He should have used his elbow!

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Image result for garfield comics
Posted in Humor | Comments Off on He should have used his elbow!

One Reform to Save America

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Jim deMaine

By David Brooks from the NYT – thanks to Sue Van L for sending this is as a follow though to the recent presentation.

There are a bunch of different ways to do democracy. In Western Europe, most countries have proportional representation and a lot of different parties representing voter interests. In this country we’ve gone with a two-party system and winner-take-all elections.

During the middle of the 20th century, it seemed like we’d chosen the right approach. The proportional multiparty system allowed an extremist named Adolf Hitler to rise to power with the initial support of a tiny fraction of Germany’s voters. Both American parties, meanwhile, seemed to bend toward compromise, knowing they had to win over the median voter in order to get to 50.1 percent majorities.

But even then, as Lee Drutman of the think tank New America points out, America really had a four-party system. There were liberal Republicans from places like the Northeast and conservative Republicans from the West. There were liberal Democrats on the coasts and conservative Democrats from the South. The four groups floated into different legislative coalitions depending on the issue and the moment, allowing for flexible bipartisan majorities.

Now the two-party system has rigidified and ossified. The two parties no longer bend to the center. They push to the extremes, where the donor bases and their media propaganda arms are. More and more people feel politically homeless, alienated from both parties and without any say in how the country is run.

Moreover, the whole way of practicing politics has been transformed. Each party imagines that it is one wave election from destroying the other side and gaining total power. Therefore, as Drutman notes, there’s no interest in compromise, just winning and losing, gloating and seething.

Partisans’ chief interest is in proving that the other party is despicable — in ramping up fear, hatred and the negative polarization that is the central feature of contemporary American politics.

The result is that people, especially the young, lose faith in democratic norms altogether. There are over 6,000 breweries in America, but when it comes to our politics, we get to choose between Soviet Refrigerator Factory A and Soviet Refrigerator Factory B.

The good news is that we don’t have to live with this system. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says there have to be only two parties. There’s nothing in the Constitution about parties at all. There’s not even anything in the Constitution mandating that each congressional district have only one member and be represented by one party. We could have a much fairer and better system with the passage of a law.

The way to do that is through multimember districts and ranked-choice voting. In populous states, the congressional districts would be bigger, with around three to five members per district. Voters would rank the candidates on the ballot. If no candidate had a majority of first-place votes, then the candidate with the fewest first-place votes would be eliminated. Voters who preferred that candidate would have their second-choice vote counted instead. The process would be repeated until you get your winners.

This system makes it much easier for third and fourth parties to form, because voting for a third party no longer means voting for one with no chance of winning. You get a much more supple representation of the different political tendencies that actually exist in the country.

The process also means that people with minority views in their region have a greater chance to be represented in Congress. A district in Southern California, for example, might elect a Bernie Sanders-type progressive, a centrist business Democrat and a conservative.

The current system — wherein a vast majority of seats are safely red or blue and noncompetitive, with only a handful of fiercely contested districts — disappears. Every district becomes a swing district, each vote much more important. Congress begins to work differently because with multiple parties you no longer have stagnant trench warfare — you have shifting coalition-building.

There’s a reason voters in proportional representation countries are less disenchanted with politics than we are. Their systems work better.

Over the last few decades, a lot of work has been done to fight gerrymandering, a reform that would have only a marginal effect on our politics. The good news is that attention seems to be shifting to ranked-choice voting, a change that would have much bigger and better effects.

In 2016, voters in Maine passed a referendum installing ranked-choice voting. The state’s Legislature has done everything it can to fight it, but it looks like voters there will use the system for their June 12 primary, and have a chance to make the system permanent.

Representative Don Beyer of Virginia introduced legislation in Congress last year to make this kind of system national. Groups like FairVote champion the reform nationwide, and writers like Drutman are tireless advocates.

