It’s time to roll hard with Weird Al once again with Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”, this time kicking your house up to code with a parody called “Handy.” This video is the first of the pack that’s directed by Weird Al himself – you’ll find each of the previous videos to have been created by a 3rd party. Fun fact: your … Continue reading
We may not have hover boards yet, but we can have motorized shoes, and Acton is leading the charge with its RocketSkates. Already a Kickstarter hit, the futuristic electric skates are controlled by your feet and can push you along at potentially four times the average walking pace. Risking life and limb (not to mention being laughed at by onlookers), … Continue reading
Aereo is putting up a valiant effort, but they’ve been dealt another major blow in their fight to stay alive. The US Copyright Office has ruled that Aereo cannot be deemed a cable company under the terms of the Copyright Act. This comes after a Supreme Court ruling which effectively dug Aereo’s hole for them. The Supreme Court case ruled … Continue reading
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued new comprehensive guidelines for addressing HIV/AIDS in so-called “key populations”— the current global health lingo for often-marginalized populations that are heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic including gay men and other men who have sex with men, people in prison, people who inject drugs, sex workers and transgender people.
While the guidance had a number of new recommendations, the one that has received — and deserves — the most attention is the recommendation that gay men and other MSM be offered the option of oral PrEP (the use of a daily medication to reduce risk of HIV infection) as part of comprehensive HIV prevention services. It’s the first time that this new strategy has received an unqualified endorsement from WHO, and it is a most welcome development!
Unfortunately, it also highlights the work that global health agencies and funders have, to date, left undone to make the world a place where such a recommendation could be put into practice. It also risks limiting PrEP’s future impact. By inadvertently reinforcing perceptions that this option is just for gay men, the recommendation could slow efforts to deliver it to others, including millions of heterosexual women at risk for HIV.
These new WHO recommendations come two years after that agency issued guidance on PrEP demonstration projects in low-resource settings, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of daily Truvada as PrEP in the U.S.
The 2012 WHO guidance and FDA approval opened a new chapter in the global rollout of this effective prevention strategy, and they sent a critical message: PrEP is real, it works, and it should be made available now. The 2014 WHO recommendation on PrEP for MSM reinforces that message, and that is a good thing.
But PrEP is an option for many people, not only for gay men. (It isn’t for everybody, of course, but that is a decision to be made by individuals and their health providers.) Global health leaders should be working, now, to develop and fund programs to provide access for anyone who can benefit. Oral PrEP should be integrated into comprehensive, high-impact prevention programs for all people at risk internationally, with particular attention to key populations but also for young women and married women who continue to bear the brunt of the epidemic.
WHO needs to quickly issue guidance on PrEP for all of the populations that can benefit. The data are strong enough to warrant this move, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently showed with its guidance that recommended that doctors consider oral PrEP for anyone at high risk of HIV infection. State and local health agencies, including in New York State, are currently conducting demonstration studies to figure out how best to get PrEP to those who need it.
Public health history tells us that a broad recommendation can actually help ensure that specific populations get access. When the hepatitis B vaccine was introduced in 1986, it was recommended only for specific populations, which ended up stigmatized the intervention. It wasn’t until it was repositioned as being a health tool for the general population that it took off.
This lesson should be borne in mind, particularly in light of the homophobic climates in many African countries with high rates of new infections in MSM, women and youth. If PrEP is viewed mainly as an option for MSM, country authorities could be resistant to providing access for anyone.
The scientific evidence of PrEP is as strong in other populations, including heterosexual women and men, and people who inject drugs. Clinical trials in multiple countries have shown that people who consistently take PrEP with oral TDF alone or in combination with emtricitabine (FTC), also known as Truvada, can reduce their risk of becoming HIV-infected by 90 percent or more.
Here in the United States, PrEP is gaining momentum, as are efforts to begin to deliver PrEP to all of the populations that can benefit.. And while gay men have been the most vocal users of PrEP so far, others are beginning to benefit. The poignant accounts by PrEP users and providers at myprepexperience.blogspot.com and just this week on the cover story of New York magazine offer hope that this new strategy will save and improve many lives, just as researchers and advocates have long hoped.
If the rest of the world follows America’s lead, PrEP could become an important global health success story. It is already being rolled out faster than earlier public health advances, from vaccines to tampons, oral contraceptive pills and the female condom — many of which took decades to get into the field. To realize PrEP’s potential, several specific things need to happen now.
