http://www.wikio.com/search=Elizabeth Pisani Wikio - Elizabeth Pisani http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=62416630 Why don't we know more about the world? Here's a simple answer: Wonderful writers aren't where they should be. That is, in banks, hospitals, factories, amusement parks, hair salons, racetracks, car washes, delicatessens - explaining their peculiar institutions to the rest of us. Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:01:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=62416630 2008-06-29T07:01:00Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=62245176 A moment with Elizabeth Pisani, epidemiologist and author of "Wisdom of Whores," whose point is that the international battle against AIDS is off-track. Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:46:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=62245176 2008-06-27T22:46:00Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61889070 I was recently going through the sometimes frustrating process of getting permissions from rights-holders so I could include certain visual illustrations and musical examples in my forthcoming book (Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections). One of the questions I was asked... Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:22:57 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61889070 2008-06-25T11:22:57Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61477187 At a bookstore reading, I learned that Elizabeth Pisani wrote The Wisdom of Whores — about doing HIV epidemiology among sex workers — because she wanted to have more of an effect on HIV prevention programs. Scientific papers didn’t have much effect unless a journalist wrote about them. Journalists, she found, tended to focus on [...] Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:01:07 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61477187 2008-06-21T19:01:07Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61200791 In More Sex is Safer Sex Steven Landsburg famously argued (based on work by Michael Kremer) that if more people, especially more sexually conservative people, had sex the AIDS epidemic could be reduced. Landsburg wrote: Imagine a country where almost... Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:30:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=61200791 2008-06-19T11:30:00Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60744974 Elizabeth Pisani has a piece today that roughly outlines where we are with AIDS today. There’s two entirely different epidemics: the African one, which is indeed largely heterosexual, and the one everywhere else, which is: The second epidemic covers the rest of the globe. Nine out of ten humans (and three in ten of those infected with [...] Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:09:30 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60744974 2008-06-16T08:09:30Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60557951 Michael Bywater reviews The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:55:08 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60557951 2008-06-13T23:55:08Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60528254 More on the way political correctness has corrupted the world's fight against AIDS. Here's a review of Elizabeth Pisani's new book "The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS," which is about how the worldwide AIDS bureaucracy... Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:30:32 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60528254 2008-06-13T17:30:32Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60095437 FRESH AIR In her new film, Savage Grace, the actress Julianne Moore plays the wife of the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune, a middle-class woman who’s married up, but who craves more than the comforts money can buy. As her emotional neediness gets entangled with her son’s, boundaries of all kinds get broken — [...] Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:11:54 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=60095437 2008-06-10T17:11:54Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=59952913 Here is an excellent post from Marginal Revolution on the perils of random sampling. Even when you think you've done it, you might have missed something. The Wisdom of Whores As a teenager Elizabeth Pisani discovered that she liked sneaking into the "girlie bars" of Hong Kong and talking to the hookers and the johns. Ordinarily one wouldn't expect such peculiar hobbies to pay off in a dazzling career. But beginning in the mid 1980s, people who were comfortable talking to hookers, rent boys, trannies, warias and junkies (all Pisani's terms) especially in the hot spots of Asia and Africa became scouts and spies in the war against AIDS. Information provided by these epidemiologists in the streets about where AIDS hid and how it spread has been critical to the war. The Wisdom of Whores is Pisani's vivid account of what she has learned and why AIDS is still being fought ineffectively. I'll say more on this in the future. Here, however, is one bit relevant to the title: We'd just finished our first survey of HIV, syphilis and risky sex among waria in Jakarta...I had the impression from the qualitative research...that waria were turning dozens of tricks a week, but the study showed they averaged only three. And since that figure came from 250 waria selected at random as the manual requires, it was certainly more accurate than the qualitative research... "Three a week? Your insane!," snorted [sex worker and waria] Ines....Ines left school at fourteen but she is not stupid, so I explained how, through our probability sampling, we are asking a representative sample of Jakarta's waria. Ines dismissed by lecture with a wave of her manicure and a flick of her locks. "So clever, but so stupid." she sighed. Ok, so what was the wisdom of the whore? (n.b. Pisani's term!) Bonus points if you can also describe a solution. I am going to have to get this into my econometric notes! Answer in the extension. She explained, as if to an enthusiastic but slightly dim child, that a waria who is hanging around on a street corner to be interviewed by a research team is a waria who is not with a client. 'You are talking to all the dogs, obviously'. Not something I learned in the lecture halls of London...but Ines is quite right. Our sample is biased towards the 'dogs,' who get picked up less than the cuter girls. So the study results underestimate the true number of clients per seller... Ines's comments...prodded us into changing the sampling strategy...now we work with the powers-that-be (the mami, the pimps, the brothel owners) to arrange off-hours time for data collection. The principle....is that you are not cutting into people's work time, so there is less chance of talking only to the remnant sex workers who can't get a client. Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:19:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=59952913 2008-06-09T15:19:00Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=59929673 As a teenager Elizabeth Pisani discovered that she liked sneaking into the "girlie bars" of Hong Kong and talking to the hookers and the johns. Ordinarily one wouldn't expect such peculiar hobbies to pay off in a dazzling career. But... Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:30:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Elizabeth+Pisani?rinfoid=59929673 2008-06-09T11:30:00Z