Right now our politics is heading in a truly horrendous direction — with vicious, binary political divisions overlapping with and exacerbating historical racial divisions. If we’re going to have just one structural reform to head off that nightmare, ranked-choice voting in multimember districts is the one to choose.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Reform to Save America

Meet the surgeon Buffett, Bezos and Dimon trust to fix health care

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Atul Gawande is aware of the problems in the health care system – access, quality and cost. He has now teamed up with Buffett, Bezos and Dimon to try to bring these runaway problems under control. If anyone can do it I think Gawande is the one. All of his books are well worth reading – Being Mortal, The Checklist Manifesto, Complications and Better. He is an effective critic and doer. The new challenge he’s taking on in designing a health care system is daunting. I wish him well and hope the politicians are listening.

Atul Gawande attends The 2016 New Yorker Festival in New York. He is a staff writer for the magazine.

From CNN news: “Reducing mistakes during surgery? Check. Raising awareness about end of life care? Check.Lowering the cost of health care? Surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande is still working on that one.

Gawande was tapped last summer to lead a nonprofit health care venture, Haven, created by the three mega-rich, visionary leaders of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase.The expectations are enormous: Gawande has been given a lot of latitude, a lot of time — and most importantly, a lot of money — to curb the “hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” as Berkshire’s Warren Buffett has described soaring health care costs.”The pressure is, can Atul find the secret sauce that many others have missed,” said fellow researcher Niall Brennan, chief executive of the Health Care Cost Institute. “The cynic in me … wonders if anybody can make a difference. The optimist in me would say that if anybody can make a difference, it’s probably Atul.””He’s a god-like rockstar in health care,” Brennan continued. “Atul is an incredible visionary thinker and clinician with also a track record of innovation.”

Ultimately, the venture’s work is intended to serve a wider audience than the 1.2 million workers and their families at the three firms. But first he has to satisfy his bosses: Buffett, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.Not too much is known about the effort. The venture only revealed its name several days ago.Haven aims to make primary care easier to access, insurance benefits simpler to understand and use and prescription drugs more affordable, according to its website. The effort will seek to harness data and technology to make the overall health care system better, but notes that solutions may take time to develop.”The good news is the best results are not the most complicated or expensive,” said Gawande, who has been meeting with the companies’ workers to learn more about their health care experiences, in a statement. “The right care in the right place is often more effective and less costly than what we get today.”

Atul Gawande attends The 2016 New Yorker Festival in New York. He is a staff writer for the magazine.Gawande is already a disrupter. The son of two doctors who was raised in Ohio, Gawande has devoted much of his career to finding ways to better deliver health care. He’s known for his checklists: His surgical safety protocol has been shown to cut deaths and complications following operations by as much as 47% around the world. He’s an author, too: His books include 2014’s “Being Mortal,” which focused on improving end-of-life treatment. As a staff writer for The New Yorker he’s reported on the high cost of American health care, including in a 2009 piece on McAllen, Texas, in which he argued that spiraling spending on medicine has “damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance.” Now, instead of writing about it, he’s charged with fixing one of the nation’s thorniest problems.

Employers, who provide coverage to more than 150 million Americans, have been wrestling with keeping expenses down for themselves and their employees for years. Together, it costs companies and their workers close to $20,000 to insure a family, up 55% in the past decade. And that’s before someone even sees a doctor. All told, private businesses spent nearly $700 billion on health care, while American households shelled out nearly $980 billion in 2017.

Gawande won’t be the first to try an innovative approach. Large employers have attempted to institute changes with mixed, often minimal, results. General Motors recently partnered with Henry Ford Health System to provide care for more than 24,000 workers in Southeast Michigan and their families. Others formed the Health Transformation Alliance, which now boasts 40 employers — including IBM, FedEx and Coca-Cola — covering more than 6 million lives. Founded in 2016, the alliance is pushing medical providers and drug manufacturers to compete on the basis of value and quality. It’s not Gawande’s first time in the fix-it business. In 2012, he helped found Ariadne Labs, a joint venture of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard’s School of Public Health that seeks to improve patient care. He stepped down as Ariadne’s executive director, but remains its chairman, as well as a practicing surgeon at the hospital and professor at Harvard’s medical and public health schools.

