Why Sunscreen Is the Only Anti-Aging Product You Need

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Jim deMaine

By Dana G. Smith in the NYT

Have you ever looked at the skin on the buttocks of a 90-year-old? Dr. Fayne Frey has. “It’s beautiful,” said the dermatologist and author of the book “The Skincare Hoax.” “There’s very little pigment, there’s very little wrinkling, there are very few blood vessels.”

Compare that to the skin on a nonagenarian’s face, where you’ll likely see brown spots, scaliness, visible blood vessels, much more wrinkling and a generally sallow appearance.

Some signs of aging, namely fine lines, happen naturally over time. But Dr. Frey said that as much as 80 percent of the skin changes we associate with age are actually caused by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The best way to avoid them, aside from staying indoors, in the shade or permanently covered up? Sunscreen.

Sunscreen’s ability to block sunburns and prevent skin cancer is well known, but many dermatologists say it’s also the best skin care product for slowing signs of aging. Here’s what to know about how UV rays cause the skin to age and how sunscreen helps to minimize those effects.

There are two categories of ultraviolet light: A and B. UVB wavelengths are shorter and primarily affect the top layer of the skin. UVA rays are longer and can penetrate deeper (they can also travel through glass, so don’t assume a window keeps you safe from sun damage).

Years of exposure to both UVA and UVB rays damages cells on the top layer of the skin, called keratinocytes. When that happens, the skin starts to look red, rough and scaly in patches — a condition called actinic keratosis.

“It’s due to DNA mutations that occur specifically in the keratinocytes, and they then proliferate and become abnormal,” said Dr. Lena Von Schuckmann, a dermatologist and clinician researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia. In some cases, actinic keratosis can become cancerous.

Below the keratinocytes are the melanocytes — the cells that produce melanin and cause the skin to darken. UVA rays primarily activate these cells, resulting in a suntan. (Sunburn is different; it’s caused by UVB rays injuring the top layer of the skin.) With long-term UV exposure, the melanocytes become damaged, resulting in permanent hyperpigmentation. These brown spots are sometimes called sunspots, age spots, liver spots or their technical name, solar lentigines.

Collagen and elastin, which keep the skin elastic and supple, reside in the next layer down. UVA rays trigger the breakdown of those proteins, causing wrinkles as the skin loses its elasticity, as well as the thinning of skin, making blood vessels more visible.

There’s no real way to boost collagen and elastin artificially (there’s scant evidence for the power of supplements and creams), but cells called fibroblasts do continue to make the proteins as you age, although production slows down. As a result, some dermatologists say it may be possible to reverse some signs of aging.

If you start using sunscreen early and consistently enough, “and the fibroblast is still young enough or healthy enough to be able to produce more collagen,” the appearance of wrinkles could diminish over time, said Dr. Henry Lim, a dermatologist at Henry Ford Health and a former president of the American Academy of Dermatology. The key is making sure collagen levels aren’t depleted further by sun exposure while the cells work to replenish the protein.

But Dr. Von Schuckmann said the jury is still out: “We certainly have studies to show that sunscreen used on a daily basis reduces skin aging. Whether or not it reverses skin aging, that’s a little bit tricky to differentiate.”

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Greystone’s public space and alley

Posted on July 24, 2023 by William Calvin

Looking down on Columbia, at left we see the new public space and its planters in place. Middle bottom is Skyline’s parking garage exit. Starting just across Columbia from it is the new paved alley that goes through to Marion Street and then on to Madison.

That alley will, once opened to traffic (not yet!), serve as a way of bypassing the steep cobblestones of Columbia Street when it gets slippery. Marion is paved and less steep. The sightlines when turning downhill onto Columbia make it difficult to see cars coming uphill or jaywalkers.

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Here’s How to Fix Downtown: Better Parking and Tax Breaks

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: How about this article with a contrarian view!!

By Dick Lilly in the Post Alley Newsletter

A few months back my friend Alec Fisken (now passed away) and I were picking our way through downtown on our way back to Horizon House. At one point, somewhere in the Denny Triangle, we drove past the base of a new office or apartment tower which had a sign in one of its large ground-floor windows: “Restaurant Space for Lease.”  How, I wondered could they sell that: on the three sides of the block we could see as we drove by, there was no street parking.

And that’s one of the big obstacles to fixing downtown Seattle. Surface parking lots between Denny and Jackson and west of I-5 have virtually disappeared in the Amazon-Plus growth bomb. The few that remain start at $15 just to drive in. Parking in the buildings’ garages goes up from there. What, an extra $30 just to go to the dentist?

And how many street parking places have been lost in recent years to bike lanes and bus lanes, desirable as they may be? With nearly nothing available at the curb, parking costs probably deter a lot of people from even thinking about shopping downtown. Lower income families are stuck with the bus, more evidence that Seattle is splitting, rich and poor.

That said, there’s still the problem of getting shoppers (and even office workers) downtown. One wishes for the days when Mayor Norm Rice and development whiz Matt Griffin (and I’m sure there were other players) put together the Nordstrom move to the old Frederick and Nelson building and included (relatively) low-cost public parking in the Pacific Place development across the street.

