All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Deranged Maniacs With Green Thumbs Actively Adding Random Fruit Tree Branches To Trees Near You

Deranged Maniacs With Green Thumbs Actively Adding Random Fruit Tree Branches To Trees Near You Just kidding. This is fun! A group called Guerrilla Grafters are doing something that’s illegal but nonetheless kind of rad: They’re going around town and grafting baby fruit-tree branches onto existing street trees, creating, at least a couple years from now, surprise “orchards” of free fruit where you’d least expect it. [ more › ]

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Shaved and savage: has comedian Margaret Cho finally gone too far? | Stage | The Guardian

These days, much of her criticism is directed at Republican presidential candidates. Cho recently made headlines for lambasting Saturday Night Live’s decision to have Donald Trump host the comedy show’s next outing on 7 November. In its 41-year history, she pointed out, SNL has never had an Asian American as guest host, which made Trump’s invitation a slap in the face. “He’s so racist,” she says. “He’s so sexist. He says he wants to date his daughter. It’s so gross. Who does he think he is – Woody Allen?”

Source: Shaved and savage: has comedian Margaret Cho finally gone too far? | Stage | The Guardian

Fear and Silence in Bangladesh as Militants Target Intellectuals – The New York Times {Whole Nation is Hostage!}

Ms. Farzana, 37, cannot shake the feeling that, as she puts it, “there is a blueprint,” and that someone, somewhere has added her name to a list.“I am really scared this time,” she said. “I have something in mind that maybe they would like to open up a new chapter and kill a woman. These days, you may not have a single idea how you are related to the whole thing. But maybe you are the target. You never know.”So far this year, four bloggers and one publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh — a tiny number for a country with a population of around 160 million. But anonymous threats are common, and the cumulative psychological effect has been profound, prompting public figures to steer away from discussing the terrorist threat openly.Salil Tripathi, chairman of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, approached a long list of Bangladeshi writers for a commentary after a blogger was killed in May. All refused, saying that attaching their name to the subject would be too dangerous. He was reduced to publishing a column written by an expatriate, under a pen name.By threatening intellectuals, “you’re trying to silence opinion, and shape opinion, and I think that’s happening,” said Mr. Tripathi, the author of “The Colonel Who Would Not Repent,” a book about Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan and its legacy.

Source: Fear and Silence in Bangladesh as Militants Target Intellectuals – The New York Times

Study shows immune response from H1N1 flu vaccine is short-lived

Scientists from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University recently conducted a study that demonstrated that people who receive the H1N1 flu vaccine have a strong immune response for just two years.

Health professionals first identified

H1N1, or swine flu, in 2009 as the virus rapidly spread and killed countless people around the world. Now, it is one of the flus that spreads every season.

Scientists previously thought that people with the H1N1 flu vaccine had strong immune responses against the virus for approximately 10 years.

The researchers, divided into teams in Australia, China and the U.S., applied a mathematical model to show a map of how the various flu strains spread from 2006 to 2015. The results showed that H1N1 followed a “skip and resurgence” pattern in both Eastern Asia and Europe. For example, the virus was estimated to strike in 2011 and 2012, but there was no outbreak until the next flu season.

The pattern is made clear with fundamental epidemiological theories. When a population has sustained immunity to the virus after the initial infection, the virus cannot outbreak like before, so it spreads elsewhere. When the immunity declines after two years, people become vulnerable to the virus again.