From Crosscut: “The media is full of stories bemoaning change in Seattle. Old cafes closing, landmarks demolished, efforts to save legacy businesses like that dive bar down the street. There are more construction cranes dotting the skyline than in any other city in America. Locals, the numbers suggest, have started leaving the city in droves. A group of artists has launched a new effort to generate discussion of the Seattle that was by embracing stories and places that are now the city’s “ghosts.” Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times wonders if response to the city’s unprecedented growth is a new boom in nostalgia.
“Folks have long snickered at the idea of nostalgia in Seattle. They tell those of us who worry about historic preservation that the city is too young, too new, too much a work-in-progress to evoke such emotions. Nostalgia is what holds us back. It’s an Old World attitude, not a frontier frame of mind. We have been told repeatedly that the past is mere baggage, the thing we came to escape by building anew on Puget Sound….”
The above device, called AspireAssist was recently approved by the FDA for qualifying individuals with morbid obesity (a BMI of 35 to 55). With obesity reaching epidemic proportions in developing countries, multiple solutions have been sought. The physiology of weight gain and ability to lose weight are still being studied, and the whole issue is quite complex. AspireAssist will need further comparison with bariatric surgery, gastric balloons, and other ways of diverting the nourishment we take in. Late night comics like Steven Colbert have poked fun at the AspireAssist, but it might prove a safer alternative more invasive techniques.
However, I’m concerned that we now have a huge lucrative medical-industrial complex poised to reap profits from obesity management with a variety of surgical interventions. Some folks like Al Roker have obviously benefited, but I’ve cared for a few that have died in the ICU following complications of bariatric surgery (infection, blood clots, etc). Obesity prevention studies, dietary research, improved nutrition, less sugary drinks, and many other modes of non-surgical care will benefit us all more in the long run.
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From Crosscut: “MEXICO CITY — Continuing his defiant tone following the presidential election, Mayor Ed Murray insisted that Seattle will continue to press forward on climate change whatever the policies of the Trump administration. On his first official trip to Mexico as mayor, Murray spoke alongside other U.S. mayors at an international climate change summit in the Mexican capital, where he also signed a cooperation agreement with Mexico City.
‘We will continue to work with cities around the world on this very important issue,’ Murray said alongside the mayors of Austin, Phoenix, Portland, and Washington, D.C. at the C40 Mayors Summit. ‘We’re not naïve about the political environment that we face going forward. But we actually believe that we can offer leadership. We’re not going to step back.”’
This New Yorker not-so-far-from-the-truth article pokes fun at all sides on the way we tune in to what we already believe. Enter the I-BIAS, the wearable device that knows just what you want to hear from the media.
From Seattle Parks and Recreation – Yesler Neighborhood Park: “The scope of this project is to develop a 1.7-acre neighborhood park that is part of the Yesler Terrace Master Planned Community. The intent of the park is to serve as a gathering place for current and future residents of Yesler Terrace as well as people who live and work in the surrounding community. The 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy provides $3,000,000 for a new park at Yesler Terrace. Additional funding has been secured from the Seattle Housing Authority, State of Washington Recreation Conservation Office Recreation Grant, RAVE Foundation, Stim Bullitt Park Excellence Fund, Wyncote Foundation, and Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Foundation. The overall budget now totals $4,330,000. More information can be found here.”
Posted inIn the Neighborhood|Comments Off on A new 1.7 acre park coming on Yesler
From Aeon: “From our origins in Africa, humans began migrating around the globe roughly 100,000 years ago. But it was only with the advent of agriculture about 12,000 years ago that our population started to swell to more than a million. This data visualization from the American Museum of Natural History beautifully charts humanity’s stunning – and increasingly alarming – exponential expansion to our current population of roughly 7.4 billion.”
Published author Rick Rapport has written about his personal experiences with patients, doctors and families in crisis when near death. Dr. Rapport is a colleague and Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at nearby Harborview Hospital. He has given permission to link this article here.
“Before we become ill, we tend to assume that everything can be treated and treated successfully. The prelate in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop was wiser. Approaching the end, he said to a younger priest, ‘I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.”’
To build the Washington State Convention Center Addition project, the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) is requesting that the city vacate three alleys and underground portions of Olive Way and Terry Avenue. The project will pay for these rights of way and also provide a package of public benefits.
There are a number of concepts that have been proposed by the community, the city, and WSCC for the public benefits package. Your participation and feedback at the public open house will help determine which ideas should be advanced for further analysis.
Wednesday, December 7
5-7 p.m.
WSCC, Room 2AB
Posted inenvironment, In the Neighborhood|Comments Off on ATTEND THE CONVENTION CENTER ADDITION PUBLIC BENEFITS OPEN HOUSE 12/7
From Aeon: “When people in the West throw their clothes away, their cast-offs often go on a journey east, across the oceans, to India’s industrial interior. From the Kutch District of western India to the northern city of Panipat, garment recyclers turn into yarn the huge bales of clothes that come from people and places distinctly strange. With little exposure to Western culture other than the Discovery Channel, the garment recyclers rely on their imagination and the rumours that travel with the cast-offs to create an an intriguing perspective on the West.”
