medical

Kids Spread Germs

There’s an interesting short article in the October 2012 issue of Scientific American, which I was reading last night.

Under the banner Target the Super-Spreaders, Kathleen A Ryan proposes that the best way to tackle flu is not by vaccinating the elderly, the immuno-compromised and the pregnant. It is actually by vaccinating all schoolchildren between the ages of about 5 and 18.

The article doesn’t seem to be online, so here are a few key extracts:

[T]he most effective way to protect the elderly, and everyone else, is to target kids … Schools are virus exchange systems, and children are “super-spreaders” — they “shed” more of the virus for longer periods than adults.

Computer-modelling studies suggest that immunizing 20 percent of children in a community is more effective at protecting those older than 65 than immunizing 90 percent of the elderly. Another study suggests that immunizing 70 percent of schoolchildren may protect an entire community (including the elderly) from flu.

Perhaps the best example of the effectiveness of childhood vaccination comes from Japan. The 1957 flu pandemic prompted the Japanese to start a school-located childhood vaccination program. For at least 10 years vaccination against influenza was mandatory for all children. Excess deaths from influenza and pneumonia … fell by half … The study showed that for every 420 schoolchildren immunized, one life was saved, predominantly among the elderly. Once the program ended, immunization rates fell, and death rates rose dramatically over the next few years.

In Alachua County, Florida … a school-located influenza vaccination program has been in full operation since 2009. Implemented as a coalition of schools, health departments and community advocates … the program administers FluMist nasal spray, a live attenuated vaccine, free of charge to students, from pre-K to 12th grade, in public and private schools regardless of insurance status. Immunization rates of elementary students have reached 65 percent — enough to reduce the incidence of influenza in Alachua County during the past two flu seasons to nearly zero.

School-wide vaccinations would require a big conceptual change in immunization strategies, involving schools, communities, paediatricians and health departments. Who will fund and lead such an effort?

Well who’d have guessed it? Kids spread germs. Sounds a sensible strategy to me. But it needs a paradigm healthcare thinking. Just a little something else for the NHS to get its teeth into!

personal, ramblings, science

On Hairiness

Now here is a mystery. Well at least it’s a mystery to me, and I can’t quickly find anything about it on the intertubes.

I’m one of those hairy males; I always have been. Fortunately I’m naturally mid-brown-ish of hair for if I were black haired I’d have to shave twice a day or spend more of my life looking like a villain.

As a child my hair was light brown; it got thicker and darker and wavy as I got to puberty. I ended up with something akin to a coconut mop on my head. Now I’m past three score years it is almost completely grey (the front is actually white), much finer, less wavy and thinning — though I’m nowhere near approaching going bald or even really receding.

But it isn’t head hair or beard that is my immediate interest, but body hair.

(No, no, I’m NOT going THERE!)

We know that as men get older their patterns of hairiness change. As I’ve said, head hair greys and gets thinner even to the extent of baldness; and apparently leg hair also decreases. Annoyingly though eyebrows, ears and noses sprout extraneous tufts of fur, which may also go grey.

(As an aside it’s also interesting that ears and noses continue to grow throughout life, with ears apparently growing at a rate of around a couple of millimetres every decade. Noses also appear to grow with age, hence the caricature of the old man with a large warty nose.)

But in the last few years I’ve noticed something else strange. I’m sure that the hair on my forearms and chest, maybe also my back, is getting longer as I get older. Not thicker, coarser or darker, but longer.

Now it does seem that men do go on growing body hair well past puberty, even into their 30s, and apparently most men over 35 are a lot hairier than they were in their 20s. But I’m talking about something I’ve only become aware of in the last few years, say from about age 55.

Now I can’t prove that my impression is right. I didn’t start measuring the length of my body hair at the age of 18 and don’t have a series of regular measurements throughout my life. (Just see what joys I’ve passed by!) Several searches using “a well known search engine” haven’t turned up any tufty hints.

Not, you understand, that I’m complaining. Inasmuch as I think about it at all I quite like being hairy; it’s part of me and it doesn’t bother me; I certainly wouldn’t shave or wax it. Ouchy!

Am I imagining things? Am I going mad? Do I have hairs on the palms of my hands? (No, not yet!) Does anyone know? If not, why not? — this is a vitally important research topic!

PS. No, no picture of my chest hair; you really didn’t want that much information, did you!?

quotes

Quotes

Another collection of quotes recently encountered which have amused or inspired me.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
[Robertson Davies]

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
[William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1 Scene 1]

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
[Fred Allen]

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
[Albert Einstein]

Word verification — an updated version of mediaeval trial by ordeal
[Tim Atkinson, at Bringing up Charlie]

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
[HL Mencken]

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
[CS Lewis]

The Puerarchy … “Extended Adolescence” … the tendency for young men to spend a decade or so getting drunk, high, laid, and wiped out from video game exhaustion and porn marathons instead of applying nose to grindstone, getting a college education that will allow them to support their future ex-wives … No one seems to like these guys — the Left condemns them as slacking losers who won’t grow up, and the Right condemns them as dope-smoking losers who won’t grow up.
[Ian Ironwood at The Red Pill Room]

personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 2 #3

Time to cudgel the brain with an answer the the third of the five questions (series 2) I posed a few weeks back. So …

Question 3. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?

