Recent Stories in News

You know that mournful, mysterious train whistle you hear sometimes downtown? Here's the culprit: a freight train emerging from the South Portal of the Great Northern Tunnel.

Perhaps encouraged by the Seattle Times Truth Needle series, people are taking it upon themselves to correct the Times' reporting: Previously, the Seattle Bike Blog has fisked Joni Balter and Nicole Brodeur columns for their specious car vs. bikes set-ups (and let's not forget Sightline's succinct "Seattle Times Flunks Math").

Now Jon Scholes, vice-president of advocacy and economic development for the Downtown Seattle Association, has written an open letter to the Times to point out that enforcing parking limits is not, in fact, an anti-business move. That doesn't mean the Times doesn't write good stories; just this morning there's a great piece on why it seems like there are so many spiders around lately.

After years of crying out in the boom-erness, Seattle Bubble is now becoming our own Paul Krugman of real estate, getting quoted far and wide on how a home is different from a retirement account. TechFlash is covering Paul Allen's Friday patent freak-out. Crosscut suggested that Mayor McGinn might be some kinda new-Jerry-Brown-style leader. (Where have I read that before?) Publicola has outsourced a temp column to Mexico City's Grant Cogswell, who, judging from the comments section, has still got that gadfly "it" factor.

Meanwhile, in neighborhoodliness news, a woman vanished from Hemp Fest. [UPDATE: Found! says the comments section.] CHS walked Broadway with the King County Council's Larry Phillips, who was not beaten and robbed. CD News waded into the intersection of nightlife rules and race. Queen Anne View covered City Council activity on urban farming, which increases the chickens you can have from three to eight.... (more)

Phil Talmadge

Usually it is a Tim Eyman initiative that people are reassuring themselves is unconstitutional; but in this case, a former state Supreme Court justice, Phil Talmadge, has written that I-1098's income tax would likely fall afoul of the court. (The NPI Advocate mentions that "Phil Talmadge was part of the majority that struck down Tim Eyman's first unconstitutional initiative... I-695.")

Talmadge notes first that Washington, very unusually, considers income property, and places strict limits on property tax rates. Secondly, he notes that the state constitution ensures protection against unequal taxation, which would also augur against I-1098, the "high-earners tax."

In the opposite corner is Hugh Spitzer, who argues that previous state rulings in the 1930s were based on federal rulings themselves reversed or wiped out; only two states, including Washington, still maintain income is property.

But Spitzer can't say, as Talmadge can, that he's already tried, as a legislator, to introduce an income tax, or that he authored a dissenting opinion while on the Supreme Court in 1999 that questioned the validity of the court's ruling that income was property. ("[T]hat position commanded only two other votes on the Court," Talmadge writes ruefully.)

Otherwise, supporters of I-1098 are fighting the good fight with charts and graphs that demonstrate it really is a "soak the rich" scheme. (I-1098's income tax would only kick in for any income earned over $200,000 for individuals, $400,000 for couples.)... (more)

"New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Back" is the headline in the New York Times, which is the home of serious readers who don't need--never asked for--color. Yes, there's a fervent hallelujah chorus from tech blogs and magazines, but if you're selling a long-form e-reader, the long-form newspaper is where you want to be.

Tech columnist David Pogue weighs in on the next-gen Kindle v. iPad match-up and concludes the two devices are really not for the same audiences, and in fact are more differentiated than ever before: "The Kindle 3 is ingeniously designed to be everything the iPad will never be: small, light and inexpensive."

Thank god, then, for the iPad, because previously the Kindle was not really setting records in two of those three departments, certainly not on price. Now comes a Kindle that measures 7.5 x 4.8 inches, that's only 3/10s of an inch thick, that weighs in at 8.5 ounces--and the Wi-Fi only version subtracts only $140 from your wallet (with 3G, $190).

In one of their context-free news releases, Amazon crows that the new Kindle is selling fast and is their hottest selling product (which is what happens when public relations becomes a marketing plaything). Contrast has increased "50 percent," and battery life is said to be up to a month if you're just reading (no wireless). Downsides: You're still tied to the Kindle's book format, and you can't loan your purchases to other Kindle owners.