Gawande works as a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Gawande works as a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.But Haven has far greater ambitions. Failure means the relentless upward climb of medical costs, which is straining the budgets of employers and Americans, will continue. And it would damage his reputation, as well as those of his backers, who pride themselves on being disrupters. Gawande acknowledges that the mission is important but challenging. The company is tasked with developing and ramping up models of care that improve health outcomes, while increasing patient satisfaction and lowering costs for people, according to Haven’s site.He has hinted at the areas he plans to focus on. Like many, he wants to reduce prices and remove some of the middlemen to decrease administrative costs. Also, he wants to address the complexity and inefficiencies that plague the health care system: He noted at an Aspen Institute talk in June that 66 different people came to his mother’s hospital room when she had a knee replacement that went “beautifully.” One of Gawande’s biggest hurdles will be overcoming the nation’s enormous and entrenched health care industrial complex. He will have to convince not only doctors and hospitals to buy in, but Americans, too, said Robert Pearl, author of “Mistreated” and former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group.”Americans are looking for the shiniest machine and the newest medication when the tried and true often proves higher in quality and significantly lower in cost,” Pearl said. Ultimately, however, Gawande may be trying to overhaul a system he thinks should disappear. The practice of tying insurance to the workplace is breaking down, he has said, especially since many of the new jobs being created are in the gig economy or are contract positions, neither of which come with benefits.”I think the only way we go is by having us collectively paying into a system that no matter where you’re employed, you have coverage all along the way, and that’s what I think people mean by single-payer,” he said at Aspen. “It’s the necessary way to go.”

Posted in Advocacy, Books, Business, end of life, Health, Safety | Comments Off on Meet the surgeon Buffett, Bezos and Dimon trust to fix health care

Citing petition by law firm ‘Sue, Grabit, and Run,’ judge enjoins Old Man Winter

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Jim deMaine
judge snow tree gavel

Thanks to Pamela P for sending amusing story in. It’s about time we had some legal action against the weather!

From the ABA Journal: “A Minnesota judge has not only complained about the weather—he decided to do something about it.

In a March 7 order, Judge Kevin Burke issued an injunction barring any more snow this winter in specified areas of Minnesota—especially in Hennepin County where he presides. Above the Law, WCCOand the Star Tribune have coverage. Burke identified the plaintiffs as the citizens of Minnesota, represented by the law firm of “Sue, Grabit, and Run.” The defendants were listed as “Minnesota Meteorologists, Old Man Winter and Mr. Snow.”

“This order tests the limits of judicial authority,” Burke wrote. “But it is not a reflexive or petulant act by a frustrated judge. That would be entirely inappropriate. This order is issued because of Article I Section 8 of the Minnesota Constitution, [which] states in relevant part, ‘Every person is entitled to a certain remedy in the laws for all injuries or wrongs which he may receive.’ ”

Burke went on to examine the five factors judges must consider when considering an injunction. All were satisfied.

Factor 3, for example, looks at the likelihood of success on the merits. Burke found no problem. “Simply put, no jury is going to find in favor of the defendants absent a change of venue of this case to Arizona or Florida,” he wrote.”

Posted in Humor, Law, Nature | Comments Off on Citing petition by law firm ‘Sue, Grabit, and Run,’ judge enjoins Old Man Winter

How my dad’s dementia changed my idea of death (and life)

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Advance Directives, Dementia, Grief, Health | Comments Off on How my dad’s dementia changed my idea of death (and life)

Vaping Is Big Tobacco’s Bait and Switch

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Ed Note: Nicotine is highly addicting as any cigarette smoker can tell you. I cared for two doctors who died from COPD – neither able to stop smoking. Big Tobacco has long tried to lure us (especially teenagers and women) to smoke. Remember “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby?” Now there’s a new way to get people hooked on nicotine – the e-cig a vaping device powered by a battery with nicotine in a flavored solution. Basically the only use of this device is to deliver an addicting drug (nicotine) to a susceptible individual. Once the person is addicted, the vaping device becomes an entry pathway to taking up cigarette smoking – though it’s marketed as a way to get off cigarettes. The nicotine by vaping may not be as toxic when delivered by the vaping device, but we really don’t know how safe the fumes are. Basically, the public is undergoing an experiment in the probable toxic effects of vaping. The 20th century will be remembered for its tobacco abuse. Will the 21st be remembered for corporations trying successfully to get us addicted by vaping nicotine? 

