All posts by nedhamson

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

My dad, Mike, died at the age of 69 today. And so I wanted to share what I wrote about him 10 years…

My dad, Mike, died at the age of 69 today. And so I wanted to share what I wrote about him 10 years ago in March of 2005:

“On the theory of the American Dream:

I was watching MTV a few days ago and they had one of their trying to be intelligent issue type programs like Made or True Life. On the show was this Indian kid who was talking about how his family was the American Dream. The reason? His parents came over to America from India to go to school here. His grandfather paid for his dad to come over. His grandfather is a plastic surgeon over in India, but he wanted his son to recieve better training. He also paid for his son’s wife to come over. His wife later became a chemical engineer. This kid goes to a prep school, drives an Infinti to school and lives in a 7 bedroom home outside Beverly Hills. He smirked at the camera while talking about his parents having an “average” existence in India, but now they can truly be happy here in America. He also said you have to be foreign to appreciate the “American Dream.” He has been accepted to Yale, which his parents are going to pay for because he doesn’t qualify for financial aid. This is his one gripe about America. He can’t go to college for free. He is, indeed, living the American dream because the American dream has become entitlement and not working hard, but smart.

Now let me tell you about the American dream. My family has lived the American dream as it was. It was originally bringing yourself up out of your circumstances, usually poverty, and providing a better life for yourself and your family through working hard, education and sacrifice. Maybe that kid’s family lived the American dream in India, but they have never wanted for anything. One aspect of the American dream is wanting for something, being hungry for it and working hard to gain the means necessary to achieve it. Maybe his dad really wanted to be a plastic surgeon, but he had the means to easily accomplish it. There is nothing easy about the American dream. His family is rich, his parents are rich, and his parent’s parents were rich. He comes from old money. Maybe the American dream was lived back a few generations and that’s the point MTV was trying to make. Somehow, I doubt that.

My case in point: My dad. He was born in 1945 in Defiance, OH. His family was not rich. In fact, he was very poor. He never had it made for him, he was never privileged. He went to a public school instead of a pricey prep school or private school. His father was frequently sick. Not sick with a cold, but tuberculosis. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, he continued with his education and joined the Navy. He didn’t want to, but he did to serve his country and to help pay for college because he didn’t have generous parents paying his way.

He worked at a number of jobs, none of them glamorous or easy, to help pay for college. The GI Bill didn’t cover everything and at one point he had to drop out due to lack of money. Instead of giving up, he worked and saved up to go back. He received his bachelor’s degree in English, but couldn’t find a job in which he could use his degree. Instead of giving up or pouting like most people would, he took a job with the city of Defiance. This job provided a paycheck. He joined the union to try to provide a better work environment for the workers there and eventually became president of the union. As a kid, I was taught to say “Go Union!” Of course I was a kid, so it came out “Go Onion!” However, the intent was there. But I digress.

My dad met my mom in 1982 and were married in 1983. They bought a small, 2 bedroom house on 206 Williams St. in Defiance, OH. It had a large back yard and was across the street from a nice city park. I grew up in that house and felt in no way disadvantaged by not living in a 7 bedroom mansion. I went a private Catholic school, along with my brother, for several years and went to public school at my choice. My brother got to play baseball and soccer and I got to be involved in drama and on the cross country team. My dad’s job provided us health insurance and dental insurance. I got braces to fix the gap between between my teeth I inherited from my dad, along with generally bad teeth. My brother and I didn’t get a huge allowance, but that motivated us to get jobs and learn how to work hard. My brother had a paper route and I waited tables. I paid for most of my new school clothes and school supplies myself. We went on family vacations out west. I never went to Disneyworld, but I turned out alright regardless. He taught me Disneyworld is an overpriced sham, and he’s right.

In 2001, my dad and mom retired to Buffalo, WY after buying 35 acres of land and putting a house on it. My dad also bought a new car. When he was 9 years old and watching his John Wayne movies, I’m sure he never thought he’d own what he does and accomplish what he did. He and my mom raised my brother and I well and any mistakes we have made or will make we cannot blame on our upbringing. We learned the value of the dollar and hard work. I learned you appreciate things more when you have to work for them versus them being given to you. I have been unemployed before, but on the day I lost a job I started looking for a new one. I got back up again. And again. I haven’t been taught anything less.

It’s taken me until now to appreciate everything my mom and dad did for my family. I was a typical teenager and thought I had it so rough. That’s bullshit. My parents gave a lot. Especially my dad. There were days he worked 16 hours (8 a.m. to 4 p.m. then 4 p.m. to midnight and then back at 8 a.m.) and he didn’t see any of us really for a few days just so we would have that extra money for a family vacation. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my dad, besides the value of a dollar, is to always look for the good in people, but don’t be surprised if you can’t find it. That allows me to trust, but not too much. He has given me my love of reading. Almost all my favorite books are ones he gave me. He also told me to question what I’m taught and not to accept it as gospel. Perhaps with the way the world is today, that is one of the most valuable lessons I have learned.