Bothell's Marina Biotech has sold the patent rights and technology it holds for the intranasal formulation of synthetic oxytocin analogue Carbetocin to Cypress Bioscience, reports the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Marina Biotech is now focusing on RNA interference technology, to control disease-causing protein expression; Carbetocin is arguably a better fit for Cypress, who work on the development of drugs that affect the central nervous system, and have a good record of bringing them to market speedily.

Cypress is making an upfront payment of $750,000, with up to $27 million more tied to stages of successful drug development, with "single-digit royalties [going] to Marina Biotech based on commercial sales, if any," summarizes the news release.

What makes Carbetocin worth all this is a) Marina Biotech's intranasal delivery system, which has completed Phase I study, and b) the longer serum half-life of Carbetocin compared to oxytocin (it persists in the blood stream longer). There is also a c) which is potential upside to an oxytocin-based therapy for autism.

While the miracle-cure effects of oxytocin were trumpeted in the press earlier this year (ScienceDaily, Newsweek), like the early notion of the "serotonin deficit" accounting for depression, a simple "oxytocin deficit" hypothesis hasn't been borne out by studies [Modahl, et al, pdf]. (As a spectrum disorder, autism wouldn't necessarily be expected to have a single cause.) Recent studies have shown and not shown a link between the oxytocin receptor gene and autism.

Still, evidence is mounting that oxytocin has therapeutic effects: reducing social anxiety, promoting attention to faces, encouraging imitative behavior, inhibiting repetitive behaviors, helping strengthen emotional memory. Given that in one study, the researchers had to account for the effects of clonidine, Depakote, Tegretol, Dilantin, Ritalin, lithium, and Haldol on their study subjects' oxytocin levels, a therapeutic drug that's an analogue for a naturally occurring hormone is a bright moment in autism treatment, all by itself.... (more)

Mayor McGinn

"As of late last year, only 28 percent of small businesses were using bank loans, the lowest rate since 1993," notes the Seattle Jobs Plan, unveiled yesterday by Mayor McGinn.

A chunk of the $50 million in business financing that the city plans to distribute within an 18-month window will go to start-ups and small- and medium-sized businesses looking for loans to help them invest in operations or expand.

Millions more in tax exempt stimulus bonds and tax credits are targeted at large businesses, with a priority given for "projects that create or retain permanent jobs, increase the availability of goods, and serve as an anchor for future economic development in low-income communities."

It's a plan that seems to include the kitchen sink--job training and preparation for college is in there ($2 million), interim parking lots near light rail stations, street food vendors, a city-owned broadband network expanded to homes and businesses, urban farming, and energy-efficient retrofitting ($26 million).

Totaling it all up, the city expects to create around 10,000 jobs in the next few years, reports Seattlepi.com, while it's not really on the hook for much of the financing: "roughly $70 million for business loans and tax credits come from new federal funds and leveraged local dollars from partnerships."... (more)

Seattle/LocalHealthGuide has a story on the intercontinental team who have discovered the genetic link to a form of muscular dystrophy. Their paper, published in Science, details how expression of the DUX4 homeobox gene by an otherwise harmless stretch of "junk DNA" results in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).

They're hypothesizing that the DUX4 protein is at some level toxic to muscle cell development, which results in FSHD's "weakness and wasting" of muscles in the face, shoulders, and upper arms--which can later reach the abdomen and hips. Eventually, it could be possible to medically disrupt the protein-encoding process--but for now identifying the protein in a lab's controlled conditions and in the body are two very different things.

It's now possible, given this discovery, to determine via DNA testing if someone has FSHD before symptoms have begun to display. (Even pre-natally.)

Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington (Daniel Miller), and the University of Rochester Medical Center collaborated with scientists in the Netherlands and Spain. Dr. Stephen Tapscott, from the Hutch's Division of Human Biology, was a co-author.

I spoke with Lauren Snider, from the Human Biology Division, about their lab's role. "Most of the work was done by the group in Netherlands, at Leiden University," she explained.

"We provided the technical refinements that allowed us to understand what transcripts are expressed." As you remember from biology, "Transcription is the first step leading to gene expression." (Not all of their research made it into the paper--some played more of a supporting role in delineating genetic possibilities, but that's science. There's a lot of ruling in and ruling out to do.)... (more)

This might be a good place to mention that Amtrak is offering a 25 percent discount on Seattle to Vancouver tickets this September. The new "second train" to Vancouver that leaves Seattle at 6:50 p.m. had 25,000 passengers in July alone. (The original Amtrak Cascades train leaves at 7:40 a.m.)