By Jeneen Interlandi from the New York Times



I was 15 when I started smoking, and so were most of my friends. We smoked to rebel against our parents but also to identify with them — of course they smoked, even as they told us not to. We smoked because it was feminine and sexy, and also masculine and tough. Because celebrities did it, and they looked cool. Because the prissy kids didn’tdo it, and we weren’t them. Because cigarettes were both forbidden and easy to get: ten quarters in a cigarette vending machine, which you could still find in most pizza joints and doughnut shops in suburban New Jersey in the early 1990s.

All of that — the appeal, the access, the illicitness of cigarettes — was by design. By the time my friends and I were born, cigarette makers had stitched their products into the fabric of our culture so thoroughly that not even a century’s worth of research tying those products to an array of slow, painful deaths was enough to deter many of us.

Tobacco companies made cigarettes a diet tool and a matter of high fashion. They made smoking a feminist act. They didn’t just assure the public that it was safe to smoke; they used doctors to push their brands. And the more they came to understand their own product, the more they advertised cigarettes to the young. Most people who don’t start smoking by the end of adolescence never will. The cigarette makers knew that. They used cartoon camels, pictures of Santa Claus and larger-than-life cowboys in their ads.The Marlboro cowboy and Joe Camel were mainstays in cigarette advertising.CreditStanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising

It helped that their key ingredient was highly addictive. It also helped that they were willing to lie. When concerns emerged about nicotine dependence, cancer and heart disease, they kept regulators at bay by playing up scientific uncertainty. Then they bought off scientists and disguised corporate propaganda as independent research. By the timetheir deceptions were exposed, a new generation of smokers — promising billions of dollars in industry revenue — was already hooked.Early tobacco advertising appealed to young people, and made health and diet claims.CreditStanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising

Pages: 1 2
Posted in Addiction, Business, Health | Comments Off on Vaping Is Big Tobacco’s Bait and Switch

How to deal with a crabby person

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Peanuts Comic Strip for January 16, 2015
Posted in Humor | Comments Off on How to deal with a crabby person

‘My Cousin Vinny’ plays big role in Merrick Garland opinion

Posted on March 9, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Pam P for sending in this article from the ABA journal

BY DEBRA CASSENS WEISS

Top 25 Moviesmycousinvinny

Cross-examination drawing on lessons of My Cousin Vinnyhelped undermine a nursing home operator’s claimed reason for firing several union organizers, according to a federal appeals court.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland—whose Supreme Court nomination failed after no vote was taken—wrote the March 5 opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, report the National Law Journal and Above the Law.

“In 1992, Vincent Gambini taught a master class in cross-examination,” Garland wrote, with a footnote to My Cousin Vinny. “Trial counsel for the National Labor Relations Board and the National Union of Healthcare Workers apparently paid attention.”

Pages: 1 2
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on ‘My Cousin Vinny’ plays big role in Merrick Garland opinion

The last time a guy from Washington ran for president

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Jim deMaine

From Crosscut by Knute Berger: “A Republican president who many thought was a crook was up for re-election. Washington state hadn’t supported him during his election. A well-known state Democratic politician with experience in Congress — though largely unknown outside the state — decided to jump into the presidential race, joining a field crowded with Democrats of all stripes eager to take down the incumbent president. A second term for the president was unthinkable. It was critical to have a candidate who could beat him.

The year was 1972; the president, Richard Nixon; and the candidate, Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson ­– the last Washington state politician to mount a presidential campaign, the first of two attempts. It wouldn’t be precise to draw too many parallels between then and now, but with Gov. Jay Inslee having thrown his hat into the ring. a look back at Scoop’s first crusade offers a view of the opportunities and pitfalls of such an effort.

