It is little more than an irresistible newspaper story at the moment, but The Guardian, and just about every other media outlet on earth, is reporting that Heidi Fleiss, the “former Hollywood madam”, is planning to open a brothel with male sexworkers catering to female customers in the Nevada desert. Conservative newspaper editors will be lining up their “the world is going to hell” editorials now.

But even those who find the idea intriguing shouldn’t get too excited – a lot of things get announced in newspapers that never happen – but nevertheless it does provoke some interesting questions about the relationship between the sexes.

I think the general attitude towards sex work is part of the hangover of millennia in which enormous emphasis was put women’s faithfulness – however that was so defined (sometimes “close friendships” with women didn’t matter; sometimes it did) – that so much stress is put on “SEX” as something different to other aspects of life.

Why should it be perfectly acceptable for someone to have, or give, say, a deep tissue massage, in which the masseur or masseuse will use many parts of their body in close contact with their client, but as soon as anything becomes defined as “sexual” there’s a moral horror? (Indeed, as Bill Clinton’s impeachment case found, there’s by no means any clear definition of “sex”.”)

Of course the reality of sex work, for women, and men, at the moment is that it is often the last resort of the addicted, the disadvantaged, the trafficked, or those otherwise forced into it by circumstances. That sort of sex work is clearly unacceptable, as I’ve written elsewhere.

But what if it is a genuine job choice, gone into with open eyes and full understanding, and practiced in a safe way (in all senses)? (As presumably could apply in this case.) Why should society have any objection to this?

And what if using such services is regarded, in appropriate circumstances (i.e. not involving unfaithfulness to a partner), as just something that satisfies a bodily need. If someone at this point in their life doesn’t want a relationship, but does want sex, why not just openly acknowledge this and make appropriate arrangements?

What’s wrong with that?

A few months ago I bought the latest Norton anti-virus/anti-spam general computer security update. I’d been using the firm’s products for a couple of years, in conjunction with Spy-bot and Ad-aware, and together they seemed to do a reasonable job of fighting off the attacks.

Then I installed the upgrade, and it was an instant nightmare. My CPU was continually running at 100 per cent, making any operation a mix of staccato bursts and long pauses. The programme kept refusing to acknowledge I’d registered. It put a large percentage of my real mail in the spam folder, and most of the spam in my inbox. “Teaching” it “this is not spam” seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

After putting up with this for a few months I’d had enough, and after some research tried the ZoneAlarm Pro 15-day free trial. Instant relief! I had a CPU back again, the right emails were directed with about 98 per cent accuracy into the spam box (and I haven’t found a real email in there).

It is a breeze to operate – giving you quite comprehensible (well by computer standards) guidance when asking if you want to allow programs to do things (with colour coding that helps you to decide what to do about it), and easy-to-follow directions that allowed me to sort out WordPress operation that it affected with a minimum of fuss.

And I think (any security experts out there please correct me if I’m wrong) it means I don’t have to remember to run Spy-boy or Ad-aware any more.

No, I haven’t bought into the company, but if you are looking for security solutions (for a PC at least – can’t comment on a Mac) it could be $40 well spent.

… or at least significantly changed.

Sir Matthew Pinsent is today reporting back from China about observing the training of young gymnasts for this Olympics, and the one after. The BBC reports:

He claimed children were in pain while training, and said: “It was a pretty disturbing experience. I was really shocked by some of what was going on.” …Pinsent felt children were being pushed beyond acceptable limits in pursuit of excellence and was disappointed that it appeared to be regarded as necessary.

But I would suggest that while China might be taking this to greater extremes than you normally see in the West, the basic problem lies with the sport. This is particularly a problem in women’s, or I should say “girls'”, gymnastics.

These are children – usually before puberty, or with all signs of puberty disguised by huge amounts of exercise and a restricted diet – doing things that only such small lithe bodies can do. Female gymnasts are usually washed out for serious competition by the age of 18, if not 16.

And to do these things even the girls have to put in vast numbers of hours of physically hard training – and many of course will fall by the wayside with injuries before they even see the inside of a competition hall – labelled as failures as 10, or 12, or 14. And what sort of education will they have received for other careers?

Oddly enough, the men – who perform different types of routines on different apparatus – are usually in their late teens or early 20s, much like athletes in other sports.

