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The Club PUBlication 01/25/2021

1/25/2021

KEEPING UP WITH BOOMERS’ AGING JOINTS Replacements have evolved as people stay active for longer.

By JOHN HANC • New York Times

In the first joint replacement surgery in 1890, German Themistocles Gluck implanted “carved and machined pieces of ivory” into joints diseased by tuberculosis, said medical historian and author Dr. David Schneider.

The implants used today, as well as those doing the implanting, are radically different.

In thousands of such procedures, robots are assisting surgeons to ensure an optimum fit. Although many doctors still perform the procedures successfully without their assistance, the robots’ ability to help achieve more precise implant positioning — often determined through 3-D computerized modeling of the patient’s joint — makes their role likely to grow over the next decade as the implants become more individualized and such technologies as augmented reality are integrated into the operating room.

Over the past century, the replacement have evolved to include metal, plastic and ceramics, and are now made of titanium, cobalt chrome and specially reinforced plastics.

Something else has also changed: the psychology of the patients, specifically, baby boomers. Now in their 50s, 60s and 70s, they represent about half of the patients for the most common knee and hip replacements. “This is the first generation that is trying to stay active on an aging frame,” said Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon in Havertown, Penn. , who coined the term “boomeritis.”

This change in attitude is a striking difference in the patient population, and some say it has helped drive the advances in orthopedic surgery and has transformed the operating theater.

Today, of a bone implant can be superimposed on a 3-D model of a patient’s joint, said Robert Cohen, president of digital, robotics and enabling technologies for Stryker’s orthopedic joint replacement division in Mahwah, N.J. “This information is imported directly into the robot in the OR.”

About 1,000 robots manufactured by his company, Cohen said , help perform about 15,000 joint replacement procedures a month in over 850 hospitals . That number is expected to increase.

DiNubile said, “I think arthritis and joint deterioration are here to stay.”

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The Club PUBlication 01/18/2121

1/18/2021

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Attack could fuel extremist recruiting

By NEIL MACFARQUHAR, JACK HEALY, MIKE BAKER and SERGE F. KOVALESKI • New York Time

Law officers outside the U.S. Capitol hours after it was stormed by a mob of pro-Trump rioters. At least 13 off-duty law enforcement officials are suspected of taking part.

Overthrowing the government. Igniting a second Civil War. Banishing racial minorities, immigrants and Jews. Or simply sowing chaos in the streets.

The ragged camps of far-right groups and white nationalists emboldened under President Donald Trump have long nursed an overlapping list of hatreds and goals. But now they have been galvanized by the outgoing president’s false claims that the election was stolen from him — and by the violent attack on the nation’s Capitol that hundreds of them led in his name.

“The politicians who have lied, betrayed and sold out the American people for decades were forced to cower in fear and scatter like rats,” one group, known for pushing the worst anti-Semitic tropes, commented on Twitter the day after the attack.

The Capitol riots served as a propaganda coup for the far-right, and those who track hate groups say the attack is likely to join an extremist lexicon with Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Bundy occupation of an Oregon wildlife preserve in fueling recruitment and violence for years to come.

Even as dozens of rioters have been arrested, chat rooms and messaging apps where the far-right congregates are filled with celebrations and plans. An ideological jumble of hate groups and far-right agitators — the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo movement and neo-Nazis among them — are now discussing how to expand their rosters and whether to take to the streets again this week to oppose the inauguration of Joe Biden.

Some, enraged by their failure to overturn the presidential election, have posted manuals on waging guerrilla warfare and building explosive devices.

Law enforcement officials have responded by beefing up security at airports and creating a militarized “green zone” in downtown Washington. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an urgent warning that attackers could target federal buildings and public officials in the coming days, and at least 10 states have activated National Guard troops in their capital cities. Some states have canceled legislative activities this week because of the possibility of violence.

Purging extremist groups from mainstream social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter may have succeeded in disrupting their organizing, experts say, but such efforts have pushed them into tougher-to-track forms of communication including encrypted apps that will make it harder to trace extremist activities.

“Destroying the platforms could lead to more violence,” said Mike Morris, the Colorado-based founder of Three Percent United Patriots, one of dozens of so-called “patriot” paramilitary groups. Morris said he does not support violence but warned that other groups might find more freedom to plot on encrypted platforms.

Since last week, dozens of new channels on secure-messaging apps have popped up devoted to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that says Trump is fighting a cabal of Satanists and pedophiles. Many militias have found thousands of new followers in darker corners of the internet, such as one Telegram channel run by the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, which more than doubled its followers, to more than 34,000 from 16,000.

“People saw what we can do. They know what’s up. They want in,” boasted one message on a Proud Boys Telegram channel last week.