It’s a way to go: the city and businesses need to come up with a parking program that significantly reduces cost for everyone. City centers – our downtown’s not alone – are public amenities and a significant part of the glue (and the tax base) that holds communities together. You shouldn’t have to open your wallet and peel off a twenty just to go there. It should not surprise anyone that University Village is the competition. Need I say that parking there is free?

More parking is one essential step. Getting workers back downtown is another. Amazon’s announced requirements for return to office work is certainly one thing I can admire them for (not so much some of their other business practices). Now the city, county, and the federal government should get on board. All those governments should insist on at least four days in the office. I know they’re moving toward it, but how far, how fast? A decade and more ago when I worked for city government, so-called 4-40 work weeks were common — 10 hours a day four days a week. It worked pretty well but we never held important meetings on Fridays. A 4-40 plan or regular 8-hour days with one day a week at home sounds like a nice perk.

And then there’s retail, particularly small, locally owned retail operators, the ones that Covid and the homeless population have driven out of downtown. They need a tax break – a rent break, really — and here it is:

As I proposed here in Post Alley back in late 2022, there’s a way to create a great tax exemption for retail and restaurants at street level.  Offer an exemption to landlords, buildings large and small, for the ground floor, street-facing square footage of their property as long as they reduce the rent of their street-level businesses by the same amount. That would amount to a terrific break on rent, one that will keep small shops in business and offer opportunity to new ones. (All street-level businesses, even chains and franchises count. They all build traffic for the area.) The reduction in tax take would be spread across all other properties and likely would not be noticeable.

During Covid the city provided grants up to $10,000 for impacted small businesses and Amazon gave free rent to businesses at street level in its office towers. That kind of support also needs to continue.

Admittedly, it’s hard to change property tax law. The state’s in control. But one possibility would be a law that applied only to Class A cities (Seattle is the only one), a dodge that’s been used before, or perhaps a law declared applicable only to the state’s most populous county.

A final thought: Starbucks bailed out of its Westlake and Pine store somewhere in the pandemic, no longer wanting to be a magnet for the homeless, staff safety, or labor reasons. But now they need to come back and liven up the public space that surrounds their store, a location that benefitted them hugely for years.

How to do that? Well, I think it’s up to a few of our civic leaders, John Scholes, CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association; Rachel Smith, CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce; and Tammy Blount-Canavan, new CEO of Visit Seattle, the tourism promoting outfit. They need to get together, hop an Uber and beard Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan in his office down in SODO. Maybe add Mayor Bruce Harrell to the gang, who would be helpful if they have to offer extra police around the site. It would be worth it to repopulate downtown.

Dick Lilly is a former Seattle Times reporter who covered local government from the neighborhoods to City Hall and Seattle Public Schools. He later served as a public information officer and planner for Seattle Public Utilities, with a stint in the mayor’s office as press secretary for Mayor Paul Schell. He has written on politics for Crosscut.com and the Seattle Times as well as Post Alley.

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Putting it all together

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Jim deMaine
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Behavior: The Solitary Nature of Peregrine Falcons

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Please continue to watch for the Peregrine Falcon (likely ID) seen recently by Paul R. on his deck. Birds beware!

Because peregrine falcons treat their babies with such tenderness at the nest, we might assume they have the same care and emotions toward their young as we humans do.  This is not so.  Peregrines are very different.  Here’s how:

  • Peregrine falcons are solitary, territorial, top predators.  Those that migrate live alone more than 8 months of the year, spending only 16-18 weeks with a mate raising a family.  Non-migratory peregrines, such as those in Pittsburgh, stay on territory alone or as a mated pair.  No other peregrines are allowed in the territory, not even their own offspring.
  • Peregrines have no long-lasting “love” for their young.  Parents care for their nestlings, then teach them to hunt after they’ve fledged.  Four to six weeks later the parents wean the young and will no longer bring them food.  At that point the young must fend for themselves and leave the territory forever.  If they cannot feed themselves, they die.  This is The Way of the Peregrine.
  • Wild peregrine falcons regard humans with fear and loathing.  We are their enemies.  Being captured by a human is not a happy time for a peregrine.  As falconers will tell you, peregrines can become accustomed to humans and work with humans but they never love you.  They are always wild at heart.
  • Peregrine falcons do not have reunions with their relatives so siblings from different years and birds separated by more than one generation do not know they are related.  As my friend Karen likes to say, “They don’t have Thanksgiving dinner together.”
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Visitor on Skyline deck

Posted on July 22, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Has anyone else seen this curious hawk!?

Thanks to Paul R

Posted in Animals | 6 Comments

If Loneliness Is an Epidemic, How Do We Treat It?

Posted on July 21, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed Note: This article raises the question about our dealing with loneliness at Skyline–either our own or of others. If you have thoughts about this, please reply. Better yet speak to a member of the Caring Committee.

By Eleanor Cummins and Andrew Zaleski in the NYT

Thanks to Joan H.

Ms. Cummins is a journalist and an adjunct professor in New York University’s science, health and environmental reporting program. Mr. Zaleski is a journalist who covers science, technology and business.