The discount September fare will hopefully boost ridership even more--the second train is a pilot program, and the more people who ride it, the better chance it has of becoming a permanent addition to the schedule. Visit Vancouver Attractions for more discounts. Here are even more travel offers, courtesy of the B.C. Ministry of Tourism.

A reminder that you need to take 1-90 because 520 is closed for inspection, reopening 5 a.m. Monday.

The Seattle Times says a man was found dead at a South Lake Union construction site early this morning, just three hours after someone called police to report shots fired. Police visited the call's location, a "private event" at the 1000 block of Valley Street, but no one had heard anything. Also, a woman was attacked by what she claimed was a man with a machete in "the Jungle" (11 Avenue South and Beacon Avenue South), though when police found her covered in blood, they suspected a blunt instrument.

This casts into relief the nothing-is-too-good-for-our-homeless advocacy of the City Council's Sally Bagshaw. Real Change reports Bagshaw objected to a housing site offered to Nickelsville residents by the mayor's staff, the former Sunny Jim peanut butter plant in Georgetown, because "[o]ut-of-sight, out-of-mind strikes me as not being the compassionate way we want to treat people." (See our previous coverage of the roving homeless encampment Nickelsville here.)

Publicola wrapped up the primary election results for you. (Yes, there was a primary election.) The mayor announced it was Geek Week in Seattle. More luxury condos hit the auction market; this time it's Olive 8 and the case of the price minimums. Researchers from the Hutch made a big step forward in determining the genetic basis of a form of muscular dystrophy. (More on this once I read their paper.) President Obama came to town and blew things up.... (more)

Every so often, people who like to think of their reality as fact-based (most everyone, then) throw up their hands and ask what is to be done about people who "don't get it," as if there's some formula. This isn't a partisan viewpoint; it reflects biases we all have, which tend to show up in how we intuitively imagine consequences of action. But sometimes how we imagine builds those biases.

If you force "four busy lanes of traffic into two," after all, anyone can see that a congested crawl will be the result. In a feeble economy, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know you need to make substantial cuts to keep the state's deficit down. If you want to save on electricity, even a child could tell you that the best thing is to turn the heat down.

Except none of that may be true.

It's based on what is easy to visualize, rather than what isn't. In the case of a road diet, the third, bi-directional turn lane gets overlooked, but left-turning cars block traffic in a four-lane model--and it gets worse the busier the street gets. So far as deficits go, consider a liquidity trap--again, harder to visualize than simply cutting to make fit. And that electric bill? "Making retrofits, for example, saves far more energy than turning down the heat a few degrees."... (more)

The view from higher ground

Special to The SunBreak by John Hieger

Generally the Margaret Lake trail takes you right there--which is fine if lakes are your thing--but on a clear day, the vistas from a summit always trump the scene from the shore.

If there's a loose philosophy to employ when selecting a hike, it makes sense to save summits for clear days and lakes for those less so. There are people who argue that dipping in a mountain lake is the ultimate payoff on a hot day: I don't agree, for the following reasons:

a) Mountain water, even in the peak of summer is painfully cold. Like jumping in Puget Sound, you get in because swimming sounds fun, you get out to keep your muscles from seizing.

b) Lake hikes aren't without their charms, but since it's cloudy more often than not in these climes, try to preserve view hikes for days when views are actually possible. Put another way, the window for summit views is far shorter, increasing their value (if you want to be a nerd about it).

Instead of hiking the ridge and dropping down the reverse side to the lake below, I decided to keep gaining elevation once reaching the ridgeline and bag the 5,459-foot summit instead, which is actually less work than getting to the lake basin itself.

The real leg work of Mount Margaret is a steady climb through old clearcuts now reclaimed by wild flowers and replanted saplings. The glass half-full crowd marvels over the vegetation and huckleberries on display in this phase, but I tend to think of it as a hot, exposed trudge through a rebounding, butchered forest, all too common along the I-90 corridor.... (more)

Backscatter scan, courtesy TSA, leaves little about how it's hanging to the imagination.

Goldy at HorsesAss is having none of the full-body security scans starting up at SeaTac this September, claiming the invasion of privacy and safety concerns are just too much. (In March 2010, the TSA purchased 450 advanced imaging technology units with ARRA funds--at $130,000 to $170,000 each, says the Seattle Times.)