Far-right groups were buoyed after Trump spoke of “very fine people on both sides” of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a white supremacist fatally ran over a peaceful counterprotester with his car. They saw a signal of support when Trump, during a presidential debate, told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

The attack on the Capitol was likely to become “a significant driver of violence for a diverse set of domestic violent extremists,” an array of government agencies said in a joint intelligence bulletin issued Jan. 13.

The storming of the building, several analysts said, could fuel a dangerous pushback against the incoming Biden administration and its agenda on gun control, racial justice, public lands and other issues by extremists who are not afraid to use violence to get their way.

But the backlash to the Capitol riot could also diminish them. After Charlottesville, alt-right leaders fractured amid a torrent of condemnation, infighting and legal action.

The immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack has led to arguing among extremists over whether to hold another round of violent rallies or lie low and wait out the arrests, investigations and throngs of police and National Guard troops dispatched to protect statehouses and the Capitol before the inauguration.

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, who was arrested in Washington several days before the Capitol attack on charges of carrying illegal ammunition clips and burning a Black Lives Matter banner, now calls the attack on the Capitol a mistake. But he said the far-right movement galvanized by Trump would outlast his presidency.

“He has created this movement that I don’t think anybody can stop,” Tarrio said. “They can try to silence. They can try to de-platform. It’s just going to make it louder.”

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The Club PUBlication 01/11/2021

1/11/2021

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A one-man evangelist for hydrogen battery power

Mike Strizki is using his retirement to spread the word on the planet-saving advantages of hydrogen.

By ROY FURCHGOTT New York Times

Photos by KAT SLOOTSKY • New York Times Mike Strizki is seen with his 9-year-old granddaughter as he fills one of his Toyota Mirais with hydrogen fuel that he produces at his home in Ringoes, N.J.

Because the Mirai doesn’t carry 1,200 pounds of batteries, it has a performance edge, Strizki says. Above, the hydrogen fuel cell of one of his Mirais.

In December, the California Fuel Cell Partnership tallied 8,890 electric cars and 48 electric buses running on hydrogen batteries, which are refillable in minutes at any of 42 stations there. On the East Coast, the number of people who own and drive a hydrogen electric car is somewhat lower. In fact, there is just one. His name is Mike Strizki. He is so devoted to hydrogen fuel-cell energy that he drives a Toyota Mirai even though it requires him to refine hydrogen fuel in his yard himself.

“Yeah I love it,” Strizki said of his 2017 Mirai. “This car is powerful, there’s no shifting, plus I’m not carrying all of that weight of the batteries,” he said in a not-so-subtle swipe at the world’s most notable hydrogen naysayer, Elon Musk.

Strizki favors fuel-cell cars for the same reasons as most proponents. You can make fuel using water and solar power, as he does. The byproduct of making hydrogen is oxygen, and the byproduct of burning it is water. Hydrogen is among the most plentiful elements on earth, so you don’t have to go to adversarial countries or engage in environmentally destructive extraction to get it. The car is as quiet to drive as any other electric and it requires little maintenance .

His infatuation with hydrogen began with cars, but it didn’t end there. In 2006 he made the first house in the United States to be powered entirely by hydrogen produced on site using solar power.

Strizki is using his retirement to evangelize for the planet-saving advantages of hydrogen batteries. He has faced opposition from the electric, oil and battery industries, he said, as well as his sometimes supporter, the Energy Department. Then there is the ghost of the 1937 Hindenburg explosion, which hovers over all things hydrogen. The financial crash of the high-flying hydrogen truck manufacturer Nikola has not advanced his case.

Strizki’s expertise has made him a cult figure in hydrogen circles, where he has consulted on notable projects for two decades. He has worked on high school science projects as well as a new $150,000-ish hydrogen hyper-car that claims to get 1,000 miles per fill-up.

“Oh, I know Mike Strizki very well, very well,” said Angelo Kafantaris, chief executive of Hyperion, the company that makes that Hypercar, the XP-1. Using a federal-standard dynamometer test, the XP-1, which claims a 0-to-60-mph time of 2.2 seconds and a top speed of 221 mph, is said to achieve a range of 1,016 miles on a single tank. “I think Mike is an integral part of everything we do at Hyperion,” Kafantaris said.

Strizki, 64, discovered hydrogen power while working at the New Jersey Transportation Department’s Office of Research and Technology. Batteries that powered electric message signs didn’t hold a charge in severe cold. Strizki was tasked with finding a solution. He turned to hydrogen fuel cells such as those NASA used in space.

He left his state job for the private sector where he worked on Peugeot’s hydrogen concept car, a mini fire engine and then a Chrysler hydrogen minivan, the Natrium, which was a modified Town & Country and went zero to 60 in a glacial 16 seconds.