In addition to expanded WHO guidance, Gilead Sciences Inc., the maker of Truvada, needs to move swiftly to secure regulatory approval in countries where PrEP is most needed. This starts with the countries that hosted clinical trials, where, tragically, PrEP is now out of reach. In two of those countries, South Africa and Thailand, Gilead recently filed for approval. This is an important and welcome step but the process needs to happen much faster and in more places. That requires both more aggressive efforts by Gilead and the willingness of national regulatory authorities to quickly review and approve the company’s applications.
Global health programs, including PEPFAR and the Global Fund, need to help countries design PrEP programs that meet the needs of their populations. A key part of this process is to launch large-scale demonstration studies in a wide range of countries and populations. Those studies can help planners understand how best to target PrEP to the people who need it most, and how to address key challenges like ensuring that people adhere to their daily medications. But so far, few of these studies outside the U.S. have been launched or even planned.
Finally, global funders need to put substantial resources into well-planned PrEP programs. In particular, PEPFAR and the Global Fund should make sure that PrEP is not squeezed out by other funding priorities. National health authorities, who are increasingly and importantly taking ownership of their HIV prevention funding, also need to ensure a place for this intervention.
PrEP is not the perfect or only solution to the global AIDS epidemic — in fact, there is not, and never will be, such a silver bullet. We need integrated and sustained combination prevention and treatment programs. And oral PrEP as an option for all people at risk must be part of that. For the millions of people who stand to benefit from oral PrEP, let’s treat it like the advance and opportunity that it is.
For more about PrEP, visit www.prewatch.org and www.avac.org/prep. And follow AVAC at the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne at @HIVpxresearch.
WASHINGTON — A vote on a birth control coverage bill has caused a bit of awkwardness between Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Mark Begich (D).
Murkowski was one of three Republicans who voted with Senate Democrats on Wednesday to advance a bill that would have required all for-profit companies to cover birth control regardless of the owners’ religious beliefs. The bill fell short of the 60 votes it needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. But when Begich said in a statement that he was proud to have stood with Murkowski on the issue, she demanded to be removed from his press release.
Murkowski’s spokesman, Matthew Felling, told The Huffington Post that while the senator did vote in favor of proceeding to a debate on the birth control bill, she did not vote to pass it and would need to see the final bill before making up her mind.
“Yesterday was a procedural vote, and we did not think that [Begich] made that clear in his release,” Felling said. “He also spoke on behalf of Senator Murkowski, and we did not think it was appropriate for a senator to characterize the motivations and intent of another senator.”
Begich’s office had to send a new statement and press release hours after sending the first one. The original release noted that Murkowski had voted with Begich in favor of the measure.
“I am proud to stand with Senator Murkowski, because we both know that Alaskan women want to make their decisions about reproductive care based upon the recommendation of their doctors – not the religious beliefs of their bosses,” Begich said in the original statement. “This bill is common sense and I will keep fighting to protect all Alaskans’ privacy – including women’s access to affordable birth control and other critical health care services.”
Begich and Murkowski are both relatively moderate senators and have voted together 80 percent of the time — a fact Begich’s campaign has touted. But Murkowski is trying to distance herself from Begich, and his office agreed to send out a corrected statement Wednesday night that left Murkowski out.
This is not the first time a birth control bill has put the moderate Republican in a tough spot. Murkowski supported a Republican-sponsored measure in 2012 that would have allowed employers to opt out of covering any health services to which they religiously object, but she later told the Anchorage Daily News that she deeply regretted the vote.
“I have never had a vote I’ve taken where I have felt that I let down more people that believed in me,” Murkowski said.
Last week, I got into a fight on Twitter with New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, whose work I respect, and it wasn’t about anything that either of us had written; rather, we were tussling over the merits of a piece written by Tom Junod, for Esquire, about how today’s 42-year-old women are hotter than ever before.
There’s no need to linger over our differences: I thought the article was a piece of sexist tripe, celebrating a handful of Pilates-toned, famous, white-plus-Maya-Rudolph women as having improved on the apparently dismal aesthetics of previous generations; my primary objections to the piece have been ably laid out by other critics. Chait tweeted that he viewed the piece as a “mostly laudable” sign of progress: a critique not of earlier iterations of 42-year-old womanhood, but rather of the old sexist beauty standards that did not celebrate those women; he saw it as an acknowledgment of maturing male attitudes toward women’s value.
There is much ado about the No. 1 song this summer. Will it be “Summer” by Calvin Harris, “Rude” by Magic or “Ain’t It Fun” by Paramore? What song captures the season this year?