Stephanie Cacioppo thought she would be single forever. “I was an only child,” says Dr. Cacioppo. “I always thought that was my fate to be alone.”

Despite that, Dr. Cacioppo, a behavioral neuroscientist, dedicated herself to studying the science of romance. In 2011, when least expecting it, she met the love of her life. His name was John Cacioppo, a twice-divorced neuroscientist and one of the world’s leading researchers on loneliness.

After they married, in a joyfully spontaneous ceremony in Paris, they were hardly ever apart and even conducted research together at the University of Chicago. They were known among their academic peers by complementary monikers: She was Dr. Love; he was Dr. Loneliness. But in 2018, at age 66, he died, very likely from complications of salivary gland cancer. She was only 43. “They not only shared the same office (the sign on the door said ‘The Cacioppos’),” his New York Times obituary read, “but also the same desk.”

In the wake of her husband’s death, she experienced a crushing loneliness. So she decided to apply the couple’s research to her life while using herself as a case study for further research into solutions. She reached out to friends, ran six miles a day and picked up doubles tennis, all of which she chronicled in her 2022 memoir, “Wired for Love.” It’s an effort that Dr. Cacioppo, now an adjunct assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Oregon, is still undertaking, with the goal of studying how to prevent loneliness and restore strong connections.

More than one-fifth of Americans over 18 say they often or always feel lonely or socially isolated. Among older adults, social isolation has been linked to various adverse physical and psychological effects, including increased risk of dementia and heart disease. “Addressing the crisis of loneliness and isolation is one of our generation’s greatest challenges,” wrote Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in The Times in April, discussing a national framework for rebuilding social connection to combat what he called an “epidemic” of loneliness.

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Posted in Advocacy, Caregiving, Essays, happiness, Kindness | 1 Comment

Flower from Agave Parryi- acquired by the Conservatory 28 years ago.  Dies after flowering.

Posted on July 21, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mike Ca…

Posted in Gardening, Plants | 1 Comment

You are a 1% ers

Posted on July 21, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bill K.

1% ers 

99 % of those born between 1930 and 1946 (worldwide) are now dead. If you were born in this time span, you are one of the rare surviving 1% ers of this special group. Their ages range is between 77 and 93 years old, a 16-year age span.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE 1% ERS:

You are the smallest group of children born since the early 1900’s.

You are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war that rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

You are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.

You saved tin foil and poured fried meat fat into tin cans.

You can remember milk being delivered to your house early in the morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.

Discipline was enforced by parents and teachers.

You are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, you “imagined” what you heard on the radio.

With no TV, you spent your childhood “playing outside”.

There was no Little League.

There was no city playground for kids

The lack of television in your early years meant that you had little real understanding of what the world was like.

We got “black-and-white” TV in the late 40s that had 3 stations and no remote.

Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party lines), and hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).

Computers were called calculators; they were hand-cranked.

Typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage, and changing the ribbon.

‘INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.

Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on your radio in the evening. (your dad would give you the comic pages when he read the news)

New highways would bring jobs and mobility. Most highways were 2 lanes (no interstates).

You went downtown to shop. You walked to school.

The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

Your parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war, and they threw themselves into working hard to make a living for their families.

You weren’t neglected, but you weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus.

They were glad you played by yourselves.

They were busy discovering the postwar world.

You entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where you were welcomed, enjoyed yourselves.

You felt secure in your future, although the depression and poverty were deeply remembered.

Polio was still a crippler. Everyone knew someone who had it.

You came of age in the ’50s and ’60s.

You are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.

World War 2 was over and the cold war, terrorism, global warming, and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life.

Only your generation can remember a time after WW2 when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.

You grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better.

More than 99% of you are retired now, and you should feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times!”

If you have already reached the age of 77 years old, you have outlived 99% of all the other people in the world who were born in this special 16 year time span. You are a 1% ‘er”!

Posted in History | 3 Comments

Facing your fears

Posted on July 20, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to T&T

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José Andrés Is the First Chef to Serve Good Meat’s ‘No-Kill’ Chicken in the U.S.

Posted on July 20, 2023 by Jim deMaine

by Tierney Plumb  in Eater-Washington DC Thanks to Pam P.

Culinary superstar José Andrés just made history by selling Good Meat’s cell-cultivated chicken for the first time in the U.S., right here in D.C.

The chef and global humanitarian hosted the landmark meal at his Penn Quarter Peruvian restaurant China Chilcano on Wednesday, July 5, preparing the charcoal-grilled chicken for a select crowd.

The same skewers, marinated in anticucho sauce and served with native potatoes, will officially land on China Chilcano’s menu starting July 31. Reservations to try the revolutionary chicken go live on July 25, with limited quantities available each week.

Cultivated chicken with anticucho sauce, native potatoes, and ají amarillo chimichurri.

The meal comes two weeks after Good Meat received final regulatory approval to sell its chicken to American consumers. Its California-based food technology parent company Eat Just Inc. created the world’s first-to-market meat that’s grown from animal cells instead of slaughtered livestock. Singapore was the first place to receive approvals for the product in 2020, and Eat Just was awarded a key clearance earlier this year to scale up and manufacture the sustainable meat for less.

