Remember that time? When Matthew Johnson and Adam Barlow-Thompson from The Neighboring Movement invited me over to talk about the health effects of social isolation on their podcast The Neighbor Next Door? No? Well click on the play button up there then. That’ll remind you.
From Bloomberg
Links for September 18, 2017: American sperm, movement is life, neighborhoods and vascular disease risk, and Taiwanese fruit ghosts
Canada needs our sperm. America!
Background: It is illegal to pay for sperm donations in America's hat.
"What Canada should do is legalize compensation for renewable bodily fluids in our own country. It would be the morally right thing to do. It would help make and save more lives, without harming anybody.
Until we realize our mistake, we need you Americans to keep rolling up your sleeves and unzipping your pants not just for the sake of lucre, but also for the sake of the thousands of current and future Canadians whose lives depend on you."
The more you move, the longer you live.
Bottom line up front (BLUF): Over 4.0 years of accelerometer use, total sedentary time was associated with an increased risk of dying. Not only that, but the longer the usual sedentary bout, the higher the risk of dying (roughly double for the highest quartile). This study is encouraging, in a way: you don't have to move that much to really affect your risk, you just have to move often. But this doesn't apply to you, dear reader, since you ride your bike to the grocery store and forsake social media. Don't you?
If you live in a disadvantaged neighborhood, the usual risk factors for heart disease probably underestimate your risk.
BLUF: In a group of patients from the Cleveland Clinic, the Pooled Cohort Equations Risk Model, or PCERM of the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association underpredicted vascular disease risk in patients from disadvantaged communities (those with a high "Neighborhood Disadvantage Index," or NDI). For a patient from a disadvantaged community, the model only achieved a "concordance index," a measure of how well it predicts vascular disease, of 0.70. In Affluent communities, on the other hand, the concordance index was 0.80. That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but the NDI was much more powerful at predicting variation between census tracts than was the PCERM tool itself.
Fruit names do not invite ghosts, says Taiwanese government
"The seventh month of the lunar calendar is called Ghost Month, when the gate of the underworld is said to open and people prepare offerings for the dead.
People have refrained from offering bananas, plums, pears and pineapples, because the fruits’ names sound like they are inviting ghosts in Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), the market’s Fu-te Temple (福德宮) chairman Lin Lai-fa (林來發) said.
In Hoklo pronunciation, banana sounds like “inviting” (tsio), plum like “you” (li), pear like “come” (lai) and pineapple like “prosperity” or “more” (ong), the combination of which sounds like an invitation for ghosts to stay in someone’s home."
Whatever, Taiwanese Agricultural and Food Agency. I've seen a Dragon Fruit. That thing's bound to attract demons.
