Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Toe Spacing: More Important Than You Probably Thought

Toe spacers can be built into socks (bottom right)
The hot new fitness device is toe spacers.
The pursuit of perfect toe alignment has made the humble toe spreader the new must-have training tool after previously being associated mainly with pedicures and bunions. You place it between your toes to improve alignment, like braces. The items can cost under $10...

The foot should act like a tripod, with weight evenly distributed between the center of the heel, the ball of the big toe and the base of the little toe.

The spacing should be widest at the toes, says Dr. Dennis Cardone, a sports medicine specialist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. When the toes get scrunched, the foot tripod narrows, which can affect our balance, he says.

Tight shoes that cramp the toes can lead to deformities, such as bunions, where the big toe is pulled toward the smaller toes, and hammer toes, where the toe becomes bent at the middle joint. The wrong shoes can also cause inflammatory conditions like plantar fasciitis...

A study published in the medical journal Clinical Biomechanics linked the presence of toe deformities, combined with toe weakness, to increased falls in older people...

The devices can be made from felt, foam or silicone gel. You can find basic toe spreaders in drugstores, while foot specialists sell versions for up to $65. Companies are designing colorful spacers in aqua and plum, and blingy spreaders shaped like gemstones.
Several in our household wear special orthotics indoors. I don't need them--yet--but toe spacers look like an inexpensive preventive device that can pay huge dividends.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Sites Reservoir May Come On Stream in 2032

Sites Reservoir will cover some of this
area in Colusa County (Merc photo)
The long-delayed Sites Reservoir will start construction in 2026 and come on stream in 2032, all contingent upon overcoming objections by the usual suspects:
If the project overcomes opposition and a lawsuit by environmental groups, the 1.5 million-acre-foot Sites Reservoir would be California’s eighth largest. It would be four times the size of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, which is the main water supply for San Francisco and the Peninsula. It would provide water to 500,000 acres of Central Valley farmlands, and 24 million people, including parts of Silicon Valley, the East Bay and Los Angeles.
The $4.5 billion project will be funded from a half-dozen different sources and has been "discussed on and off since the 1950s." With over 90% of the financing in place, and with a signoff from all major State and Federal agencies, Sites looks likely to happen. It's nice to know that California can still get things done.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Unexpectedly Nice

Every 500 feet on its portion of the Bay Trail the City of Foster City has placed benches for people to take in a view of the lagoon.

Some kind soul placed a bottle of flowers at one bench to brighten everyone who chanced to rest there.

I don't wish to over-praise the effort or its importance, but it was an unexpectedly nice public-spirited gesture in a world that could use more of them.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Light at the End of the Tunnel

The future Fresno station: too bad we'll never see it. (Chron)
We were skeptical of the high-speed rail project when it was announced in 2012. As cost estimates tripled, milestones got pushed out, and expectations were massaged down, we became convinced it would never be completed. From 2018:
I'd bet money on this: we will put a human being on Mars before anyone travels from LA to SF on high-speed rail.
In 2024 harsh realities are at last sinking in.
the project remains about $7 billion short of the cost to complete the initial segment from Merced to Bakersfield.

The rail project also needs about $100 billion to make the original vision of linking San Francisco and Los Angeles via bullet trains a reality. And some of the project’s watchdogs say state leaders need to decide soon whether to commit to the entire project — or abandon it.
In an election year no one in power will admit to this multi-billion-dollar disaster, much less allow the project to be cancelled. Nevertheless, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel---and it's not an oncoming train.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Nyet to Neti Pots

Neti pots (Mercury News/AP)
When the hay fever gets intense and when the pills and inhalers don't provide relief, allergy sufferers can rinse their nasal passages with saline solution. However, the appliance of choice, the neti pot, now comes with a warning from the CDC: [bold added]
Neti pots are one of the better known tools of nasal rinsing. They look like small teapots with long spouts, and usually are made of ceramic or plastic.

Users fill them with a saline solution, then pour the liquid in one nostril. It comes out the other, draining the nasal passage of allergens and other bothersome contaminants...