Andrés’ milestone dinner honored the “godfather of cultivated meat” Willem van Eelen, the late Dutch entrepreneur who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on July 4, 2023. His daughter and Good Meat advisor, Ira, was among the first to try the meat at China Chilcano.

“The big day is here, the chicken is here, and people are going to be talking. This is a first for the history of humanity,” said Andrés, in a statement, adding he picked China Chilcano as the inaugural spot to sell the meat because “Peru is a country of many civilizations at once.”

Ira van Eelen has continued in her father’s footsteps as a global champion for cultivated meat. 

Meanwhile, San Francisco diners were the first in the U.S. to sample the futuristic chicken at a restaurant just days earlier. At Michelin-starred Bar Crenn, chef Dominique Crenn started serving a tempura-fried take with a burnt chili aioli on Saturday, July 1 as part of a new partnership with another lab-grown meat producer (Upside Foods)

Posted in Business, environment, Food, Health | Comments Off on José Andrés Is the First Chef to Serve Good Meat’s ‘No-Kill’ Chicken in the U.S.

Converging atmospheric rivers (look north)

Posted on July 20, 2023 by William Calvin

Here we see the Puget Sound Convergence Zone, ordinarily found up north of the King County line. Moisture-laden westerly winds off the Pacific run into the Olympic Mountain range and split into a south-around branch (via southern Puget Sound) and a north-around branch (via the Strait of Juan de Fuca). Looking north from Seattle’s First Hill, we can see under the cloud layer of the south-around flow to observe the clouds of the north-around flow.

The most famous example is the Intertropical Convergence Zone ITCZ about 7 deg north of the equator. That is where the trade winds out of the NE collide with the southern trade winds out of the SE. Surface air is pushed up into cooler air and so that’s a line of thunderstorm one sees.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Biden to FDR, LBJ. Thanks for the free campaign ad!

Posted on July 18, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Jim S.

Rex Huppke        USA TODAY      

Far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene might have accidentally realized Joe Biden is a good president.

The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden an unexpected – and surely unplanned – solid this weekend in a speech at the conservative Turning Point Action conference in Florida, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.

She compared Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society,” an array of programs from the mid-1960s aimed at combatting poverty in America. Those programs included Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks linking Biden to popular programs like Medicare will hurt him?

Now, I’m just a humble newspaper columnist, but it strikes me as a curious political strategy to compare the legislation of a president you despise and want to impeach with some of the most broadly popular legislation in American history.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey from March found more than 80% of Americans have either a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of Medicare, and 76% feel the same about Medicaid.

As Greene talked about President Johnson, she said, dismissively: “His BIG socialist programs were the Great Society … big government programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare.”

THAT MONSTER! Surely no politician wants to be associated with helping address education or rural poverty or transportation! 

Surely the last thing voters want is a president like Biden who is – GASP! – helping Americans

Greene continued making the case for Biden’s reelection: “Now LBJ had the Great Society, but Joe Biden had Build Back Better, and he still is working on it, the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.” 

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Posted in Communication, Essays, Government, Politics | Comments Off on Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Biden to FDR, LBJ. Thanks for the free campaign ad!

As a Rabbi, I’ve Had a Privileged View of the Human Condition

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Jim deMaine

By David Wolpe in the NYT

Rabbi Wolpe is the Max Webb emeritus rabbi of Sinai Temple and will be a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School in the fall.

For over a quarter century now, I have listened to people’s stories, sat by their bedsides as life slipped away, buried their parents, spouses and sometimes their children. Marriages have ended in my office, as have engagements.

I have watched families as they say cruel, cutting things to one another or, just as devastating, refuse to say anything at all. I have seen the iron claw of grief scrape out the insides of mourners, grip their windpipes, blind their eyes so that they cannot accept the mercy of people or of God.

After 26 years in the rabbinate, as I approach retirement, I have come to several realizations. All of us are wounded and broken in one way or another; those who do not recognize it in themselves or in others are more likely to cause damage than those who realize and try to rise through the brokenness.

This is what binds together a faith community. No religious tradition, certainly not my own, looks at an individual and says: “There. You are perfect.” It is humility and sadness and striving that raises us, doing good that proves the tractability of the world and its openness to improvement, and faith that allows us to continue through the shared valleys.

I have had a privileged view of the human condition, and the essential place of religion on that hard road. Sometimes it seems, for those outside of faith communities, that religion is simply about a set of beliefs to which one assents. But I know that from the inside it is about relationships and shared vision. Where else do people sing together week after week? Where else does the past come alive to remind us how much has been learned before the sliver of time we are granted in this world?

I know the percentage of those who not only call themselves religious but also find themselves in religious communities declines each year. The cost of this ebbing of social cohesion is multifaceted. At the most basic, it tears away at the social fabric. Many charities rely solely on religious institutions. People in churches and synagogues and mosques reliably contribute more to charities — religious and nonreligious — than their secular counterparts do. The disunity that plagues us in each political cycle is also partly because of a loss of shared moral purpose which people once found each week in the pews.

