HIV test privacy rights

The state of Massachusetts is to begin requiring doctors whose patients test positive for HIV report the names of said HIV positive people. Wonderful! This is after pressure from the Feds - apparently soon federal funding to states's AIDS patients and programs will be dependant upon reporting names from tests. Beautiful. Are they going to make people start wearing red triangles on their sleeves or something next?

I totally understand wanting to track where "outbreaks" occur, but I see no reason this can't be done by number at the testing stations. Gah, and apparently syphilis and gonorrhea already have to have names reported! "In addition to name, other identifying information such as age and address, and factors that put patients at risk for contracting the illness, are typically included." [Boston Globe] Man. I wanna see the ACLU on *this* one.

Worm bin question

To anyone else with a worm bin, I've a question. I went to harvest some soil from it (I was repotting plants), and I noticed the soil was very gray, and not the rich brown I was expecting and had seen in the past. What causes this, and is it still good to use? My best guess is that I've been low on the "green" content lately (as in fresh veggies), and high on the paper pulp. There were LOTS of worms, at least one in every spoonful, so it's not a shortage of digestion.

x-posted

Photos!

More new photos from my new camera!