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2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 13

Posted Tue, Jan 6, 6 a.m.

Why the odds are long for an economic and social turnaround

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A Christmas essay: a better way to help the homeless

Posted Thu, Dec 25, 9 a.m.

Vancouver faces a potential public relations embarrassment during the 2010 Olympics, owing to the city's tremendous homeless population. An architect proposes a bold solution: temporary, modular housing.

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What Somali pirates can learn from Walla Walla and Wall Street

Posted Wed, Nov 26, 7 a.m.

Washington's death row inmates and corporate fat cats are employing strategies that could come in handy for seagoing brigands.

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The science of chocolate

Posted Thu, Nov 13, midnight

A Fremont shop will show you how chocolate goes from bean to bar.

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Oat straw, to ease your election fears

Posted Thu, Oct 30, midnight

Our Zen gardener advises, "Drink until election day," but it's not what you think.

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Anger over the right to die

Posted Fri, Oct 24, midnight

If God wants to join the political debate over assisted suicide, he should expect a bloody nose.

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When brain surgery isn't brain surgery

Posted Sun, Sep 21, 8 p.m.

Other people's smarts will only get you so far. Our mind-numb humorist explores the limits of anti-elitism.

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Taking 'Death with Dignity' lessons from Oregon

Posted Thu, Sep 18, 3 a.m.

Washington state voters must soon make up their minds about I-1000, a measure supporting physician-assisted suicide, which appears on the ballot this November. Former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts championed a similar law in her home state and supports I-1000. Here's a look at the results of Oregon's law, passed in 1997, and the issues surrounding it.

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The rebirth of activist theater

Posted Thu, Sep 4, 1 p.m.

Now in its third year, Puget Sound's BOLD theater group presents another round of consciousness-raising theater shows coupled with "Red Tent" events focused on the birthing experience.

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Stymied by mosquitoes and bacteria

Posted Wed, Sep 3, midnight

Impatient for solutions to AIDS, tuberculosis, and infectious disease, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put out a call for anyone who thought they had an idea — and more than 4,000 poured forth. A second request for grant applications goes out today.

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For Gates, global health should drive foreign policy

Posted Fri, Aug 22, 4 a.m.

Gates Foundation-funded research is putting war deaths three times higher than conventional ways of counting them. In turn, good data might drive good international politics.

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In the absence of an AIDS cure, prevention gains prominence

Posted Thu, Aug 7, 5 a.m.

As vaccine research retrenches, scientists seek to provide a stopgap with new approaches to HIV prevention that were first explored with help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Seattle City Hall stares at $50 million in cuts

Posted Thu, Jul 31, midnight

As the economy shrinks tax revenue, the mayor and City Council are making cuts, with more to come next year. One possible casualty would be 20 to 25 promised new cops.

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More fun than Deliverance!

Posted Fri, Jul 18, 5 a.m.

Spend your summer vacation in Eastern Washington, an exotic locale where lakes are slippery, the Scablands surprising, and wheat farmers are smashing stuff for fun.

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Salmonella may be a key for a new vaccine

Posted Wed, Jul 9, 2 p.m.

Gates Foundation-backed vaccine developers have found a way to send genetic text messages to the cells of the body to evoke immunity to pneumonia. It could save the lives of a million children a year, yet fluency in the language of the immune system will not come easily.

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Health insurance coverage vs. science

Posted Tue, Jul 1, 5 a.m.

A device to help those with autism and other conditions communicate has been excluded — and then included, and then excluded again — from health insurance coverage in Washington. At issue is the process by which insurers decide what's covered and why, which doesn't always reflect scientific consensus.

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Bill Gates 2.0

Posted Sun, Jun 29, 9 p.m.

Traditional methods of scientific research have not produced the medical breakthroughs he expected. Now he's going to use his money, through the Gates Foundation, to challenge old ways. The man is breathtaking.

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Energy and desperation on the streets of Seattle

Posted Thu, Jun 12, 5 a.m.

A foreign tourist sees this as a place where citizens and the bureaucracy have in many ways abandoned each other, resulting in individualism, survivalism, and capitalism.

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One Seattle chaplain's story of homelessness

Posted Tue, Jun 10, 9 p.m.

A chaplain whose pioneering work to end homelessness is recognized worldwide shares the story of encountering the limits of the city's mental health system.