Keeping a congregation together has never been easy, and mine has become increasingly politically divided in an ever more polarizing era. Two practices have enabled us to stay together. Over the years I have encouraged people to learn about each other’s lives before they explore each other’s politics. When you share the struggles of raising children and navigating life, when you attend meetings and pack lunches together, when you are on the same softball team and sit near each other in synagogue, you don’t start each conversation with how the other party’s candidate is a scoundrel.

The second is listening. We, who do not know ourselves, believe we understand others. We must always be reminded that each person is a world, and that the caricatures we see of others on social media and in the news are just that — a small slice of the vastness within each human being.

Still, as the poet John Masefield wrote, “I have seen flowers come in stony places.” I have witnessed parents who have buried children and believe life offers them nothing, that the world will forever be hollow, only to have another parent who has endured the same loss reach out to them and in shared grief find a new purpose, together. I have seen beautiful acts of comfort and of love. I have seen families receive meals for weeks, and in one case for years, after a loss. I have seen one child pick another up on the sports field and I have seen couples find their way back to one another after estrangements. I have watched parents choose love over rejection when the child is not who the parent expected or dreamed, and seen children forgive parents when they are not who the child needed or wished.

I am not leaving the pulpit without concerns. There are issues that have arisen in these years that I could not have anticipated when I began at the synagogue. The explosion of hatred and antisemitism throughout the world has been alarming. The debasing of discourse about Israel, the way it has been slandered everywhere from campus to Congress, is painful and at times frightening. The struggles over Covid policies and two years of separations introduced a new set of tensions and exacerbated loneliness.

Yet when I think back on the years I have been in the rabbinate, questions and controversies are not what endure. Instead I keep a mental slide show of poignancies, captured like Polaroids: The moment an autistic child bashfully presented me with a drawing. Teaching parents how to place their hands on their children to bless them on Friday night. The moment a dying man whom I had known well took my hand and thanked me, telling me he would not see me again in this world. The day I pronounced a blessing alone in a cemetery with a tiny coffin bearing twins, less than a week old, whose family could not bear to see them placed into the unforgiving ground.

Those are the outward-facing experiences. In 2003 I had a grand mal seizure when speaking at the opening of the Hillel at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. I was flown back to Los Angeles, where I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I shall never forget standing in front of my congregation a few days before my brain surgery asking for their patience and their prayers.

I still believe the synagogue is a refuge for the bereaved and provides a road map for the seeker. I have been moved by how powerful the teachings of tradition prove to be in people’s lives, helping them sort out grievances from griefs, focusing on what matters, giving poignancy to celebrations. The stories of the Torah, read year after year, wear grooves in our souls, so that patterns of life that might escape us become clear. Sibling rivalries and their costs are clear in the story of Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. The consequences of kindness emanate from the book of Ruth. We share unanswerable questions with Job and passion with the Song of Songs. The Torah acts as a spur and a salve.

Religion may be on the decline in this country and in the West, but if you wish to see the full panoply of a human life, moments of ecstatic joy and deepest sorrow, the summit of hopes and the connections of community, they exist concentrated in one place: your local house of worship.

Posted in Religion | Comments Off on As a Rabbi, I’ve Had a Privileged View of the Human Condition

ChatGPT4 wrote this sonnet for me

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: Just for fun I asked the AI program to write a Shakespearean style sonnet about an iPhone. Here’s the result. Yikes!

O iPhone, thou art a wondrous device, A marvel crafted with artistry rare, Thy sleek design doth captivate mine eyes, Thy touch doth beckon, thy features declare.

With glass and metal, thou dost proudly shine, A beacon of innovation untold, Thy screen, a canvas, where fingers entwine, To navigate a world, both new and old.

In thee, the wonders of knowledge reside, A gateway to realms of boundless delight, Thy apps and games, a universe inside, Where dreams and fantasies take flight.

Yet as I hold thee close, I can’t help yearn, For moments untouched, where life’s embers burn.

Fair iPhone, dost thou steal our precious time, With notifications that incessantly chime? Thy sirens’ call, a constant allure, A temptation hard to wholly endure.

As we immerse in thy digital grace, Doth human connection slowly efface? For in our haste to capture and share, We oft neglect those present, unaware.

Yet, in thy realm, we find solace and ease, With every task accomplished with breeze. From texts to calls, from pictures to sound, Thy arsenal vast, with wonders profound.

Oh, iPhone, thou art a double-edged sword, Both blessing and curse in this modern world.

So let us tread with caution and care, To cherish moments that truly are rare. For in the end, it is love and embrace, That fill our hearts and bestow lasting grace.

Though thou art sleek and marvelously grand, May we remember, it’s the touch of hand, The warmth of voice, the sparkle in the eye, That make life’s joys worth cherishing high.

So iPhone, thou art but a tool, indeed, Let not thy glow surpass what’s true and freed.