Regular surveillance cameras were enough to catch the TSA supervisor who stole $20,000 worth of valuables from checked luggage, but SeaTac, which has one of the more complex and inane security/performance art installations in the nation, has no problem with an invasive upgrade. (In fairness, they arbitrarily downgrade, too: "TSA Relaxes Restrictions for Cigarette Lighters and Breast Milk in Carry-On Luggage.")

Of the two types of imaging technology, millimeter wave and backscatter, it's the latter that has health professionals worried. Backscatter relies on low-dose x-rays just strong enough to "see through" clothes, but be reflected back by skin and soft tissue.

Health professionals are concerned that this kind of exposure directed at the skin could still have effects: "[T]here really is no threshold of low dose being OK. Any dose of X-rays produces some potential risk," David Agard, a biochemist and biophysicist at UCSF told NPR.

In an Orwellian touch of "sensitivity," the x-ray units employ a blurring algorithm while passengers are observed nude, and the TSA has instituted a complicated privacy procedure so that you will never actually see the officer checking you out nude:... (more)

The damaged BT-3 boring machine in shinier days. Photo: King County.

I was a little surprised to hear that the final phase of Brightwater tunneling is set for this fall. Back in mid-February, King County Executive Dow Constantine declared the project's status an "emergency," and I assumed that meant round-the-clock tunneling action. But really the emergency declaration was simply to allow Constantine to switch contractors, to Jay Dee Coluccio (JDC), and renegotiate terms with them. (JDC is also working on the University Link light rail project.)

After the tunneling that finished this June, the boring machines have been on hiatus while "reconditioning" is done. A fact sheet (pdf) explains:

JDC will move the tunneling machine that has mined from Point Wells into the 200-foot deep shaft at the Ballinger site. This will take about two weeks. Once the TBM is in the shaft, several sections will be lifted to the surface to be reconditioned. Remaining portions will be refurbished inside the shaft. Cranes will be used to lift the TBM sections to the surface and to lift equipment and crews in and out of the shaft.

Brightwater is a huge wastewater treatment system north of Seattle, with a 114-acre treatment plant, 13 miles of pipeline, and a marine outfall that, via twin pipes that shoot about a mile out into Puget Sound, diffuses treated water with the Sound. It's designed to treat 36 million gallons per day, and expansion planned by 2040 should increase that capacity to 54 million gallons.... (more)

The net neutrality Internet is like a series of happy pipes, glad to see all kinds of data. Thanks to our Flickr pool's zenobia_joy for this wonderful shot.

Special to The SunBreak by Mark Rushing of Orbis Lumen

[Ed.: A proposed agreement between Google and Verizon has pundits debating its merits at warp speed, while pixels are still free. Wired has the "real" story. HuffPo has seen it all before. We asked Mark to take a step back and give us the lay of the land. Here's the first part in a series on net neutrality.]

Would you be happier if you no longer were charged for voice minutes? What if you were no longer charged for voice minutes, but strangely you had unlimited voice talk time?

What if you suddenly had unlimited text messaging capabilities for free? And unlimited multimedia messaging as well? And what if you also were given a new telephone number for free, that rang your cell phone and home phone simultaneously, or any other phone, too? And all your voice mail messages were  recorded and transcribed, then emailed to you, and you never had to worry about copying people and their contact information to your phone again?

Well, you can get this right now, and the mobile telephone companies are not too pleased. Google, one of the Great Horsemen of the ongoing Internet Apocalypse--which is seeing the slow demise of such power institutions as traditional newspapers, the music industry, publishing, and is transforming the way we perceive our role in government, international issues, and the way we organize--well, Google is ruffling the feathers of the Powers that Be, namely the very few companies who own all the pipes that this Internet thing flows through.

And the power that forced these giants to allow others--such as Google--room to grow was...you and me, through the principles of net neutrality.

We may smugly believe the Internet has already arrived, but it is actually still in the process of arriving. And sometimes this behemoth of decentralized interconnections between us looks more like a planet crashing in ultra-slow motion through a steel and glass china shop than it looks like, well, just an amorphous thing of stuff, doing this and that. That china shop has been many things. Right now, that steel-girdered china shop is the mobile telecommunications industry, and they're doing all they can to stop that world from crashing through it.... (more)

King County's unemployment rate (ESD)

"State jobless rate drops to 8.9% in July" reads the Seattle Times headline. (Et tu, TechFlash?)