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The animal-waste problem is, and is not, a load of crap

Posted Tue, Jun 10, 10 a.m.

Researchers in Snohomish County estimate that pets there account for waste equivalent to a city of 32,000. That's a lot of nasty bacteria in surface-water runoff.

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Other media

How did Vancouver, WA get drunks off the streets? Officials aren't sure which of several programs led to big decline in public intoxication. Voluntary ban on single can sales of high-alcohol beverages seems important.

Study: cities are bad for your brain Just a few minutes on a bustling urban street and your brain reels.

Optimism in short supply for Venture Capital firms Report from Silicon Valley: Web 2.0 has passed its prime. The search for clean tech companies is getting more realistic. Personal health care companies may be one area of growth.

"Dismal inaction" at OSHA Under Bush, workers' health took a back seat to industry's wishes.

Proposed bill would require MRSA screening Hospitals would be forced to do more to spot the deadly pathogen, under legislation prompted by an investigative series in Seattle Times

Blog posts

The heart of a heart surgeon

Posted Wed, Nov 19, 4:24 p.m. 2008

The writer recalls getting to know Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz, the legendary pioneer of heart transplants.

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Is Northwest nature worship neurological?

Posted Thu, Nov 20, 6:30 a.m. 2008

Our religious impulses toward the wilderness could be boosted by the way our brains work.

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A vaccine-delivering mosquito, and other research ideas

Posted Thu, Oct 30, 10 a.m. 2008

Global health funding gets freaky.

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Cutting-edge brain science comes to Seattle

Posted Fri, Oct 24, 10 a.m. 2008

Swedish opens a brain cancer center that works like a university, and looks like a spa.

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Physician-assisted suicide: two stories

Posted Wed, Oct 8, 3:19 a.m. 2008

George Eighmey, the father of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, spoke yesterday at a conference in Yakima, and concluded his very sober presentation with two stories, both about his experiences sitting with patients just before they died from lethal medication. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, and in case you missed it, it's on the ballot this election here in Washington state.

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Regence reverses its position on autism devices

Posted Tue, Sep 9, 3:38 a.m. 2008

Regence Blue Shield has recently changed its policy to cover speech-generating devices (SGDs), which allow non-verbal people — such as those with autism — to communicate. In the past, Regence denied coverage for these devices for those with autism or mental retardation, citing that SGD use by people with these diagnoses was "investigational."

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Sausage Links, it's time to be partisan edition

Posted Mon, Sep 8, 12:29 p.m. 2008

There's an interesting guest column in today's edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It's written by Gov. Chris Gregoire's driver during the Democratic National Convention, a Colorado State Trooper and lifelong Republican, who says Gregoire may be "a strong advocate for her party, but she is not a 'partisan' in the way the term has recently become defined." Naturally, some Gregoire supporters see the story as a good example of the governor as an appealing post-partisan politician. But not everyone thinks non-partisanship is a good thing – for Washington state politics, that is. Liberal blogger David Goldstein at Horse's Ass sees it a little differently, saying Gregoire actually needs to be more partisan if she wants to get things done in Olympia. ...

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A Seattle gold rush house is endangered

Posted Sun, Aug 31, 5 a.m. 2008

There's little question that Seattle was put on the map by the Klondike Gold Rush. The man credited with setting off that rush, George W. Carmack, spent the last dozen years of his life living in a big Colonial Revival home in what is now Seattle's Central District. The National Park Service says the George Carmack House is fit for the National Register, but it may be too late. A for sale banner hangs on it today touting the property as a 4,800-foot lot ripe for redevelopment.

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Sausage links, Clinton overkill edition

Posted Tue, Aug 26, 3:01 p.m. 2008

Michelle Obama's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention has the pundits praising – and rightly so. Like Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial cartoonist David Horsey wrote: She "hit it out of the park." But as Camp Clinton prepares to take the stage in Denver tonight and Wednesday, the convention buzz has turned to back to speculation about Hill and Bill. And I'm getting tired of it. ...

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It's all bad for you, and it's all good

Posted Thu, Aug 21, 5 p.m. 2008

I appreciate the media bringing attention to health issues. Particularly good is Jean Enersen's HealthLink on KING-5. But recently, a number of the advisories have made me more neurotic than usual. The one about moisturizers increasing skin cancer really made me listen, although I was less concerned when I heard that the study was conducted on hairless mice.

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