Pages: 1 2
Posted in Politics | Comments Off on The last time a guy from Washington ran for president

Kitbull Pixar – SparkShorts

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Kitbull Pixar – SparkShorts

This should make you smile too!

Posted on March 7, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Gordon G for sending this is

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on This should make you smile too!

March 12th First Hill Improvement Meeting

Posted on March 7, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Homeless, In the Neighborhood | Comments Off on March 12th First Hill Improvement Meeting

Preston Singletary at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass

Posted on March 5, 2019 by Jim deMaine

“The art of Preston Singletary has become synonymous with the relationship between European glass blowing traditions and Northwest Native art. His artworks feature themes of transformation, animal spirits, and shamanism through elegant blown glass forms and mystical sand-carved Tlingit designs. Singletary’s residency celebrates the exhibition Raven and the Box of Daylight, currently on view through August 2019, and is the first of a series of residencies celebrating Native American artists working in glass.”

Figures of glass

A visit to the Museum of Glass was truly enjoyed by a large group of Skyliners. What is the next museum you’d like to visit? Perhaps the Tacoma Art Museum: ” Celebrating 81 years, Tacoma Art Museum is an anchor in the city’s downtown and a gathering place for connecting people through art via thoughtful exhibitions, exciting events, and enriching programs. The museum’s collection of more than 4,500 works emphasizes the art and artists of the Northwest and broader western region. Highlights of the collection include: -the largest retrospective museum collection of glass art by Tacoma native Dale Chihuly on continued view; …”

Posted in Art | 1 Comment

At 88 what are you going to do? Clint Eastwood answers.

Posted on March 5, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Gordon G for finding this gem

Posted in Aging Sites, Entertainment, Music | 2 Comments

FairVote Washington: Ranked Choice Voting

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Jim Tanner

Monday, March 11, 3 pm, Mt. Baker Room

Lisa Ayrault, chair of FairVote Washington, will present on the shortcomings of our current way of voting,
what Ranked Choice Voting is, how it works, where it’s currently used, and how it can improve our elections. We’ll also discuss what FairVote Washington is doing to bring Ranked Choice Voting to our state, and how you can help.

Imagine a voting system that gives voters more choices, tamps down negative
campaigning, eliminates the need to vote strategically for the “lesser of two evils”, and
ensures that election winners have the broadest possible base of support.


If this sounds good to you, join us to learn about Ranked Choice Voting and how it can
improve our elections and our politics.


There will be time for questions and discussion following the presentation.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on FairVote Washington: Ranked Choice Voting

Does tipping humanize the restaurant experience?

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Jim deMaine

From Aeon: “Historians mostly agree that tipping was originally an aristocratic custom. In early 17th century England, it became expected that visitors to a private home would, on departure, leave a small amount of money, called a vail, to the servants. The practice spread to coffee houses, then to other service providers and eventually abroad.

The word ‘tip’ itself is of unclear origin. The most likely source is the Latin stips, meaning a gift. Since the Oxford English Dictionary cites the first usage of the word in 1706, it is almost certainly a myth that it stands for ‘To Insure Prompt Service’, a sign Samuel Johnson reported seeing on a tipping jar in an 18th century coffee house. Tips have rarely insured any such thing. Like parting vails, most are given too late to make a difference, which has made the custom baffling to economists, who cannot understand why people would pay more for a service than they need to.

Tipping for better service not only defies the arrow of time, it also flies in the face of observation. Studies have shown that there is only a weak relationship between customers’ satisfaction with service and the size of their tips. There are other, more reliable ways of increasing tips than doing a good job, such as ‘upselling’: persuading the customer to order more, or more expensive, food and drink. A larger bill almost always means a larger tip, since most people simply give a percentage.

Anthropologists as well as economists are left scratching their heads by tipping. For several decades, they embraced the distinction, made in the early to mid-20th century by Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski and French sociologist Marcel Mauss, between gift and commodity (or exchange) economies. In exchange economies, such as today’s industrialised nations, goods and services are simply bought, usually by money but sometimes by a form of barter. In these cultures, a gift is not a gift if something is expected in return. However, there are implicit rules and customs that ensure that over time, givers become receivers and the system works to the mutual benefit of all.

