answers.
So the message those forms get out in the world, and have for the last few decades, is: if you are a heterosexual you should not be all that worried.
Is this the sort of message we want to get out? Is this the sort of strategy for prevention of the epidemic that we want to adopt? I don't think so.
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Friday, 30 May 2008
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I second melo!!
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clap clap clap :) wish #1 granted ;)
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
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precisely ;)
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happy to be of service ;)
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I sent a mail to a tarpipe workflow, it posted it on twitter, it didnt post it on jaiku and the activity log didn't list anything concerning what happened.
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