More than a decade ago, health officials linked U.S. deaths from a brain-eating amoeba — named Naegleria fowleri — to nasal rinsing. More recently, they started to note nasal rinsing as a common theme in illnesses caused by another microscopic parasite, Acanthamoeba.

Acanthamoeba causes different kinds of illness but is still dangerous, with a 85% fatality rate in reported cases...

This amoeba can be found naturally all over the environment — in lakes, rivers, seawater and soil.

It can cause diseases of the skin and sinuses, and can infect the brain, where it can cause a deadly form of inflammation. The microorganism also has been connected to non-fatal, but sight-threatening, eye infections, sometimes through contaminated contact lens solution.

U.S. health officials have identified about 180 infections from the single-cell organism since the first one was diagnosed in 1956.

In the vast majority of cases, researcher don’t know exactly how people became infected. But in reviewing cases in recent decades, CDC researchers increasingly received information that a number of the cases had done nasal rinsing, Haston said.

Research also has indicated it’s common in tap water. A study done in Ohio in the 1990s found more than half of tap water samples studied contained the amoeba and similar microorganisms.
I use a neti pot occasionally, and warm tap water brings relief when nasal passages are swollen. However, I'm going to switch to distilled or pre-boiled water. I've lost enough brain cells already.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Her Honesty Research Was Dishonest

Francesco Gino
You can't make this stuff up.

Harvard University has found that "prominent" researcher Francesco Gino, "known for her research into the reasons people lie and cheat", manipulated her data.
The investigative committee that produced the nearly 1,300-page document included three Harvard Business School professors tapped by HBS dean Srikant Datar to examine accusations about Gino’s work.

They concluded after a monthslong probe conducted in 2022 and 2023 that Gino “engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct” in the four papers they examined. They recommended that the university audit Gino’s other experimental work, request retractions of three of the papers (the fourth had already been retracted at the time they reviewed it), and place Gino on unpaid leave while taking steps to terminate her employment.
After this incident and the Claudine Gay fiasco, it would be nice if Harvard people became less insufferable, but don't hold your breath.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

A Straw to Grasp

2023 gathering in Dolores Park (Chron)
When I hold losing stocks, I often seize upon any positive bit of news to justify holding on (and rationalizing my poor buy decision). Here's a straw for die-hard San Francisco believers to grasp:
San Francisco’s pandemic exodus is over, and its population grew slightly last year, new census data shows.

The city’s population increased to an estimated 808,988 residents as of July 2023, up 0.15% from the prior year’s revised 807,774, according to census data released late Wednesday. It remains far below its pre-pandemic level, down nearly 65,000 people or an estimated 7.4% compared to April 2020, after seeing some of the heaviest losses in the country.
Going up by a thousand people hardly signifies a turnaround--or even a bottoming out--of San Francisco, especially in the face of macro data:
There are other signs that the city is still struggling: Apartment rents are still below 2019 levels, making San Francisco an anomaly. Retailers are still shuttering downtown, citing lack of foot traffic. A record number of vacant offices are listed for lease.
The artificial-intelligence hiring boom isn't broad enough to offset the losses in non-AI tech, retail, finance, and travel and leisure, but hope springs eternal.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Checking and Refilling Tires: Easier Than Ever

"That tire looks flat." More often than not, that statement from a stranger is what usually prompted me to check the air pressure on car tires for over 50 years. (I won't be too self-deprecating; I always checked the water, oil, and tires before leaving on an out-of-town trip.)

Fast forward to 2024. The dashboard on the Lexus flashed the warning light (right). One or more tires had low pressure. Sure enough, the tire pressure gauge showed all four tires to be in the 27-29 PSI range, when they all should have been at 33 PSI.

When I started driving, every service station had an air pump that customers used for free. When self-service became the norm, the air pumps began costing at least 50 cents, and if the customer wasn't quick the machine would turn off after 5 minutes, and he had to feed in more quarters.

Today there is only one service station in Foster City that has a free air pump, and there is usually a line of cars waiting to use it.