That ought to be easy. But is it? Well, I guess it probably is actually, at least for me.

I would immediately narrow down the options to one of the personal mottoes by which I try to live. (Yes, I know! I usually fail!)

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary

If it harm none, do as you will

Sex and nudity are normal

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

Say what you mean and do what you say

Don’t worry about things you can’t change

Of those which are the most important? Well I guess that without too much mental contortion several can be combined.

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary and Sex and nudity are normal are really only aspects of If it harm none, do as you will. So too is Don’t worry about things you can’t change if doing harm to no-one includes oneself, as it should.

And I would suggest Say what you mean and do what you say is really only an aspect of Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.


Which leave us a choice of two:

If it harm none, do as you will

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

But is not the latter encapsulated within the former? I think it arguable that it is. By treating others as we would wish to be treated is surely doing harm to no-one. Isn’t it?

So we are reduced to giving our hypothetical newborn the basic tenet of Gardnerian Wicca:

If it harm none, do as you will
And if we extend none/no-one to include the environment (Mother Nature if you prefer) that’s a pretty good rule to work to, nurturing both people and planet. What’s not to like?

Hmmm … interesting. I wonder how Gerald Gardner came by the idea?

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 44

OMG it’s now week 44 (of 60) of my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. But I’m still trying to work out where the last week has gone. I seem to have been running in a blur of circles all week with little to show for it except stress and losing all track of what day it is. Ably assisted the while by having a cold and sinus infection — thankfully it seems now on the wane.

So I have to come up with my five picks for the week. Hmmm …

  1. Pak Choi. Yes that strange cabbage-y oriental veg. I rather like it’s slightly nutty flavour and its crispiness and it is full of vitamin C. As it has been good recently so we’ve eaten it twice this week.


    And I’ve made my own way of cooking it (probably not original): slice the pak choi in half along it’s length and pan fry it in olive oil and flambé it with a slug of whisky or brandy. (I nearly managed to fire the kitchen doing this last night!) Serve when it’s beginning to brown but still fresh and crunchy.

    What I hadn’t realised is that it is very closely related to the common or garden turnip. But don’t eat too much of it as it contains some toxic glucosinolates.

  2. Bastourma. We’ve eaten out twice this week as on both Tuesday and Wednesday we ended up near a favourite restaurant in the early evening. On Tuesday, as we left a meeting about 6pm I asked Noreen what we were about to do. She said “I’m taking you out for dinner”. Well who am I to object? Especially when we were but a few hundred yards from one of our favourite Italian restaurants.

    Then on Wednesday I had another meeting which was scheduled right across evening meal time and which I knew wouldn’t finish until 8pm. So afterwards I met Noreen in our favourite Greek Cypriot restaurant. I just had a quick main course of Bastourma, a smoked spicy beef sausage, with a couple of beers. They weren’t hugely busy, so we had time for a chat with the lady of the house too.

  3. Boarding the Loft. Regular readers may recall we’ve been slowly trying to clear and organise our loft. This week we had James in to lay boarding in the second (of three) areas we’ve cleared. Job well done and lots more usable storage space. Now we just have to clear the final third!
  4. Roast Pork & Apple Sauce. This week’s other treat was a large joint of pork from our trip to the supermarket. Succulent roast pork, with Noreen’s tart apple sauce (just Bramley apple stewed with butter) — and a naughty bit of crackling on the side!
  5. Completed Tax Returns. What a wonderful job for a Sunday: filling in the income tax return! Like most people it’s a job I hate; I remember my father swearing about it every year. But it’s worse now I have three tax returns to do: mine, Noreen’s and my mother’s! But with a decent PC application, last year’s return as a basis and all the data in the file ready it doesn’t take too long. Mine and Noreen’s have been sent in; just my mother’s to finalise during the week. And it is such a pleasant relief when it is over for another year!
words

Word : Callipygian

Callipygian

Having well-shaped or finely developed buttocks.
(In more modern parlance) having a nice bum.

From the Greek καλλίπῡγος, κάλλος beauty + πῡγή buttocks.

The Ancient Roman Statue Venus Callipyge is literally “Venus with the beautiful buttocks”.

Hat-tip: Steve Olle for reminding me of this superb word!

amusements, links

Things What You Might Have Missed …

It’s been a busy week, most of which I seem to have spent in meetings. In addition I’ve been fighting a losing battle against a filthy cold and sinus infection. That’s why there hasn’t been too much activity here. It also means that I’ve built up a little backlog of links to things you might have missed, some of which, in more equable times, I would have written about in detail.

A few weeks back, Ian Visits, went to look at a 600 year old “timber cathedral” near Heathrow Airport. Looks like an old barn on the outside, but just get those timbers on the inside!

Harmonsdworth Great Barn
Meanwhile in Leicester archaeologists have been digging up a car park looking for a king. And lo, verily! They believe they’ve found Richard III, “hunchback” and all!