We're a metrics nation (even if that whole metric thing never took off), so it's understandable that people follow numbers closely to see what news they contain. But some people seem to want numbers to deliver action-verb news monthly, even when the economy is clearly stagnating.

When Washington's Employment Security Department announces that "Washington's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent from June’s upwardly revised level of 9.0 percent," it helps to remember that June's rate was originally 8.9 percent. Comparing unrevised numbers then--apples to apples--absolutely nothing happened.

But something did happen, of course. As ESD's July report states right at the outset, "Washington state, on a seasonally adjusted basis, shed 2,300 jobs between June and July 2010." The ESD news release on July's numbers focuses instead on our anemic but actual private-sector job growth.

The private sector added 3,100 jobs in July, led by 1,000 in transportation, warehousing, and utilities. Construction and education and health services grew by 900 jobs over the month.

Almost 240,000 people were anxiously awaiting their UI checks in July, but a growing number have simply reached the end of that rope. ESD's David Wallace tells me, "Since Congress implemented Emergency Unemployment Compensation in July 2008, the State of Washington has had a total of 15,848 claimants that have exhausted benefits."... (more)

Maybe our "brazen squatters" in Magnolia and Kirkland are simply adopting best practices. Almost two years ago, in late September 2008, federal bank regulators seized Washington Mutual and sold it to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion. All around Seattle the WaMu signs came down and Chase signs went up.

Now a WaMu shareholder, armed with a FOIA, claims to have a document showing the deal has yet to reach a final settlement. The PSBJ reports:

Lam noticed that on pages 7 and 9, the original WaMu purchase and sale agreement allows the FDIC to extend the settlement date. He says he asked about it, and the FDIC confirmed in phone calls and emails that the settlement date was set for Aug. 30, 2010, and could be extended further.

The PSBJ's Al Scott called the FDIC and JP Morgan Chase for comment, only to be told they were "looking into it." [Ed: I'll be downtown later this afternoon putting up TSB signage on Chase branches, since there's apparently some confusion about when Chase bought WaMu and when they knew they'd bought it. The market rewards nimbleness!]

At the time of the sale, WaMu had assets of $307 billion and deposits of $188 billion, so the $1.9 billion "sale" price represented a remarkable bargain for JP Morgan Chase, who took over WaMu's assets while WaMu shareholders' claims were wiped out by bankruptcy. Those shareholders have been waging a battle ever since, to reclaim at least part of their investment.... (more)

Governor Gregoire

That's right, whitehouse.gov is the base URL for Governor Gregoire's blog post about dealing with health insurance rate increases. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is giving 45 states and D.C. (not a state) $1 million apiece to keep an eye on health insurance premiums, and keep customers apprised of the results.

Washington state's insurance commissioners generally do the people proud in the watchdog department, pressing for regulation until the insurance company executives cry out from their day spas in annoyance. But you can't nap for a second: "rates for some individual health plans in Washington increased by up to 40 percent until we stepped in to impose stiffer premium oversight," writes Gregoire.

To let people know about changes in premiums, Gregoire says, the state will "create a web based consumer website called 'Consumer Care' to provide information about the cost and quality of health care."

Mount Hopper fire, as seen from Capitol Hill

Lightning ignited a small fire in the Olympic National Park on August 5, on Mount Hopper, and thanks to winds and heat, it's now grown to about 170 acres. Since it's in the Park and not threatening anyone, the forest service is letting it burn itself out. In Seattle, that means some pretty terrific smoke plumes as a Space Needle backdrop, especially around sunset. If you were planning on hiking in the area, some trails are closed: "the Scout Lake way trail to St. Peter's Gate at Mount Stone, the way trail to Hagen Lake, and the Mount Hopper way trail which closed on Friday."

UPDATE: The buzzkills at the state's Department of Ecology have issued a news release pointing out that breathing smoke isn't good for you. Currently, as of Monday afternoon, Seattle's air quality is listed as "Unhealthy for sensitive groups." You can check in on real-time air quality measurements here. Dust masks won't help with wildfire aire pollution:

The biggest health threat from smoke comes from the fine particles. These tiny particles can get into your eyes and lungs, where they can cause health problems such as burning eyes, runny nose, and illness such as bronchitis. Fine particles also can aggravate heart and lung diseases.