But refilling tires has also moved into the 21st century. The local Costco has installed two air pumps by the tire center. No ID required: just input the pressure target, in this case 33 PSI, affix the end of the green tube, and the machine fills the tire until it hits the mark, beeps, then turns off. Repeat three times, et voila, properly pressurized tires. The dashboard warning light switched off.

Costco even uses pure nitrogen gas, which causes less wear and tear than ordinary air.

I'd still shop at Costco even if it didn't have the fancy Nitrogen air pump, but amenities like these only make customer loyalties stronger.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Easy Risk Evaluation

The now half-empty San Francisco
Centre was filled in 2003
It's no surprise that banks are experiencing losses on property loans in U.S. cities: [bold added]
two banks that have reignited worries about property lending in recent days are one based in the New York region, New York Community Bancorp, and one based in Japan, Aozora Bank. Shares of both banks plunged this past week after they reported increased credit concerns related to commercial property risks in the U.S...

At Aozora, the at-risk property loans identified were concentrated in big cities. Of the 21 nonperforming U.S. office loans, with $719 million outstanding, that it reported this past week, the largest chunks by city were $171 million in Chicago and $127 million in Los Angeles. “The volume of property sales remains very low,” the bank wrote about Chicago’s office market in a presentation.

In a January report, Moody’s Analytics found the biggest percentage-point increase in office vacancies among U.S. metro areas over 12 months was in San Francisco, followed by Austin, Texas.
Other concentrations of problematic real estate loans were in New York and Los Angeles. Note: every single one of the cities named in the article has a Democratic mayor. Were your humble blogger a bank risk officer he would simply deny real estate loans to cities that had Democratic leadership. (Yes, I'd miss out on some profits in, for example, Knoxville, TN or Columbia, MD, but in banking big write-offs are to be avoided more than profits on risky loans are sought). Then I'd go home and have an untroubled sleep.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

The Hell of Our Imaginings

(From infernodotblog)
There are as many--perhaps more--visions of hell as there are of heaven. They range from the elaborately constructed nine circles of Dante's Inferno to an infinitely large room of emptiness.
Is the eternal fire a metaphor? If so, what does it mean? Is hell a physical place or a state of mind? Is there such a thing as eternal life—and if God’s verdict goes against you, does that mean a life of everlasting torment? Is it possible to believe in hell if you don’t believe in God, or is hell the terrible solitude of living without God?

Pope Francis himself has defined hell as “eternal solitude.” By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre, the pontiff of existentialism, wrote that “hell is other people.” Which is it?

Evelyn Waugh proposed a darkly witty version of hell in his novel “A Handful of Dust.” It ends with the hero, an English gentleman lost in the Amazonian rain forest, held prisoner by an illiterate mixed-race Guianan who happens to own a complete set of Dickens and forces his captive to read it aloud, over and over again, without hope of release.

Hell expanded centuries ago from theology into literature. Great writers have had a crack at it. Dante set the standard. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is magnificent, although, as Samuel Johnson remarked, “no one wished it longer.” Milton’s fallen Lucifer sounds unexpectedly modern when he cries, “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Is it the case that we make our own hell?
Whatever our visions of hell, it does seem that we are much less concerned with the afterlife than were our ancestors. The rewards of heaven and the miseries of hell don't seem to motivate people's behavior. As for me, as I enter the winter of my life, the reasoning of Pascal's Wager appeals, so I may as well try to be good and do good.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

One Sign That Inflation is Abating

Spam is on sale again at Costco. At eight cans for $17.99, it's the same price as it was 17 months ago.

For comparison sake pre-COVID prices were $14.99 in 2019 and $13.99 in 2018.

Inflation is abating, but hopes for disinflation back to 2019 price levels is not going to happen any time soon. But that's ok. I have plenty of Spam to tide me over.

Friday, March 08, 2024

Fill the Bottle, Shake, Pour

I've given blood and urine samples before, but this time the urologist wanted samples covering a 24-hour period.

The orange bottle came with detailed instructions about collection, refrigeration, shaking the bottle for one minute, pouring samples into other containers, labeling and sealing the bottles, putting them in plastic bags, and completing the accompanying forms. When leaving home, I carried the bottle in a discreet shopping bag. It was a relief dropping off the samples (but not the orange container) early this morning.