But who needs a king when you can have a naked lady to ramble over? Northumberlandia, is a public open space landscaped as as naked lady. What better use could there be for old slag heaps?

While on the subject of nudity (nothing unusual there then!) I note that Stephen Gough, the “Naked Rambler” has been jailed again by the prudish Scots judiciary. From reading the Telegraph report the guy clearly isn’t mad, but he is certainly misguided and pig-headed — especially given that this has not only kept him (wrongly in my view) in jail but also cost him his family. Clearly he doesn’t see it that way and I suspect there’s nothing that’s going to change him. It needs a certain level of flexibility and common sense by “the authorities” in Scotland to release him from jail, put him in the back of a police van and deposit him a free man somewhere in England where he appears to be less likely to be re-arrested. It’s crazy that no-one (on either side) is prepared to budge enough to resolve something which is a huge waste of money and resource.

While talking of wasting money, the TUC has this week dubbed Britain’s railways “a gigantic scam” with passengers being fleeced, and public money wasted, to line the pockets of shareholders. And for once I have to say I agree with them. Railways, like the utilities, should never have been privatised.

How on earth does one write a bridge from the unions and railways to cats? Because next up, yes we have pussies. Guess what? Researchers this week have discovered that we humans can catch toxoplasmosis from cats. Who knew? Well I did; and what’s more I’ve known for 30 years! Duh!

I’m not even going to try the next link. I doubt I can do it without descending into the bowels of indecency. For next we have two weblog items from sex educator (and sex “a lot of other things”) Maggie Mayhem, who I enjoy reading because she’s not afraid to call a spade as shit shovel and tell things like they are, albeit often somewhat amusingly. First off she’s written an absolutely scathing attack on the elements of (mostly American) society who believe in “Biblical Anti-Feminism” — basically keep the girls uneducated and trained only to praise their men and God, and bear their children. Read it and weep … read the links she provides and you’ll likely become suicidal, if not homicidal.

Secondly Maggie Mayhem has written about how she has rebelled against the current fashion for females to remove body hair. Sing praises for some common sense!

After which you’ll need your daily dose of mind-boggling. Here’s an old article which describes a one line program (above), written in IBM’s APL language, which runs Conway’s Game of Life. What’s even more scary is that I used to be able to write and maintain this stuff. No wonder I’m out of my brain!

For your second sorry third, including the Biblical anti-feminists, mind-boggle of the day … have you ever wondered how long you’d need to lie outside with your mouth open before some bird shit dropped in it? Well wonder no longer, because What If? from XKCD will tell you. It’ll also tell you something weird about the fuel consumption of your car.


Finally in this edition we go from the totally mad to the … totally mad. Did you know that the world’s longest recorded parsnip is 18 feet 5 inches (5.607 metres) from stem to tip? Yep, it’s all part of the National Giant Vegetable Championships. Or perhaps you’d prefer a 3.76kg spud with your roast? There’s nowt so queer as gardeners!

photography

Gallery : Beauty

1 Comment

So the theme for Tara’s Gallery this week is simple … Beauty.

Simple huh?

So what is thing called “beauty”? Is it merely something cultural; an attribute based on whatever is the current common consensus? Or is there some “universal beauty” which transcends time and place? It seems (see here and that it’s actually a mix of the two. But it’s also interesting that aside from the biological markers of health and fertility, there’s no definition of beauty that isn’t considered ugly in another place or another time.

Which means I can choose anything the hell I like! So what shall we have?

Some pretty flowers?

Hollyhock Orchid

Apothecary's Rose Cabbage
(Yeah OK, so a cabbage isn’t a flower, but you get the point!)

An attractive blonde?

Buxom Blonde
Or some pussy porn?

The Sleep of the Just Sunday Morning Lay-in
But then again we could have a crane!

Crane (2)
I know, I’ll let you choose …

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 43

OK, so it’s another week down in the experiment: week 43 done and 17 to go. Here are my five picks of the week.

  1. Wedding Anniversary. As I mentioned, yesterday was our wedding anniversary. I worked it out; a mere 33 years! I make that pearl (30) and leather (3), so we invested in some fancy dog-collars shackles. 😉 But … Eeeekkkkk! We’ve been married much longer than we weren’t. And every year we look at each other and say “How did we do it?”. And we still don’t know! But it’s a good week for it; we have several friends with wedding anniversaries this week.
  2. Summer Weather. This week has been another of glorious late summer weather: clear blue skies, hot sunshine, warm nights — just like summer should be — but also quite humid. It seems the first week of September is so often good weather, which is one reason we often used to go on holiday in early September. All of which has meant we’ve enjoyed several days of …
  3. Eating in the Garden. Well at least on the terrace, aka patio.

  4. Plums. Our next door neighbours have a small Victoria Plum tree. Like all fruit trees It hasn’t been prolific this year (we’ve had no apples worth eating), but earlier in the week they gave us a couple of pounds of delicious ripe plums; just right for eating.
  5. Duck and Blackberry. See my recipe from yesterday!