A good air purifier might help. Bottom line, says the Department of Ecology, if you can smell smoke in the air, don't do anything that prompts you to suck in huge lungfuls of it.

Our Flickr pool's got grillin' fish in it, thanks to Great_Beyond.

A weekend in the '90s? Unpossible! But the thermometer and Cliff Mass say it's so. Speaking of Cliff, here he is losing his mind at the absence of clouds along the Washington coast. It's a picture, so it happened.

Okay, let's keep this short because we all have better things to do. We can all pat ourselves on our green backs because Seattle made it into the NRDC's list of the top 22 cities who are "beacons on energy innovation." City Light's wind and hydropower initiatives helped, but so did an ambitious weatherization plan.

Maria Cantwell was down at the Port of Tacoma yesterday talking about her FREIGHT Act. Dino Rossi was making spurious claims about medical research. What else? Mars Hill bought a church in the U District (god not included). Microsoft's Xbox is selling like hot pixelcakes, says TechFlash. HorsesAss noticed the Seattle Times' questionable tax-math skills, too.

Meanwhile, we've got hoods in the 'hoods. CHS has the new about the armed hold-up at 14th and Republican last night, as well as two coffee shop break-ins. This is probably why Obama is visiting the East Precinct. Belltown=Founders Day Festival. RVP offers a little counter-commentary on the Belltown public safety push. CD News welcomes Hollow Earth Radio. Southend Seattle welcomes Seward Park bats. On Queen Anne, "affordable" studio apartments are priced at $1,105 per month (for this the developer gets a tax reduction of $400,000).... (more)

Special to The SunBreak by John Hieger

Guye Peak is that first rocky spire that shoots up to the left of I-90 right as you reach the summit at Snoqualmie. It's easy to get to, but that's where the easy ends.

The entrance is literally twenty feet from Snow Lake's trailhead in the Alpental Ski Area parking lot. Guye Peak, unlike Snow Lake, is far from a popular stroll. I didn't see a single person the entire day, which can be good for solitude snobs, but sometimes it's nice to know that if you roll an ankle somebody will find you before the cougars do.

The first mile of trail is the type of vertical rock scramble that turns tepid hikers into lifetime haters. If you have a Marlboro habit, this trail isn't for you. While it's a relatively short distance roundtrip, the 2,000-foot elevation gain means you're climbing vertically almost the entire time. I was in hell for the first 45 minutes, I won't lie.

Like any good summit hike, the pain-gain cliché applies. All the good views require some gut-wrenching, vertical misery; Guye Peak is no different.

After a brutal first mile of climbing, a ridge comes into focus that offers climbers the option to head left to Snoqualmie Mountain (bigger, longer) or the other direction towards Guye Peak. Since I didn't hit the trailhead until one in the afternoon, I opted for the "easier" route to Guye Peak.... (more)

"Foreclosures continue to surge around Seattle," reports the Seattle Bubble, with King County's 1,413 notices of trustee sale in July representing an increase of 13 percent compared to July 2009.

Thus this 410-sq.-ft. studio condo on East Thomas Street, just off Belmont on Capitol Hill, which the bank will let you have for $135,000. It's eligible for HomePath financing, so you can buy with just three percent down (about $4,000).

View the listing on Windermere or Redfin. It's a 1917 brick-exterior building, with natural gas and a heat pump. HOA is $252 per month, but property taxes are $1,617. 

The price is down from an original $144,900 and it's been on the market for about a month and a half.

Redfin's July real estate summary compares buyers to vultures ("Vultures! Vultures everywhere!" Sorry. It's a tic.) who won't act until sellers pull the listing in despair, or someone else tries to snap it up. Sales volume is down, and inventory even ticked up slightly, as Seattle home sales dropped over 15 percent from June. Their spreadsheet shows 2,129 houses for sale in Seattle, and 1,373 condos. The median sale price for condos was $342 per square foot; for houses, $330.

Bottom line, says Glenn: "So far in August, we have seen record numbers of Redfin customers touring properties in Seattle, but buyers are very picky, and in no rush. Prices are going to stay down for the rest of the year, and probably longer."

In the beginning there was Mercata and the promise of discounts from group buying. And there was also ActBig, Zwirl, and C-Tribe. And the market liketh them not. Mercata was laid low in 2001, although its intellectual property would live on.