Posted in Poetry, Science and Technology | Comments Off on ChatGPT4 wrote this sonnet for me

Beware of the Medical Industrial Industry’s Incentives

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: In the 1970’s I was interviewed by a medical group in Seattle and was told I could become their “thyroid guy!” I was confused because I was note trained in endocrinology, but that made no difference. They’d just purchased a thyroid scanning device and said they could refer their patients to me and that the revenues would be top dollar. I quickly walked away from that offer, but that was my introduction to the problem of financial incentives for procedures, especially when linked to equipment manufacturers. This article in the NYT highlights one of the many areas in medicine where the ethics of the medical-industrial industry have gone awry.

Kelly Hanna, whose leg was amputated in 2020, received at least 18 artery-opening procedures on her legs. She was told they would improve blood flow and prevent amputations.Credit…Cydni Elledge for The New York Times

By Katie Thomas, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Robert Gebeloff

Kelly Hanna’s leg was amputated on a summer day in 2020, after a Michigan doctor who called himself the “leg saver” had damaged her arteries by snaking metal wires through them to clear away plaque.

It started with a festering wound on her left foot. Her podiatrist referred Ms. Hanna to Dr. Jihad Mustapha. Over 18 months, he performed at least that many artery-opening procedures on Ms. Hanna’s legs, telling her they would improve blood flow and prevent amputations.

They didn’t — for Ms. Hanna or many of his other patients. Surgeons at nearby hospitals had seen so many of his patients with amputations and other problems that they complained to Michigan’s medical board about his conduct. An insurance company told state authorities that 45 people had lost limbs after treatment at his clinics in the past four years.

Dr. Mustapha is no back-alley operator working in the shadows of the medical establishment, an investigation by The New York Times has found. With the financial backing of medical device manufacturers, he has become a leader of a booming cottage industry that peddles risky procedures to millions of Americans — enriching doctors and device companies and sometimes costing patients their limbs.

The industry targets the roughly 12 million Americans with peripheral artery disease, in which plaque, a sticky slurry of fat, calcium and other materials, accumulates in the arteries of the legs. For a tiny portion of patients, the plaque can choke off blood flow, leading to amputations or death.

But more than a decade of medical research has shown that the vast majority of people with peripheral artery disease have mild or no symptoms and don’t require treatment, aside from getting more exercise and taking medication. Experts said even those who do have severe symptoms, like Ms. Hanna, shouldn’t undergo repeated procedures in a short period of time.

Many people with peripheral artery disease also have heart disease or diabetes, which present serious risks. Such patients, already anxious about their health, are susceptible to warnings from doctors that, absent intrusive medical procedures, they could lose their legs.

Some doctors insert metal stents or nylon balloons to push plaque to the sides of arteries. Others perform atherectomies, in which a wire armed with a tiny blade or laser is deployed inside arteries to blast away plaque. Rigorous medical research has found that atherectomies are especially risky: Patients with peripheral artery disease who undergo the procedures are more likely to have amputations than those who do not.

The volume of these vascular procedures has been surging. The use of atherectomies, in particular, has soared — by one measure, more than doubling in the past decade, according to a Times analysis of Medicare payment data.

Atherectomies Have Soared

The number of atherectomies billed to Medicare has risen significantly over the past decade.

There are two reasons. First, the government changed how it pays doctors for these procedures. In 2008, Medicare created incentives for doctors to perform all sorts of procedures outside of hospitals, part of an effort to curb medical costs. A few years later, it began paying doctors for outpatient atherectomies, transforming the procedure into a surefire moneymaker. Doctors rushed to capitalize on the opportunity by opening their own outpatient clinics, where by 2021 they were billing $10,000 or more per atherectomy.

The second reason: Companies that make equipment for vascular procedures pumped resources into a fledgling field of medicine to build a lucrative market.

When doctors open their own vascular clinics, major players like Abbott Laboratories and Boston Scientific are there to help with training and billing tips. The electronics giant Philips works with a finance company to offer loans for equipment and dangles discounts to clinics that do more procedures.

The Times searched a database of state loan filings for the 200 doctors who have billed Medicare the most for atherectomies since 2017. At least three-quarters either received loans from the device industry or work at clinics that have. Some loans have gone to doctors with well-documented histories of endangering patients.

The device industry rewards high-volume doctors with lucrative consulting and teaching opportunities. And it sponsors medical conferences and academic journals to bolster a niche medical field that favors aggressive interventions.

This self-sustaining ecosystem is worth $2 billion a year, analysts estimate. Insurers pay doctors per procedure. And because new equipment is needed each time, the companies also profit from repeat customers.

Dr. Mustapha declined to comment on Ms. Hanna’s case, citing health care privacy law. But he strongly defended his treatment of the seriously ill patients who form the bulk of his practice. He said his clinics have “very low” rates of complications, including 1.3 percent of patients having “major amputations” within 30 days of treatment.

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“Emergency Instructions”

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Tom S.

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Record-breaking 7,200-egg omelet is cooked in a record-breaking frying pan in Chehalis on July 24, 1931.

