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
READ MORE 1 COMMENTSMost Popular
Crosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most clicks.
- Viaduct politicians reach a big moment of truth
- Meet the Pacific albus tree, harbinger of green forestry
- Seattle school closure plan, due Tuesday, still doesn't add up
- Seattle Times Co. still trying to close sale of Maine papers
- Five things that make even a Mossback happy
- Monorails: the idea that will not die
- Recession, wrecking balls, and history
- If you convene citizens, listen to them
- One-upping the Choppaduct
- 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear, Essay 7
Most Commented
Crosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most reader comments.
- Monorails: the idea that will not die
(19 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear, Essay 7
(17 comments) - Seattle school closure plan, due Tuesday, still doesn't add up
(11 comments) - Viaduct politicians reach a big moment of truth
(9 comments) - Think before you cut the state auditor's budget
(8 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 5
(6 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 8
(6 comments) - Recession, wrecking balls, and history
(5 comments) - Seattle Times Co. still trying to close sale of Maine papers
(5 comments) - Five things that make even a Mossback happy
(4 comments)
Health / Medicine
Crosscut most recent
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
The science of chocolate
Posted Thu, Nov 13, midnight
A Fremont shop will show you how chocolate goes from bean to bar.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE 2 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 7 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 8 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 28 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE 3 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE 5 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 7 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE COMMENT NOW
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.
READ MORE 7 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 8 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 16 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 3 COMMENTS
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.
READ MORE 3 COMMENTSOther media
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.
MOREIs 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.
MOREA vaccine-delivering mosquito, and other research ideas
Posted Thu, Oct 30, 10 a.m. 2008
Global health funding gets freaky.
MORECutting-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.
MOREPhysician-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.
MORERegence 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."
MORESausage 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. ...
MOREA 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.
MORESausage 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. ...
MOREIt'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.
MORE