So, in summary, my dad has lived the American dream. He has worked hard, educated himself, and sacrificed for his family to give them a much better life than he had. He has rightfully earned everything he has and deserves his retirement. You don’t need to be a plastic surgeon or engineer to appreciate the American dream. You can be blue collar. And I am, as is the rest of my family. And we’re nothing less because of that.“

IFTTT – useful recipes and giveaway winners

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We launched our Inoreader IFTTT channel just over 2 weeks ago and the response by the community has been tremendous. We’re happy you find this integration useful – it took us lots of time and effort and it’s great to see what our users are doing with it.

An amazing launch

Just 4 days into the integration the stats were soaring with:

  • 1260 Channel Activations, 
  • 1490 active Personal Recipes 
  • 97 Published Recipes 
  • 65203 Recipes Runs in total across all active Recipes

Now we’re looking at much higher numbers and Inoreader is included not just in the New and Noteworthy section on IFTTT, but also is in the Top 100 chefs. This means we managed to give you the essential recipes right from the start, which feels great! We’re also going through the new published recipes and there are some interesting uses of Inoreader we didn’t think of, but our users have.

Here’s a couple of our trending recipes:
IFTTT Recipe: Tweet your broadcasted articles connects inoreader to twitter
IFTTT Recipe: Send starred articles to Pocket connects inoreader to pocket
IFTTT Recipe: Send starred articles to Evernote connects inoreader to evernote
IFTTT Recipe: Mark yesterday's news as read connects do-button to inoreader
IFTTT Recipe: Save YouTube 'Watch Later' videos to Inoreader connects youtube to inoreader

The IFTTT giveaway winners

We announced that we’ll give away 5 Professional subscriptions among those who share their own recipes with us. The 3 winners that were drawn randomly are Vladimir Gareski, Erwan François and Rick Shide.

We also chose 2 of our favorite recipes. It was really hard to choose just 2 out of the many suggestions and after much discussion here are the winners:

Fernando Belaza:
IFTTT Recipe: A new random Wikipedia article everyday, into your Inoreader feed connects date-time to inoreader
Tyler Regas:
IFTTT Recipe: Inoreader Active Search Weekly Email Digest connects inoreader to email-digest

Congratulations! Winners will receive information by email from us shortly.

Ebola virus: wild and domestic animals, plants and insects…

Initial Ebola virus (EBOV) infection of humans is a rare zoonotic spillover event.  

 
Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycteris torquatebats, all fruit-eating megabats of the familyPteropodidae, are considered to be important reservoir hosts, yet they do not show signs of disease.1 
 
While a great deal remains unknown about the identity and spectrum of natural ebolavirus hosts,1zoonoses appear to co-occur with bat pregnancy.2
 

 

Animals that have died from ebolavirus infections include 3,4:

 

  • Duiker (Cephalophus sp.; an antelope) 
  • Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) 
  •  Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)

 

Living animals found to harbour infectious EBOV include:

 

  • Cynomolgus macaque monkey (Macaca fascicularis
  • Franquet’s epauletted fruit bat (Epomops franqueti) 
  • Hammer-headed bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus
  • Little collared fruit bat (Myonycteris torquata)
Those animals with only antibodies to EBOV in the absence of infectious virus, suggesting past exposure include 5,6:

 

  • Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris
  • Peter’s lesser epauletted fruit bat (Micropterus pusillus; fruit-eating) 
  • Angolan free-tailed bat (Mops condylurus; insect-eating) 
  • Giant roundleaf bat (Hipposideros gigas; insect-eating) 
  • Egyptian fruit bat (Roussetus aegyptiacus; fruit-eating) 
  • Geoffrey’s rousette (Rousettus amplexicaudatus; a bat species; fruit-eating) 
  • Lord Derby’s scaly-tailed squirrel (Anomalurus derbianus)

 

Porcupines (Hystrix cristata) have been implicated as a source for human EBOV exposure but virus-positive animals have not been documented.4 
Between nine and 25% of 337 domestic dogs from various towns and villages in Gabon during an EBOV outbreak in 2001-2002 were identified as possible hosts for EBOV when found to be seropositive. 7,8 It was not known when they became seropositive nor has it been experimentally determined that dogs are able to host an active EBOV infection.9,10 Dogs were observed in contact with suspected virus-laden fluids and with other animals during the Gabon outbreak but seropositive dog specimens did not contain EBOV antigen or viral RNA. Three specimens from these seropositive dogs did not yield infectious virus in cell culture either and thus there remains no documented evidence for a canine source of human EBOV infection. In 2014, two dogs owned by human cases of EBOV/Mak in Spain (euthanized without testing 11) and the United States of America (tested negative for EBOV 12,13) did not exhibit any signs of disease. 
Domestic pigs have been found to be a natural host for the Reston ebolavirus 9,14 and antibodies to EBOV have also been found in guinea pigs, an animal that can also be experimentally infected.15Domestic dogs and guinea pigs appear to become infected without symptoms.6,7 Horses, mice, guinea pigs and goats have been experimentally inoculated with EBOV to produce antisera or test therapeutic preparations.16,17 
Pigs experimentally infected with a member of the Zaire ebolavirus become symptomatic.8 NHP, guinea pigs and mice have been used to examine aspects of disease progression and exhibit various degrees of disease when experimentally infected.18,19 
On a few occasions in one study into possible hosts, a low viral load of EBOV could be sporadically recovered after inoculation of a snake (up to 11 days post inoculation), a mouse (up to nine days later) and a spider (21 days later) but the authors of this study concluded that these results could have represented residual inoculum.21
Plants, arthropods, cows, cats and sheep have not been found to naturally carry or host ebolavirus infection but only small numbers of some species have been examined. 3,20-22

