Breathing Free: How I rid myself of chronic sinus inflammation

Sinuses may have benefits, but I'd rather live without them.
Aren't they rather poorly designed? Someone messed up.

    (11/29/14) For my entire adult life, my sinuses have been inflamed. This is not infection: just a feeling of congestion, pain and pressure that affected my appearance, my red-eyed vision, and even my ability to think clearly. I had a headache every morning. It made me feel kind of sick and dizzy all over. I tried using my own personalized, macho form of neti potting: Filling my sinuses with warm salt water using a turkey baster. Where are the paparazzi when you need them? I blew so hard, my eardrums screamed and then seemed to deflate. It helped, but not enough.
    Now I have a new regimen, and for the past nine months, I have been transformed. I can't believe what a difference it has made.

The Harder They Fall

   (7/23/14) In 2011, the University of Utah Medical Center was named best in the nation by the morally dubious, cabalistic University HealthSystems Consortium. This simply was not believable. Our investigation discovered that a U. of U. executive essentially reverse-engineered the "top secret" algorithms that were going to be used by UHC in its ranking process, and focused intensively of those particular criteria. It was sort of like doping: It was cheating. The University blanketed the Intermountain West with ads and media coverage about its Number One status, until our blog post article appeared (http://kronstantinople.blogspot.com/p/the-consortium.html). UHC abandoned its ranking program and reallocated its considerable resources.
    Now that the new U.S. News and World Report rankings have been released, we can see how far from Number One the U. really is. Naturally, no one is trumpeting this dismal news.

Model Intentions: I got duped, you got screwed

I don't have a photo of Punky, but this looks very much as she did in 1968 -- sweet and beautiful.

Dear Punky Fortune:

    I have wondered for so many years how things turned out for you, and even if you’re still alive. Long after I’d moved to New York, I heard that your pimp almost beat you to death. I heard about the heroin. I heard that you’d had two kids before you were 20.

    I think you must know that whatever role I played in what happened to you was unwitting. I hope you realized that I was there with the purest of intentions. Decades later, the betrayal that affected all of us, but which victimized you and your girlfriends in unspeakable ways, still makes me ill. I am so sorry.

Much Ado-doo at the U.

     Call me a pathologically cynical party poop, but I am very dubious about the University of Utah’s charming invitation for all of us to help in its search for a new president.

    The University launched a web site today, announcing what KTVX TV hails as a “new kind” of process in which input from the average citizen is solicited. That means y’all, you all!
    Please post your comments! They really want your help! Oh sure they do!

The e-cigarette conspiracy: You can't handle the truth!

Safety concerns are obscured by a fragrant cloud of vapor

    (Feb 27, 2014) Volunteers are being recruited through CraigsList and a Bronx "free classifieds" site for a groundbreaking study of e-cigarette safety at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. The stated hypothesis of this study is troubling: E-cigarettes "disorder airway epithelial biology."  It is the airway epithelium that are "central to the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer." Impacts on epithelial gene expression, DNA methylation, telomere length and cilia length will be scrutinized.

    Doesn't this sound a little bit scary?

    Strangely, this research effort is not listed, as it should be, on the clinicaltrials.gov. web site, even though it was submitted in Dec. 2012 and "verified" in Oct. 2013. It is hidden in an XML file that is clearly not intended for public consumption. I have written to the two researchers who are designated as "contacts," to pose basic questions about the assumptions underlying their inquiry. I have stressed my seriousness in covering this subject thoroughly and responsibly. We have a right to know what they suspect and why. They are being funded by us, through the National Institutes of Health.
    They have not even acknowledged, much less responded to, my repeated overtures.

    This is not an isolated example. Despite urgent calls around the country for more safety information about e-cigarettes, virtually none of the findings from research around the world have been publicized. I think I've figured out why: Both Big Tobacco and anti-smoking/public health officials want e-cigarettes to succeed.
    Disclosure: I love e-cigarettes. I want them to be safe. But all this secrecy makes me very uneasy.

Here Comes the Judge! A few amicus briefs, and underpants galore!

This High Court Justice isn't blind -- he sees very well.

    (Jan 27, 2014) For nearly four decades, my old New York friend has combined the role of "Your Honor" -- which he has performed with diligence and decisiveness -- with the role of tireless womanizer. He is gorgeous, ravenous, a bona fide connoisseur of females in every shape, style and color, a chivalrous charmer and always a victor. 
    It's all about victory, just as courtroom dramas are. No agony of defeat for this battler of the sexes.
    The fact that he has kept his double life so well hidden under those filmy robes represents a magnificent feat of finesse and role-playing. He could easily have become another Spitzer or Weiner. Like them, he had everything to lose. But unlike them, he's managed to maintain his impeccable image, even as he has bedded hundreds (or thousands?) of women, many of whom he had just met. I bet they all have fond memories.

    Dante got mad a few months ago when I teasingly called him a "dog." He is a dog, or a bull elephant or a silver-backed gorilla (I mean no disrespect to these venerable creatures). He is always on the prowl. Sex is the centerpiece of his life. He has such a melt-in-your-mouth lust, and such charisma, and such class, that all one can do is collapse onto a fainting couch, and say, "Come on over, big boy. The owls are hooting."