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Jim deMaine

From History Link thanks to Bob P.

n July 24, 1931, approximately 10,000 people — including Governor Roland Hartley (1864-1952) — attend the Lewis County Farmers and Merchants Picnic at Alexander Park in Chehalis to see what is billed as the world’s largest omelet cooked in the world’s largest frying pan. A good time is had by all.

The Plan and a Pan

Three years earlier, Chehalis received nationwide attention when the townsfolk baked what was billed as the World’s Largest Strawberry Shortcake. The 16-foot-high, 20-foot-long shortcake produced 4,000 slices of tasty delight at the annual Farmer’s Picnic. Buoyed by the success of that event, and egged on by Seattle Times cameraman James Dwyer,  the town looked for another noteworthy edible that would garner even more publicity in 1931.

The Great Depression was in full swing, and local farms and businesses needed all the help they could get. Because there were so many chicken farmers in Lewis County, Chehalis opted to cook something egg-related. Chehalis promoters first planned on boiling 10,000 eggs, but decided this wasn’t interesting enough. They then settled on a 10,000-egg omelet, but what could they cook it in? It wasn’t as if anyone had an eight-foot-wide pan lying around the house. So they had to have one specially made.

The job was given to the F. S. Lang Stove Works in Seattle, which was happy to oblige. The giant utensil, weighing nearly half a ton, was shipped to Chehalis by truck. Photos of the pan being readied for transport, with local Seattle women dancing a tango on it, were published in newspapers and magazines across the country.

Wakey, Wakey, Eggs and Bakey

On the morning of July 24, 1931, approximately 10,000 people showed up for the annual picnic in Alexander Park — a record crowd for the summertime event.  Festivities started at 11:30 a.m. with an egg-cracking contest. Nineteen women vied to see who could crack a caseload of 30 dozen eggs the fastest, without leaving any shells in the yolk. The winner, Mrs. Al Blair, accomplished the task in 12 minutes.

To ready the skillet for cooking, it needed to be greased. To accomplish this, Thora Yeager (1907-2006) attached a giant slab of bacon to each of her feet and skated around the pan.  She maintained her balance by using one of the long wooden spatulas that would later be used to stir the eggs.

Yeager’s performance was one of the most photographed events of the day. She smiled for numerous newspaper reporters, as well as for anyone who brought his or her own camera. Universal Studios and Fox Movietone News were also there to film the event for its newsreels.

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How to be

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mary M.

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Night Out on 8th – Tuesday August 1st

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Entertainment, In the Neighborhood | 1 Comment

Got a tip for you

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Another July, another fire nearby

Posted on July 13, 2023 by William Calvin

The 9th & Madison intersection again fills with fire trucks. The garage building with black stripes is at the center. A total of 36 SFD vehicles clogged nearby streets.

2-Alarm vacant building fire in First Hill neighborhood
by David Cuerpo on July 13, 2023


Seattle — Wednesday night at 10:07 p.m., the Seattle Fire Department’s Fire Alarm Center received 911 calls reporting smoke and flames coming from the top floor of a four-story vacant apartment building at the 1000 block of 9th Ave. Firefighters arrived on scene four minutes later then entered the building to search for the seat of the fire and for any occupants inside. They rescued an approx. 26-year-old male found on the top floor of the building and confirmed the fire spread through multiple areas. Breaching through the roof. Crews carried the patient out of the building where paramedics provided care. They determined he was in stable condition and requested for AMR to transport him to a hospital for further medical care.

With flames breaching through the roof, firefighters were ordered to evacuate due to concerns of a structural collapse. At 10:20 p.m., the incident was upgraded to a 2-alarm fire to request additional resources. Firefighters transitioned to a defensive position where they poured water on the fire at a safe distance away from the building. Utilizing the ladder trucks’ aerial ladders to pour water onto the flames breaching through the roof. Additional firefighters climbed on top the roof of an adjacent building to pour water on the fire from their vantage point. By 11:06 p.m., the roof began to collapse.

Firefighters continue to pour water on the fire throughout the night. No additional injuries were reported and the incident is under investigation.

Updated July 13 at 9 a.m.: Fire is extinguished and a few units remain on scene for fire watch. Cause of the fire is under investigation.

Skyline tower at middle right. Fire at lower left.

A year ago, this was the scene.

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A Year of Cosmic Wonder With the James Webb Space Telescope

Posted on July 12, 2023 by Jim deMaine

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.

By Katrina Miller in the NYT

By now, perhaps, we should be getting used to unreal images of the cosmos made with the James Webb Space Telescope. But a year after NASA released the cosmic observatory’s first imagery, the space agency has dropped yet another breathtaking snapshot of our universe.

Wednesday’s image was Rho Ophiuchi, the closest nursery of infant stars in our cosmic backyard. Located a mere 390 light years away from Earth, this cloud complex is chock-full of stellar goodness.

Around 50 stars with masses comparable to our sun are sprinkled in white: some fully formed and shining bright, others still hidden behind dark, dense regions of interstellar dust. (Zoom in closer and you’ll even find a faint galaxy or two.)

