This feels like déjà vu.

Nearly thirty years ago I helped organize hundreds of AIDS activists to demonstrate at FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, as well as organized die-ins at the agency's regional headquarters here in Kansas City, to demand faster access to experimen… Read full post »

When word first broke last week that Emery Taylor had died, the reaction from many of us who knew him was shock. Few of his friends on Facebook seemed to know what had happened.

Given Emery's public identity as a person living with a positive test result for HIV and…

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A recent phone conversation with a friend is helping me to continue to refine what I want to focus on as an AIDS dissident activist. In a passionate outburst that revealed a new side of his character, he blurted out his… Read full post »

I’ve written before about my interest in geeky stuff like the Alexa website rankings.  A fellow AIDS dissident turned me on to Alexa last year, using it to point out how many Dissident websites and blogs there are out there, and how favorably many of them rank, especially… Read full post »

I recently unboxed some of the early media accounts of my life as an openly gay AIDS activist in Kansas City.  The very first words in the very first article ever written about me as an activist proclaim:  "Jon D. Barnett is an angry young man."/…

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My health problems are supposedly due to a virus, and I’m beginning to think that just might be the case, but before anyone jumps to conclusions, let me explain.

The word virus has been in use for more than six centuries, though the first infectious… Read full post »

What is this chatter in the AIDS dissidence world lately about banning the word “denialist”?  When did this become the most compelling matter for us to confront at this time in our history?

Of course the use of derogatory terms by others to define us should be challenged,… Read full post »

 

Have you ever wondered how I can stand being needled sometimes?

Or perhaps you think I have a prickly personality?

Need more proof that I have thick skin?

OK, enough with the puns.

This is my third acupuncture treatment for Bell's palsy.  I'm an old hand at acupuncture and… Read full post »

I developed Bell's palsy (BP) a day or two after striking the left side of my head rather severely on the sharp, hard edge of my car door.

After self-diagnosing my symptoms, I was reluctant to seek any medical care, mainly because there really is no successful treatment or… Read full post »

 

David Rasnick, PhD:

Do ARVs Save Lives? The raw data

Rethinking AIDS Conference
November 6-8, 2009
Oakland, CA Read full post »

"Let's go to lunch," Tracy said, seeing how frustrated I was after discovering that I had miscalculated the distance needed to rough-in a door that I was helping her install in a newly framed wall.

"Fine.  How about chile rellenos?"

"I know this restaurant," she said, "but I… Read full post »

Did I ever tell you that I used to be a “database specialist” in the marketing department of an HMO?

Well, I did, and it was a very enlightening opportunity to observe the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of corporate America and our so-called “health care” system.

My jo… Read full post »

Anyone who has lived or grown up on or near a farm in the midwest, will no doubt recognize one of these steel grain storage bins. They come in various sizes and are used to store grain destined for an area storage elevator or feed for livestock.… Read full post »

A recent experience drove home for me that the rotted foundation for explaining AIDS is still trying to support some pretty inexcusable medical practices at local doctors' offices.

My partner Michael is taking a class to get his EMS (Emergency Medical Services) certificate. One of the course… Read full post »

 

 

 I grew up in the small farming community of Colby, Kansas.

Until I was 14 years of age, I lived with my father's extended family on a wheat and hog farm a few miles north of town. There were so many Barnett families living within… Read full post »

Most of my work the last few decades have involved that interface... that point of contact between human beings and the computer.

I've written previously about my earliest experience with computers in the early 1970s, while still in high school, where I advocated for the first computer prog… Read full post »

I found some old recordings of the televised public hearings for Kansas City's gay rights ordinance 20 years ago.

 

You gotta' love the glasses!

 

Committee hearings are televised on the local cable channel and more than 12 hours of public testimony given… Read full post »

 

 

From 2005 to 2008 the boycott-happy Christian rightist organization American Family Association was touting its alleged success at beating down Ford Motor Company with a boycott because of that company's gay-friendly marketing at Pride events.

Never mind that American car man… Read full post »

Last month the audio version. This month the video:

 

Megan Phelps whores Lady Gaga

 

Related post:  Topeka Kansas:  The next Jonestown? Read full post »

Because of the controversy over the accuracy of information on Wikipedia, I generally avoid using it for my own references.  Nor am I impressed with the site's decision to place more trust in "experienced" editors, given my personal experience with experts and their compulsion to exclude alterna… Read full post »

Remember 2004 and 2005?

The years you couldn’t walk without falling and spraining your ankles?

You could no longer climb the stairs in your home without dropping to your hands and knees, and could only come back down by crawling backwards?

Do you remember… Read full post »

Once in a while I come across a piece of writing that resonates so closely with my own experiences that I want to say “I wish I had written that”.

Carl Stryg wrote just such an essay recently, published at The Truth Barrier, a website founded by journalist Celia/… Read full post »

This group is less than eight hours old as I post this, but growing fast (1,200+ fans so far).

 

 

 (click on picture to link to facebook)

 

 And this is from his supporters, right?

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What to do when research doesn’t provide the desired results?  Conduct another study and change the parameters, of course.

According to the AIDS mantra, penetrative sex without latex is the highest risk behavior for transmission of the HI virus. Yet, a recent study from the Univers… Read full post »

I've known Emanuel Cleaver III since he was a Kansas City council member, and then mayor.  He was an early supporter (if not a waffler a couple of times) of the effort to pass a gay rights ordinance here.

It's good to see now as a U.S. Representative from… Read full post »