I do not know the answer, but I do know that in six months we will not remember nor will we care. We will look back at the summer and remember we had fun, went too fast and reflect on what we could have done.
However, there is one way to ensure the music of the summer reverberates into the fall and beyond. It is by discovering the song of the soul. The No. 1 hit will not be found on Billboard’s charts or iTunes but inside of you and is waiting to be sung. It is music that will last forever.
I gained this insight during a recent conversation in Starbucks with a good friend. She shared with me her joy upon the occasion of her daughter’s bat mitzvah. The feeling was like none other. The wellspring of her emotions flowed not to the beat of the party but to the rhythm of the ritual. Seeing her daughter assume her role among Jewish women evoked a deep and profound inner peace and happiness. I asked her, “Was your soul singing?” She smiled and said, “Yes.”
Our soul sings when we live in sync with our deepest aspirations. The feeling of joy warms us inside for we know our deeds reflect our destiny.
Unlock the song in your soul this summer.
My soul sang this week in an apartment building in Stamford, CT.
My daughter Elisheva and I visited an elderly man, Stuart Salzman, the lone Holocaust survivor of his family. He possesses a warm smile and an upbeat spirit despite having endured five concentration camps. We first met in the spring when he sought guidance for the inscription on his tombstone. Wanting to be remembered for his faith, he chose a Star of David and Menorah to grace the stone. Despite the horrors he experienced, he never lost hope.
During my initial visit, I noticed that he did not have a mezuzah, the traditional emblem of a Jewish home, on his doorpost. I asked him if he would appreciate it if I brought him a mezuzah and he agreed enthusiastically. Yesterday, as we performed the mitzvah, he shared with me how happy his father would be, a father whom he last saw when the Nazis abducted him over 70 years ago. Together, Stuart, Elisheva and I recited the blessing. We transformed a moment in time into an eternal one. Stuart embracing the spirit of his father, of blessed memory, together with me and my daughter. In that moment, our souls sang.
When you know you are in the right place in the right time and doing the right thing, your soul will sing.
Here are five suggestions to discover your summer song.
1. Volunteer Weekly
2. Turn off your cell phone or PDA for 24 hours or more.
3. Take a walk by yourself or with a friend or family member.
4. Reflect 15 minutes daily on your life purpose.
5. Study, Pray and Love
We are at midpoint of the summer season. July 4 is a memory and Labor Day beckons.
The songs of summer will fade away but if you sing the songs in your soul it will change your life forever.
Mesut Ozil, of World Cup champion Germany, is still winning.
The midfielder announced on Facebook that instead of financing the surgeries of 11 sick Brazilian children, as he had originally promised, he was upping the figure to 23. That’s one for every member of the German squad, he explained in a post on Facebook.
“This is my personal thank-you for the hospitality of the people of Brazil,” he wrote.
In a YouTube video (below) posted in May for the BigShoe children’s healthcare charity, Ozil announced his intentions to join the campaign. “I love children, they are important to me, and I want them to thrive,” he said.
Fortunately, Ozil has some deep pockets to help. As Yahoo pointed out, German team members are expected to receive more than $400,000 in bonus money for their victory. On top of that, Ozil reportedly signed a £42.4 million ($72.5 million) contract with the Arsenal Football Club in 2013.
Ozil is sometimes criticized for laziness on the field. But when it comes to helping kids off the field, the guy just gave fans another reason to root for him.
It isn’t easy to get your hands on one of the coveted Elsa and Anna costumes from Disney’s “Frozen,” but it turns out, there’s a creative way to make them yourself — if you’re a master balloon artist, that is.
Brian Getz has been in the professional balloon art business for about 11 years, creating giant “super-sculptures,” from a 3000 balloon roller coaster to an inflatable reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” For one of his latest projects, he drew inspiration from the worldwide “Frozen” phenomenon and made a wearable Princess Anna balloon dress.
It took Getz four hours to make the Anna dress, and when his friend Christina Williamson wore it to lunch at an international magicians conference, holding an inflatable Olaf, “of course, everyone wanted to take pictures,” he told The Huffington Post in an email.
Check out this photo of Williamson wearing Getz’s awesome design:
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To celebrate #tbt, Complex.com alerted the Internet to this previously unearthed video of Kanye West rapping in 1996. The video — uploaded to YouTube by DJ Eclipse, who passed the clip on to Complex — was filmed at Fat Beats’ second New York location in August of 1996. West was 19 years old at the time of the recording. Watch below as he crushes some verses and references Alanis Morissette. Head to Complex.com for the full story behind the video, as relayed by DJ Eclipse.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
