I put a link up on the www.kwase-kwaza.org to a policy paper that has been prepared by the Kaiser Fund in Washington which analyses how much the G8 countries spend on AIDS/HIV aid. Last year the figure was somewhere between $1bn and $1.5bn, the biggest donor being the US and the second biggest the UK. Then there are the pledges that have been made to the Global Fund which is an independent body which as far as I can work out flows out of one or other of the G8 summits. This account for about another �2bn � but this is mostly future pledges. Bush�s latest $15bn is big in relation to these existing numbers but not quite as big as it looks because not all the money is additional. And the numbers are unfortunately, even with the $15bn not as big as they need to be. UNAIDS has estimated that by 2007 the cost of prevention, care and treatment and orphan support interventions will have risen to $15bn annually � that it is a 50% jump over their estimate of what will be needed in 2005.

So what are the points arising from this? I suppose the first point is to get some idea of the scale of the problem which � by its very nature gets bigger every passing day. The second point is whether the scale of the problem just overwhelms us and we put it on the �too difficult� pile along with a lot of other stuff. I suppose one reason for not putting it there is the maxim �a stitch in time saves nine.� So I suppose one has to hang onto the idea that something is better than nothing. Another point is that the latest US move despite all it controversial elements and the recent difficult international history is a pretty important something.

And having written this � Ciaran mailed to say that he had got the online donation system working at www.theraceagainsttime.com which is accessible at the head of this page. I checked the software through by registering and putting a small sum in. Peter C did the same. Do give it a try.

Back to harmony � there�s a question (of course) whether obsessing about obscure harmonic relations is a sensible use of mindspace. Today�s processing came up with putting an augmented fourth at the bottom of chord of fourths � possibly as a separate note preceding or following the straight fourth stack played as a block. This enables the sequence to progress as a fourth chord moving in parallel but inflected by some unexpected notes moving in the bass. So what one may well ask? Why do we find these tight mathematical patterns do the trick to engage our attention? We have a taste for solving structured problems? Or we believe that formal elegance and density carries a particular kind of sonic truth and integrity? This has to be a dubious assumption.!

James mailed with some thoughts about a similar kind of deep mathematical metaphor for the trauma that happened to the USSR at the end of Communism.

Gardening is dangerous. Cutting that prickly bush last weekend left bits of it in my finger. One of those bits in one of the fingers on my left hand is making it tender in a way I find rather disconcerting. Perhaps my arm will fall off.