Today, a new generation of group and social buying sites have sprung up: Groupon, Living Social. And, since it's the Internet, a second (or third) generation. Seattle is home to Tippr, Wrazz, and DealPop. Chicago has YouSwoop. Buywithme is expanding. Whither Groop Swoop, SwoopOff, SocialBuy? One can only wonder.

The largest have millions of subscribers, across the country; the bulk are just starting out, and working a geographic niche furiously, advertising themselves as the way to connect with your city. The shared, cloying cuteness of Internet naming conventions aside, the clock is also ticking for all these second-generation companies as they try to define themselves for customers.

TechFlash already sat down with Tippr for a differentiation chat: They see themselves as a collaborative, deal-delivering platform, less tied to brand recognition than Groupon. We knocked on DealPop's door to see what they were all about.

[Full disclosure: DealPop is a SunBreak advertiser and you should probably subscribe to their email alert service right now. Upper right-hand corner there. Do it.]

Right away what sets DealPop apart is that their downtown Seattle offices are the home of WhitePages.com. Alex Algard founded WhitePages in 1996 in his Stanford dorm room, stealing a march on Baby Bells and their printed phone books everywhere, and today the company has 200 million personal listings and 15 million businesses, with over 20 million monthly unique users. They're now incorporating Twitter and Facebook results into their people searches. They have a top 10 iPhone app.... (more)

Photo credit: Rachel Gray/Woodland Park Zoo

Squeeee! Another two penguin chicks recently hatched at the Woodland Park Zoo, bringing the Humboldt exhibit's total for the year up to seven new penguin babies. The chicks hatched on August 2nd and 4th and are currently bonding with their parents in a private nesting burrow.

Like the other babies, they've got to be conditioned to interact with zookeepers for feedings and weighings (as well as learn how to swim) before they can be introduced to the public. These chicks are the first offspring of mama Cujo and daddy Oedipus, who at 18 and 20 years old respectively, are the oldest birds in the colony.

The five older chicks, which hatched in April, joined the adult penguins on public display in early July.

In other important Cute Zoo Animals News, check out this drugged red panda and the snow leopard cubs (along with their mom) testing out some cologne.

Ridiculously twee baby penguin video after the jump.... (more)

Science! Is there anything it can't do? (Besides get Americans to take climate change seriously, I mean.)

There are so many beyond-space-age technologies at work in this latest news about the deathstalker scorpion (habitat: North Africa, Middle East) and its venom's possible role in cancer treatment that I hardly know where to begin. Gene therapy! Nanoparticles!

University of Washington researcher Miqin Zhang and colleagues have a paper published in ACS Nano (titled, thrillingly, "Chlorotoxin Labeled Magnetic Nanovectors for Targeted Gene Delivery to Glioma") that explains how they're using the scorpion venom's "active ingredient," chlorotoxin, to seek and destroy brain cancer cells.

On the list of cancers you do not want, brain cancer (glioma) is right up at the top. "Glioma accounts for 80 percent of brain tumors and currently remains one of the most lethal forms of cancers," begins Zhang's report. As an invasive, infiltrating growth, glioma doesn't hole up in one spot and sneer, "You'll never get me, doctors!" It gets everywhere, and then it kills you, painfully.... (more)

Thanks to our Flickr pool's shawnmebo for illustrating that Belltown can be beautiful.

Last night Mayor McGinn and I'm-official-now Police Chief John Diaz had some squishy "news" to report in the battle to reclaim Belltown from drunken douchenozzles and menacing assmittens. A month and a half in, the pair claimed their Late Night Public Safety Initiative has "paid some huge dividends."

The Seattlepi.com quotes Chief Diaz saying, "We've stopped at least two shootings that I know of that were this close to turning into something very serious, we were able to stop the individuals."

For balance, the Seattle Times notes one woman complained that a morning walk to the store included "a pimp and a group of prostitutes, a drug dealer waiting for a buyer and a homeless man who was masturbating in a doorway."

Belltownpeople attended the public safety meeting, and notes that besides the increased police presence, Belltown will see once-a-week foot patrols, new LED streetlights, a drug-dealer and mentally unstable diversion program (which needs funding), and faster cleanup on Aisle 4, thanks to a CleanScapes pilot project.... (more)