 ‘If you stay until two in the morning nursing a digestif, some poor bugger has to wait for you for no extra money. A tip in this circumstance is good manners’

Any restaurant worth its sea salt knows that both parts of the term ‘hospitality industry’ matter. Yes, diners pay, but staff have to make sure they feel like guests, not just purchasers. That’s certainly the way the head chef at Noma in Copenhagen, four times winner of the best restaurant in the world accolade, sees it. ‘Most people in restaurants give everything that they can for the guest,’ says René Redzepi. ‘Tipping is an appreciation of that.’

Shaun Hill, chef-patron at the Michelin-starred Walnut Tree in Abergavenny in Wales, offers a good example of when this is especially true. ‘If you stay until two in the morning nursing a digestif and chatting to your newest best friend, then some poor bugger has to sit waiting for you to piss off home for no extra money. A tip in this circumstance is good manners, unless of course you are content to be told to go home once coffee is finished.’

Pages: 1 2
Posted in Essays, Food | Comments Off on Does tipping humanize the restaurant experience?

Paw recognition

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Image result for peanuts cartoons
Posted in Animals, Humor | Comments Off on Paw recognition

The problem with dietary supplements

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Jim deMaine

On ingesting her bone meal dietary supplement to prevent osteoporosis a woman felt just fine – until she didn’t. Over time she began to feel weak and sought out medical attention. Even a top neurologist wasn’t able to establish a diagnosis. After months of searching, she literally dragged herself into a medical library and began to research about weakness. One possibility was lead poisoning. Long story short, her blood lead levels were sky high. A bit more research found that the bone meal came from stockyards where the cows had ingested lead in their contaminated feed. The lead contaminated cow bones became her dietary supplement.

Dietary supplements in the USA are not under the control of the FDA. Congress prohibits that. The supplements frequently do not even have the substance in them that they have on the label – again the FDA cannot regulate this. The supplements often make health claims without any research to back them up. Dr. Oz, who knows better, pushes supplements and has been grilled about this in the Senate.

Dietary supplements also will not prevent dementia. But there are a few steps that appear to help: blood pressure control, physical activity and social engagement. Read more about this in the NYT’s article “Supplements won’t prevent dementia. But these steps might.“

Posted in Dementia, Health | Comments Off on The problem with dietary supplements

After taking a painful tumble, this doctor and runner is learning the best way to fall

Posted on March 2, 2019 by Jim deMaine


By Daphne Miller in the Washington Post

Thanks to Jim T for sending this in

One minute, I was trotting peacefully along a rutted hillside path. The next, I lay in a heap on my left side, so wracked with pain it was hard to breathe. A longtime runner, I traded pavement for trails a couple years ago, and since then I’ve taken a few tumbles. But never had I fallen so fast and so hard. Moaning, I inventoried what might be broken. Then panic set in as I considered some horrifying statistics: An estimated 1 in 3 women will break a hip, and, for patients older than 60, the one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture can be as high as 58 percent. Though still in my early 50s, I thought of hardy patients I’d cared for over the years who had swiftly declined after one bad fall.

I was lucky. I had no major fractures or head trauma, and my bones, on X-ray, seemed reasonably strong. But I hobbled around for weeks, my left side turning from purple to yellow, my arm in a sling. Once I was finally back on the trail, I could not shake the fear that my next fall (and there certainly would be one) could be far worse. This anxiety quickly extended to any sport involving a hard surface, including street jogging, cycling, skating, and skiing. I was suffering from a well-described “syndrome”: fear of falling or FOF, which is especially common in the over-50 crowd. Research shows that people with FOF, regardless of whether they have experienced a bad fall, are more likely to become deconditioned, depressed and socially isolated.

At this point, my options seemed clear: confine all sports to a squishy mat, or learn how to fall safely. But what is the best way to fall, and how do we master this?