 

References…

 

 

  1. Leroy EM, Kumulungui B, Pourrut X, et al. Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus. Nature 2005;438:575-6.
  2. Plowright RK, Eby P, Hudson PJ, et al. Ecological dynamics of emerging bat virus spillover. Proc Biol Sci 2015;282:20142124.
  3. Olson SH, Reed P, Cameron KN, et al. Dead or alive: animal sampling during Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in humans. Emerg Health Threats J 2012;5
  4. Lahm SA, Kombila M, Swanepoel R, Barnes RF. Morbidity and mortality of wild animals in relation to outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Gabon, 1994-2003. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 2007;101:64-78.
  5. Marsh GA, Haining J, Robinson R, et al. Ebola Reston virus infection of pigs: clinical significance and transmission potential. J Infect Dis 2011;204 Suppl 3:S804-9.
  6. Gonzalez JP, Herbreteau V, Morvan J, Leroy EM. Ebola virus circulation in Africa: a balance between clinical expression and epidemiological silence. Bull Soc Pathol Exot 2005;98:210-7.
  7. Allela L, Boury O, Pouillot R, et al. Ebola virus antibody prevalence in dogs and human risk. Emerg Infect Dis 2005;11:385-90.
  8. Weingartl HM, Nfon C, Kobinger G. Review of Ebola virus infections in domestic animals. Dev Biol (Basel) 2013;135:211-8.
  9. Stansfield SK, Scribner CL, Kaminski RM, Cairns T, McCormick JB, Johnson KM. Antibody to Ebola virus in guinea pigs: Tandala, Zaire. J Infect Dis 1982;146:483-6.
  10. Connolly BM, Steele KE, Davis KJ, et al. Pathogenesis of experimental Ebola virus infection in guinea pigs. J Infect Dis 1999;179 Suppl 1:S203-17.
  11. Why Dallas Won’t Kill The Dog Of The Texas Nurse With Ebola. Business Insider, 2014. (Accessed 27/4/2015, at http://bitly.com/1IxqyQI )
  12. Starting today, Dallas Animal Services will begin testing Nina Pham’s year-old dog Bentley for Ebola. The Dallas Morning News, 2014. (Accessed 17/4/2015, at http://bitly.com/1GSGqbU.)
  13. EBOLAVIRUS, ANIMAL RESERVOIR (05): USA, DOG, NOT. 2014. (Accessed 01/05/2015, at http://bitly.com/1IxqAIf )
  14. Barrette RW, Metwally SA, Rowland JM, et al. Discovery of swine as a host for the Reston ebolavirus. Science 2009;325:204-6.
  15. Rouquet P, Froment JM, Bermejo M, et al. Wild animal mortality monitoring and human Ebola outbreaks, Gabon and Republic of Congo, 2001-2003. Emerg Infect Dis 2005;11:283-90.
  16. Kudoyarova-Zubavichene NM, Sergeyev NN, Chepurnov AA, Netesov SV. Preparation and use of hyperimmune serum for prophylaxis and therapy of Ebola virus infections. J Infect Dis 1999;179 Suppl 1:S218-23.
  17. Bray M, Davis K, Geisbert T, Schmaljohn C, Huggins J. A mouse model for evaluation of prophylaxis and therapy of Ebola hemorrhagic fever. J Infect Dis 1998;178:651-61.
  18. Ebihara H, Takada A, Kobasa D, et al. Molecular determinants of Ebola virus virulence in mice. PLoS Pathog 2006;2:e73.
  19. Geisbert TW, Young HA, Jahrling PB, Davis KJ, Kagan E, Hensley LE. Mechanisms underlying coagulation abnormalities in ebola hemorrhagic fever: overexpression of tissue factor in primate monocytes/macrophages is a key event. J Infect Dis 2003;188:1618-29.
  20. Turell MJ, Bressler DS, Rossi CA. Short report: lack of virus replication in arthropods after intrathoracic inoculation of Ebola Reston virus. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1996;55:89-90.
  21. Swanepoel R, Leman PA, Burt FJ, et al. Experimental inoculation of plants and animals with Ebola virus. Emerg Infect Dis 1996;2:321-5.
  22. Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Sudan, 1976. Report of a WHO/International Study Team. Bull World Health Organ 1978;56:247-70.