Your dog and your health: Today So Far

• Why GameWorks stayed in Seattle.
• The health of our dogs, and us, could be related.
• Things could get smoky again.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for Aug. 25, 2023.

It's not that I want GameWorks to move to Bellevue. Rather, Bellevue has a serious lack of pinball machines. If GameWorks did move across Lake Washington, it would nearly double the number of pinball machines in that city, which is currently six. Luckily for Seattle, GameWorks is staying right where it is in downtown. But as Soundside reports, a move to Bellevue was on the table when the arcade recently ran into Seattle's "fun tax." The fee on amusement devices placed a hefty price tag on operating in the city. The Seattle City Council just nixed this fee, so all is good. But the incident led Soundside down the (sometimes violent) history of Seattle's amusement industry. Now, on a personal note, GameWorks, you only have four pinball machines yourself, so let's work on that.

You need to interact with people in your life for good health. We know this because dogs need social interaction. This is one takeaway from an aging study over at UW Medicine. One of the researchers told KUOW there is a lot of overlap between good health habits of humans and dogs — good sleep, diet, and exercise. Another factor is socializing, just interacting with people. There is evidence that people do better if we hang out with others. According to this study, it's the same for dogs. In fact, dogs seem to do better when there is another dog in the home, or with families.

Be aware this weekend: It could get smoky. Not nearly as smoky as last weekend, when Seattle briefly had the worst air quality in the world (which, I'm pretty sure at least a quarter of that haze came from the Japanese Breakfast show at Zoo Tunes). But this weekend could be enough for the region to dip down into "moderate" air quality. I bring this up because there is also a red flag warning in the central Cascades (right next to the Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma area) that officials are closely watching. That's fancy Weather Service talk for, "Holy poopy, if a fire started, it would be super bad!" Conditions have aligned so that if a fire emerged on our side of the mountains, it would spread fast. That could mean more smoke.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

James E. Tillman, Viking scientist and University of Washington professor in his office at The Viking Computing Facility. This department collected data for NASA from the Viking lander on Mars. The lander arrived on the surface of the red planet in 1976. Tillman processed the data about the planet at UW until 1982. It was the first on-the-scene information coming from Mars. (Courtesy of Rachel Tillman)

DID YOU KNOW?

NASA's Viking 1 and Viking 2 missions were the first to ever land a device on Mars. Each Viking had an orbiter and a lander. The orbiter collected data from above Mars, while the lander roamed the surface. Part of this mission was to determine if there was life on Mars. Neither rover found conclusive evidence of life, but it did send back the first images of Mars from its surface, and provided important data about the planet's chemistry. It took Viking 1 and Viking 2 a total of 11 months to travel from Earth to Mars. The Viking 1 lander touched down on July 20, 1976, which was the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Both Viking missions were slated to last 90 days, but each orbiter continued to function for a few years. The Viking 1 orbiter stopped transmitting in 1980, and the Viking 2 orbiter stopped transmitting in 1978.

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