Bringing hydrogen vehicles into wide use on the East Coast strained even Strizki’s talent for invention. For instance, hydrogen is not authorized to travel via bridges and tunnels.

“We wouldn’t want to put out a vehicle that you couldn’t drive into Manhattan,” said Gil Castillo, who tracks regulations at Hyundai Motor North America.

Ever since Musk called fuel cells “staggeringly dumb,” there has been a fierce rivalry between lithium-ion and hydrogen backers. Cooler heads see a place for each. Electric is suitable for people with a garage who travel limited distances and can charge overnight. But for long-haul trucks, hydrogen doesn’t add weight or reduce cargo space the way batteries do. Furthermore, hydrogen tanks can be refueled in minutes.

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The Club PUBlication 01/04/2121

1/4/2021

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AGING IN PLACE NEEDS A PLAN

By CARLA FRIED • Rate.com

Best Places to Retire lists are great conversation starters, but the vast majority of Americans have no intention of making a move in retirement. They want to age in place.

Best Places to Retire lists are great conversation starters, but the vast majority of Americans have no intention of making a move in retirement. They want to age in place.

That is a blind spot that can drag down multiple generations within a family. The 60-somethings who refuse to game out the best moves to make now for their 80- and 90-year-old future selves are (unconsciously) transferring those hard decisions onto their children and grandchildren.

If you think contemplating a move in your 60s is difficult, the hurdle will be physically and emotionally higher later on. That can lead to the kids scrambling to bring services into your home, a move that often requires them to bear some of the cost. Even more costly is the decision more and more adult children (mostly women) make to quit their jobs to care for an elderly parent. That puts their own household’s future retirement security at risk.

That can trickle down to the grandkids, as well. Not just in a tighter college budget, but the increased risk that their parents will not be set up well to afford retirement.

So while in your 50s or 60s and in good health, take a clear-eyed look at what you might consider doing now to make sure your retirement works for your entire family. That should include discussing this with your adult children.

Can you really afford to stay put? The goal should be that you can cover basic living expenses from guaranteed retirement income: Social Security and a pension if you have one, and any required minimum distributions from traditional 401(k)s and IRAs.

Even if you own your home and have the mortgage paid off, don’t lose sight of property tax and maintenance. If you don’t live in a region that offers property tax breaks to older homeowners, you also need to bake in that your property tax bill will continue to climb over a long retirement.

No idea how to scope out the future cost of staying put? There are plenty of certified financial planners you can hire on an hourly or project basis to help you crunch the numbers.

Is it safe to stay put? The vast majority of homes do not have a layout that works well for seniors. Too many stairs. No bedroom/bath on the entry level. A shower that requires stepping into a tub. The time to make those age-in-place renovations is in your 50s and 60s.

And consider the psychological safety of where you live. Do you and your friends need to travel a long distance — on busy roads — to see each other? Is there a big stair climb into your home? These can become obstacles to social connections later on.

Can you help your kids by moving close(r)? Maybe not into their house, but out back perhaps? Converting a garage into a small home or building a separate small unit brings you all close while maintaining some healthy distance. Some communities are becoming open to allowing homeowners to build accessory dwelling units.

If you are game for a bigger retirement relocation, focus on future needs, not just today’s wants. Warm weather is a popular criterion for Best Places lists, but a nonprofit consortium that tracks each state’s level of support and services for long-term care needs found Florida’s overall at the bottom. The states with the highest scores across five broad categories (cost of care, support for family caregivers, etc.) were Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin.

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The Club PUBlication 01/25/2021

KEEPING UP WITH BOOMERS’ AGING JOINTS Replacements have evolved as people stay active for longer. By JOHN HANC • New York Times ​

The Club PUBlication 01/18/2121

​Attack could fuel extremist recruiting By NEIL MACFARQUHAR, JACK HEALY, MIKE BAKER and SERGE F. KOVALESKI • New York Time

The Club PUBlication 01/11/2021

A one-man evangelist for hydrogen battery power Mike Strizki is using his retirement to spread the word on the planet-saving advantages of hydrogen. By ROY FURCHGOTT New York Times

The Club PUBlication 01/04/2121

AGING IN PLACE NEEDS A PLAN By CARLA FRIED • Rate.com

Archives

KEEPING UP WITH BOOMERS’ AGING JOINTS Replacements have evolved as people stay active for longer.

By JOHN HANC • New York Times

Attack could fuel extremist recruiting

By NEIL MACFARQUHAR, JACK HEALY, MIKE BAKER and SERGE F. KOVALESKI • New York Time

A one-man evangelist for hydrogen battery power

Mike Strizki is using his retirement to spread the word on the planet-saving advantages of hydrogen.

By ROY FURCHGOTT New York Times

AGING IN PLACE NEEDS A PLAN

By CARLA FRIED • Rate.com