The lab thought of everything. There were instructions (below) to get a second bottle if the first, which held about one gallon, was insufficient to hold the day's production. One orange bottle was more than adequate.

If I made a mistake on any step in the process, I would have to do it all over again. This was a test in more ways than one. I hope I passed.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Life's Purpose: A Psychiatrist Has the Answer

I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say about life's purpose (while noting that a sizeable number who are overwhelmingly atheist assert that life has no purpose).

Yale Associate Professor of Psychiatry Samuel Wilkinson thinks he has found the answer based on his studies of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology.
In an interview with Yale News, Wilkinson discusses what inspired his fascination with understanding life’s purpose, how nature instills in humans a “dual potential,” and the evolutionary forces that spur us to be our more altruistic selves.

“When you combine the concept that we are free to choose with the dual potential of human nature, to me this strongly implies that life is a test,” said Wilkinson, who is also director of the Yale Depression Research Program. “The purpose of life is to choose between the good and evil impulses inherent within us.

“This seems to be written into our DNA.”

...I totally acknowledge we have a capacity for selfishness, but in other ways we also have a deep capacity for altruism. In a way that was unexpected to me, evolution has shaped us such that we are pulled in different directions. This is a core example of how nature has left us conflicted, what in the book I call the “dual potential” of human nature.
Prof. Wilkinson has a scientific explanation for the selfish and altruistic duality of human behavior--it's built into our DNA. But I'm still at a loss to see why one is necessarily better than the other, or why life is a "test" to see whether we will choose altruism. Who is the Grader?

Science is excellent at explaining why things work, but it's so far been lacking in determining answers to basic questions, for example, if I died today did my life have value? By the way, by what criteria does one determine that value?

Or maybe I had value because I left children behind. So that's it: propagate the species? If so, individual rats and cockroaches do more for their species than I did for mine. And so on and so forth.

For now I'll search for answers in the writings of philosophers and theologians rather than psychiatrists. One good things about Prof. Wilkinson's attempt is that it prompted me to get cracking on reading Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin while there's still time to do so.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Upper Arlington High School Orchestras

On one of my visits to the Ala Moana Shopping Center last month, I stopped to listen to the Upper Arlington High School (Ohio) orchestras. Their intonation was good, they watched the conductor assiduously, and half the string players had decent vibrato.

After the second orchestra took the stage, I asked one parent (she was wearing one of the UAHS aloha shirts) whether there was any difference between the two. She said that both were equally talented, which is something I would say if I were in her place. It turned out that the first was a full orchestra with brass and woodwinds, while the second was all strings. For my money, the latter seemed more skilled but I'm biased because my instrument was the violin.

Both orchestras ended with a patriotic medley bookended by the usual standards America the Beautiful and the Star-Spangled Banner. When I was a kid (hey boomer), everyone stood when the national anthem was played, but on this day no one budged from the chairs. To be fair, most of the seated were elderly, and some looked like they could be foreign visitors. Nevertheless, in today's America accepted cultural understandings are exceedingly rare, as are excellent public high school orchestras.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Primary Election Day

Foster City Library
I did my civic duty and cast my ballot in person earlier today at the Foster City library.

There were a limited number of offices to vote on, and only one proposition, Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond to build mental health treatment facilities and housing for the homeless. I voted "no" on Prop. 1, not because I don't want to spend money on mental health and/or the homeless but because I have little faith that the monies will actually help the intended recipients. They'll probably be diverted to consultants, planners, government agencies, and non-profits. We've been fooled before: in 2014 Californians approved a $7.5 billion bond measure to build more water storage; ten years later not one reservoir has been built.

The U.S. Senate race I also found interesting because of the way in which Democrat Adam Schiff "picked his opponent," Republican Steve Garvey. In California the top two vote getters in the primaries face off in the general election, and Adam Schiff ran ads that warned against Steve Garvey's conservatism, boosting the latter's profile amongst Republicans and some independents. A Democrat like Katie Porter would have likely proved a tougher opponent in November. If one is a fan of political strategy, one has to give credit where it's due.