Near the center of the image is a mature star called S1, its starlight illuminating the wispy yellow nebula around it. Toward the upper right are streaming red jets of molecular hydrogen, material that gets spewed out on either side of forming protostars. Black shadows near these regions are accretion disks of swirling gas and dust — some of which could be in the process of creating planetary systems.

The awe the image inspires is comparable to how researchers feel about the Webb’s first year of science.

“As an astronomer that lives and breathes this mission, I’m having to work really hard to keep up — there are so many discoveries,” said Jane Rigby, the senior project scientist for the telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She finds it fitting that the customary gift for one-year anniversaries is paper, because that’s exactly what researchers using the telescope have been churning out for the past year: scientific papers.

The observatory launched on Christmas in 2021, and scientists spent the next six months prepping the telescope for action: unfolding its sun shield and the honeycomb-like array of golden mirrors, then running tests of the four instruments used to observe the cosmos. When it was ready, the Webb embarked on its journey to peer into the depths of the universe.

The telescope’s agenda has been jam-packed ever since. It has checked out asteroids, quasars, exoplanets and other cosmic phenomena galore. For Dr. Rigby, one of the most gratifying accomplishments of this past year is the way the mission has delivered on its promise to reveal the earliest moments of cosmic time.

“That was the elevator pitch: We’re going to show you the baby pictures of the universe,” she said.

Indeed it has. Before JWST, astronomers knew of only a small handful of candidate galaxies that existed in the first billion years after the Big Bang. Within the past year, hundreds of them — bigger and brighter than expected, packed with forming stars swirling around supermassive black holes — have been confirmed.

“The data from the telescope is better than we promised,” Dr. Rigby said. “It’s over-performed in almost every way.”

Already, the telescope’s schedule for the next year is set, with roughly 5,000 hours of prime observing time for a suite of projects related to galactic formation, stellar chemistry, the behavior of black holes, the large-scale structure of our universe and more. Many of these projects — more ambitious than last year, now that scientists know what the telescope can do — are dedicated to following up on Webb’s own discoveries.

Though the telescope is operated by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, observers from around the globe were selected to use it. “This is the telescope for humanity, and we want the best ideas from the whole world,” Dr. Rigby said. “That’s how we’re doing things.”

Katrina Miller is a science reporting fellow for The Times. She recently earned her Ph.D. in particle physics from the University of Chicago.

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Washington University Scientists Develop An Air Monitor That Can Detect Covid-19 Virus

Posted on July 12, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Michael T. Nietzel Senior Contributor, Forbes

Thanks to Pam P.

A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a real-time air monitor that can detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants that are present in a room in about 5 minutes.

The proof-of-concept device was created by researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine at Washington University. The team includes Rajan Chakrabarty, the Harold D. Jolley Career Development Associate Professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in McKelvey Engineering; Joseph Puthussery, a postdoctoral research associate in Chakrabarty’s lab; John Cirrito, professor of neurology at the School of Medicine; and Carla Yuede, associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine.

The results are contained in a July 10 publication in Nature Communications that provides details about how the technology works.

The device holds promise as a breakthrough that – when commercially available – could be used in hospitals and health care facilities, schools, congregate living quarters, and other public places to help detect not only the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but other other respiratory virus aerosol such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well.

“There is nothing at the moment that tells us how safe a room is,” Cirrito said, in the university’s news release. “If you are in a room with 100 people, you don’t want to find out five days later whether you could be sick or not. The idea with this device is that you can know essentially in real time, or every 5 minutes, if there is a live virus in the air.”

The team combined expertise in biosensing with knowhow in designing instruments that measure the toxicity of air. The resulting device is an air sampler that operates based on what’s called “wet cyclone technology.” Air is sucked into the sampler at very high speeds and is then mixed centrifugally with a fluid containing a nanobody that recognizes the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That fluid, which lines the walls of the sampler, creates a surface vortex that traps the virus aerosols. The wet cyclone sampler has a pump that collects the fluid and sends it to the biosensor for detection of the virus using electrochemistry.

The success of the instrument is linked to the extremely high velocity it generates – the monitor has a flow rate of about 1,000 liters per minute – allowing it to sample a much larger volume of air over a 5-minute collection period than what is possible with currently available commercial samplers. It’s also compact – about one foot wide and 10 inches tall – and lights up when a virus is detected, alerting users to increase airflow or circulation in the room.

To test the monitor, the team placed it in the apartments of two Covid-positive patients. The real-time air samples from the bedrooms were then compared with air samples collected from a virus-free control room. The device detected the RNA of the virus in the air samples from the bedrooms but did not detect any in the control air samples.

In laboratory experiments that aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 into a room-sized chamber, the wet cyclone and biosensor were able to detect varying levels of airborne virus concentrations after only a few minutes of sampling, according to the study.

“We are starting with SARS-CoV-2, but there are plans to also measure influenza, RSV, rhinovirus and other top pathogens that routinely infect people,” Cirrito said. “In a hospital setting, the monitor could be used to measure for staph or strep, which cause all kinds of complications for patients. This could really have a major impact on people’s health.”

The Washington University team is now working to commercialize the air quality monitor.

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What scares you the most

Posted on July 11, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Sybil-Ann

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