Aside from the sexualisation of routines – girls are expected to smile ridiculously and pleasingly while performing the most amazing physical feats – there’s a question about a sport that ensures all of its participants are washed up before the age of 18.

The answer surely is to limit the age of participation – should children of 12 really be competing in Olympics and World Championships? And should the competition really require, and be judged, on the basis of what a child’s body can do? Isn’t this child labour, and child abuse – not just in China, but everywhere?

Who can resist listening when you hear people talking about you? Curiosity about what others think of you is a universal aspect of the human condition – even if you KNOW that the eavesdropper is almost certain to hear something that will upset or disappoint them.

So the tradition in British newspapers, that when you leave a mocked-up front page is done recording your departure – with a fair degree of (usually) friendly mockery – is a fascinating insight into what others think of you.

I’m still chuckling over mine from last week that speaks of me being “the voice that launched a thousand slips”. (Slips are pages individually updated within an edition of the paper.) Since people have been commenting on my “distinctive” voice since an art teacher in high school described me as a fishwife, I don’t find that a surprise.

And I’m also enjoying the “Wicket Witch of the West”, referring, in part, to my cricket wicketkeeping. (And I did always like Germaine Greer’s “grow old disgracefully”.)

I was, however, surprised that the general view was that I changed lots of headlines. Really, really, I didn’t – it was mostly the senior staff who did that, when I was responsible for the page – but there it is, recorded for posterity, and I’ll have to wear it.

Having dug out my Times farewell from a couple of years ago, I guess there is a consistency in the way people regard me – energetic, or pushy, depending on your perspective. My Times one has the rather amazing paragraph when you think about it – “‘She was decisive, multi-talented, audible and openly wanted to get on – she would never really fit in here,’ said a senior Times executive.”

Perhaps it says more about the Times than me, but I’d say that I’m not, at least in the traditional way, ambitious, I just hate being bored and love to do new things. And I’m not always sensitive to how that goes down.

The photos on both pages are terrible – no insult to the photographers, but I do generally take a terrible photo.

But in the interests of having a professional photo image – yes you will see it soon – a professional photographer friend of mine with infinite patience this week took me into the studio. And I’ve been picking out the ones to use out of the results.

It is revealing. I’ve learnt that I simply cannot smile without closing my eyes, something I was never aware of, and I really have no jawline to speak of. (Good bones were not something I won in the lottery of life – also no cheekbones, ones that you can see anyway.)

But I also learnt something about my internal self; that doing this really, really freaked me out. Being in front of a camera, when the focus is on what you look like, is not something I handle at all well. (If I’m just there to talk it doesn’t worry me – I once was interviewed for television just after getting my head out of a rugby scrum. I wasn’t self-conscious about it then. I can’t say the results looked great, although they sounded OK.)

And I was reminded of just how deep something my grandmother once said to me has sunk. I was about 10, and she looked at me, head on one side, and said: “They say ‘pretty child, ugly adult’; such a pity.” And no, I’ve never entirely managed to forget it.

Miss Frances Williams Wynn is today talking about Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon, an antiquarian who did much to establish the Louvre, and who sounds like rather a decent bloke:

Denon genuinely liked women: for the rest of his long life–he would die in 1825 [born 1747] –he corresponded with a Venetian woman of letters with whom he had enjoyed a passionate affair while in his thirties and forties. He adapted a medieval reliquary to hold, among other “relics,” a lock of the hair of Agnès Sorel, the famously beautiful mistress of Charles V. His attraction to the salon of Josephine de Beauharnais, however, was probably prompted by ambition as much as by pleasure in good conversation, and in 1798 Vivant Denon was off to Egypt with Bonaparte.

Miss Wiliams Wynn is also being rather likeable, lamenting the damage done to Paris by war and political upheaval: “one looks not only at the Louvre, which the fate of war has stripped of its finest ornaments, but at the various collections, at the Jardin des Plantes, which from neglect and want of encouragement have suffered nearly as much; when, most of all, one looks at what was the Musee des Monumens, now totally destroyed and dispersed by bigotry”.

My small posts here and on Blogcritics about the horrific killing of the Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman have drawn a strong reaction, particularly on Blogcritics, where two poets have left their personal feelings in verse.

Gary Lawless (I think this is him here) has emailed with a very constructive suggestion, that as a memorial to her, donations be made to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). One of its main programmes is providing basic education for women and girls Just $60 (now £35) a month will support a full-time teacher working in Afghanistan.