Pages: 1 2
Posted in Fitness, Health | 1 Comment

Perhaps better than your broker

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Image result for new yorker cartoons
Posted in Finance, Humor | Comments Off on Perhaps better than your broker

Is Eating Deli Meats Really That Bad for You?

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Jim deMaine

From the New York Times:

Q. Is eating deli meats really that bad? Does it make a difference if it’s organic, nitrate-free or uncured?

A. Meat and poultry are excellent sources of protein, B vitamins and certain minerals, but consuming even small amounts of processed meat increases the risk of colorectal cancer.

“We see a 4 percent increase in the risk of cancer even at 15 grams a day, which is a single slice of ham on a sandwich,” said Dr. Nigel Brockton, director of research for the American Institute for Cancer Research. Eating a more typical serving of 50 grams of processed meat a day would increase the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent, a 2011 review of studies found.

Unprocessed red meat, by comparison, increases cancer risk only at amounts greater than 100 grams a day, and the evidence for that link is limited, Dr. Brockton said, adding that the institute advises people to “limit” red meat but “avoid” processed meat.

There is some evidence suggesting an association between processed meat and stomach cancer. And a recent study found an increased risk of breast cancer among women who ate the most processed meats.

Processed meat refers to any meat, including pork, poultry, lamb, goat or others, that has been salted, smoked, cured, fermented or otherwise processed for preservation or to enhance the flavor. The category includes hot dogs, ham, bacon and turkey bacon, corned beef, pepperoni, salami, smoked turkey, bologna and other luncheon and deli meats, sausages, corned beef, biltong or beef jerky, canned meat and meat-based preparations and sauces, among others.

Many of these meats tend to be high in salt and saturated fat, though lean and low-sodium options are available.

Processed meats are often cured by adding sodium nitrite, which gives them a pink color and a distinct taste, or by adding sodium nitrite and lactic acid, which provides a tangy taste, according to The American Meat Institute. In the past, nitrates, in the form of saltpeter, were traditionally used. Nitrates or nitrites inhibit the growth of botulism and scientists suspect they may be involved in the formation of cancer-causing compounds in the body. (Vegetables also contain nitrates and nitrites, but eating them is not associated with an increased risk of cancer.)

Some products that claim to be “natural” or “organic” may say they are processed without nitrites or nitrates, and the label may say the item has “no artificial preservatives” or is “uncured.” But nutritionists warn that food manufacturers may still add vegetable powders or juices such as celery juice or beetroot juice that contain naturally occurring nitrates, which are converted to nitrites either in the food itself or when they interact with bacteria in our bodies.

The food label will state that there are “no nitrates or nitrites added,” but an asterisk will often lead to a fine-print addendum with the clarification, “except those naturally occurring in celery juice powder,” sea salt or a vegetable juice.

As a result some “natural” or “organic” roast beef and turkey breast, or other products cured with sea salt, evaporated cane juice, potato starch, or natural flavorings or seasonings, may end up with just as high a nitrite content as meats with sodium nitrite added.

Adding to the confusion for consumers is that the U.S.D.A. requires these meats be labeled “uncured” because they are produced without added nitrites or nitrates.

“The average person goes to the store and sees claims like ‘organic, ‘natural,’ or ‘no added nitrates or nitrites,’ and they assume those meats are safer, and they’re not,” said Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group.

The bottom line: If you’re trying to avoid processed meats in order to reduce your risk of cancer, it may be hard to know whether products labeled “natural,” “organic,” “uncured,” or “nitrate and nitrite free” fall into this category or not.

The C.S.P.I. has been urging the Department of Agriculture to require labels on processed meats and poultry that identify the products and inform the public that frequent consumption may increase the risk of colon cancer. A spokeswoman for the U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, Veronika Pfaeffle, said recently that the petition, filed in Dec. 2016, is still “under review.”

Posted in Cooking, Food, Health | Comments Off on Is Eating Deli Meats Really That Bad for You?

Getting to the northbound 99 & tunnel from downtown

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Transportation | Comments Off on Getting to the northbound 99 & tunnel from downtown

The policy implications of love your neighbor.