If you walk or drive down 6th Avenue toward the International District, you’ll find a National Treasure at the corner of 6th and Main Street – the Panama Hotel. This 105 year old building is the subject of the historical novel “The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.” Currently owned and preserved by Jan Johnson, there’s hope that the Panama Hotel may survive and live on to help us remember the history of Japanese immigrants and citizens during the first half of the 20th century.
One can stop there for tea and peer into the basement where the citizens of Japanese descent left their personal belongings at a dark time in our history as they were forced into internment camps. Thanks to Jan Johnson’s efforts there’s hope that the memories preserved in the Panama Hotel will live on.
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” Shakespeare’s views on aging are evaluated in the following essay. As the psychologist author says, innumerable studies still could still be done to evaluate the complex and conflicting ideas expressed in Shakespeare’s writings about becoming old.
From the Huffington Post: “We’ve all come to believe that Shakespeare was down on old age, particularly as judged by one of his most famous quotes about the last stage of life (from As You Like It): “Last scene of all… Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” There are a number of equally negative quotes about old age from other plays which, when taken out of context, seem to condemn all of us to equally horrific endings: “As they say, when the age is in, the wit is out” (Much Ado About Nothing), and the “bare ruin’d choirs… in me” he talks about in Sonnet 73. There are plenty of old and foolish characters including Polonius (Hamlet), Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV), and of course Lear (King Lear), who very foolishly believes his insincere daughters rather than his one true daughter, ultimately resulting in his own degrading and tragic end.
“Because quotes about aging have endured over the centuries, we still carry many of these negative attitudes with us today. Think about the character of Grandpa Simpson, who surely fits Shakespearean criteria for the “old fool.” To what extent can we trace these negative depictions about aging in the media to the longlasting impact of Shakespeare’s words and characters?
In an election where the loser wins, some checking of ballots might be in order. An article by A. Alex Halderman, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Michigan, makes a strong argument that audits of the electronic voting machines should be done especially in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“How might a foreign government hack America’s voting machines to change the outcome of a presidential election? Here’s one possible scenario. First, the attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers. Closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which states would have close electoral margins, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines in some of these states, rigging the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor their desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, do its dirty business during the election, then erase itself when the polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs — though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from pre-election polls.
“Could anyone be brazen enough to try such an attack? A few years ago, I might have said that sounds like science fiction, but 2016 has seen unprecedented cyber attacks aimed at interfering with the election. This summer, attackers broke into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and, separately, into the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and leaked private messages. Attackers infiltrated the voter registration systems of two states, Illinois and Arizona, and stole voter data. And there’s evidence that hackers attempted to breach election offices in several other states.
“In all these cases, Federal agencies publiclyasserted that senior officials in the Russian government commissioned these attacks. Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and has shown a willingness to use them to hack elections. In 2014, during the presidential election in Ukraine, attackers linked to Russia sabotaged the country’s vote-counting infrastructure and, according to published reports, Ukrainian officials succeeded only at the last minute in defusing vote-stealing malware that was primed to cause the wrong winner to be announced. Russia is not the only country with the ability to pull off such an attack on American systems — most of the world’s military powers now have sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.”
Click here for the full article. I doubt this election was rigged or hacked, but it does seem reasonable to audit the close swing states. Anything’s possible.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Want to Know if the Election was Hacked? Look at the Ballots
From Michael C: “America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.
“Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning,..” Click here for the full article.
Posted inPolitics, Race|Comments Off on Bill Moyers writes about the election
From Crosscut: “While Mayor Ed Murray talks about Seattle as a “sanctuary city” for immigrants, we Northwesterners might want to expand the reach of this idea to include the region as a whole, and millions of other people, including Americans fleeing the policies of President-elect Donald Trump.
“Our region — the old Oregon Country and California — has been built on immigration and migration, with various ethnicities pulsing into the region: the Irish, Chinese, Germans, Mexican, Brits and Canadians. In the 1970s, we opened our arms to some 30,000 Vietnamese refugees who became a bedrock community in our state. The biggest source of foreign immigrants in the modern Northwest is Mexico.
“Such influxes can be gracefully accommodated, which is a good thing: There are more coming.
“Meteorologist Cliff Mass has predicted that climate change will impact us, but that we’ll likely be spared some of the worst effects in the relative near term and thus we’ll be a magnet for other migrating Americans. These might be Californians looking for water, people from the Southern states looking to escape Zika, or folks from coastal communities resettling due to intensified storms, erosion and sea level rise.
In a remarkable performance of “Hamilton” the cast made a dramatic statement to the Vice President elect who attended the performance. Trump has taken offense on Twitter and demanded an apology. A taste of things to come it appears. Click here to watch.