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Jim deMaine

By David Brooks in the NYT

“Ideas drive history. But not just any ideas, magnetic ideas. Ideas so charismatic that people devote their lives to them.

In his 1999 book, “The Real American Dream,” Andrew Delbanco described the different ideas that, at different stages, drove American history. The first stage in our history was driven by a belief in God. The Pilgrims came because God called them to do so. God’s plans for humanity were to be completed on this continent.

The second phase, through the 19th century, was organized around Nation. The pioneers were settling the West. It was the age of American exceptionalism. America was to be a universal nation, a home and model for all humankind, the last best hope of earth.

The third phase, from 1960 to today, was organized around Self. Each individual should throw off constraints. The best life was the life of maximum self-expression, self-actualization and maximum personal freedom, economic as well as lifestyle.

We are now leaving the era of Self. The right and left now offer two different magnetic ideas. The Trumpian right offers Tribe. “Our” kind of people are under threat from “their” kind of people. We need to erect walls, build barriers and fight. The earlier American nationalism was about frontier; this is about the fortress. Tribalism is a magnetic idea that has mobilized people from time immemorial.

The left offers the idea of Social Justice. The left tells stories of oppression. The story of America is the story of class, racial and gender oppression. The mission now is to rise up and destroy the systems of oppression. This, too, is an electric idea.

The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict.

They are both based on the fantasy that the other half of America can be conquered, and when it disappears we can get everything we want. They are both based on the idea that if we can just concentrate enough power in the centralized authoritarian state, then we can ram through the changes we seek.

So a lot of us reject these two ideas. A lot of us don’t want to live in a war society, whether it’s a tribal war or a class war. If the 2020 choice is between Donald Trump and a Democrat who supports the Green New Deal, I’d vote for any moderate alternative.

The problem with moderates has always been that they don’t have a magnetic idea. Recent moderation has been a bland porridge that defines itself by what it doesn’t like.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

What is the core problem facing America today? It is division: The growing gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and less educated, black and white, left and right.

What big idea counteracts division, fragmentation, alienation? It is found in Leviticus and Matthew: Love your neighbor. Today’s left and right are fueled by anger and seek conflict. The big idea for moderates should be solidarity, fraternity, conversation across difference. A moderate agenda should magnify our affections for one another.

There are four affections that bind our society, and moderates could champion a policy agenda for each:

We are bound together by our love of our children. The first mission is to promote policies to make sure children are enmeshed in webs of warm relationships: child tax credits, early childhood education, parental leave, schools that emphasize social and emotional learning.

We are bound to society by our work. The second mission is to help people find vocations through which they can serve the community: wage subsidies, apprenticeship tracks, subsidies to help people move to opportunity, work councils, which are clubs that would offer workers lifelong training and representation.

We are bound together by our affection for our place. The third mission is to devolve power out of Washington to the local level. Out-radicalize the left and right by offering a different system of power, a system in which power is wielded by neighbors, who know their local context and trust one another. Create a national service program so that young people are paid to serve organizations in their community.

We are bound together by our shared humanity. The fourth mission is to embrace an immigration policy that balances welcome with cultural integration. It’s to champion housing and education policies that encourage racial integration. Neither left nor right talks much about racial integration anymore. But it is the prerequisite for national unity.

Moderation is not an ideology; it is a way of being. It stands for humility of the head and ardor in the heart. When you listen to your neighbor, you see how many perspectives there are and you’re intellectually humble in the face of that pluralism. When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same and you hunger to deepen that connection.

Let the left and right stand for endless political war. The moderate seeks the beloved community. That, too, is a magnetic idea.”

Posted in Essays, Politics, Social justice | Comments Off on The policy implications of love your neighbor.

Honesty – from “Consolations” by David Whyte

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Below is a second essay about a word, this time honesty, by the writer and poet David Whyte is his book “Consolations.” Please let me know if you would like more essays about common words. Or you can click on the above link to Amazon books.

“Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivation behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.

“The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are for the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.

“Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live without not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.”

Posted in Essays, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Honesty – from “Consolations” by David Whyte