B12 Solipsism

This might be a first, a salient point made by Tom Friedman. His insights are few, and far between, but here's what he wrote on Sunday:

Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said there has to be “an end” to the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank “that began in 1967.” Yikes!

Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama said that not only must Israel be secure, but that any peace agreement “must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people.” Yikes!

Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said “the establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it.” Yikes! Yikes! Yikes!

Those are the kind of rumors one can hear circulating among American Jews these days about whether Barack Obama harbors secret pro-Palestinian leanings. I confess: All of the above phrases are accurate. I did not make them up.

There’s just one thing: None of them were uttered by Barack Obama. They are all direct quotes from President George W. Bush in the last two years. Mr. Bush, long hailed as a true friend of Israel, said all those things.

[Click to read more Obama and the Jews - New York Times]

I've heard the whisper campaign too, but often from Hillary supporters, which is even sadder.

Sounds about right. Popovich and Tim Duncan are a perfect mesh: content to avoid the spotlight, but yet they have more victories than anyone else.

NEW ORLEANS – Gregg Popovich walked out of the victorious locker room late Monday and into the King of Scotland. His San Antonio Spurs had just punched their ticket to Hollywood, and there was Popovich standing in a tunnel in New Orleans Arena embracing indie film star Forest Whitaker. In addition to collecting fine wine, Popovich counts art-house movies among his interests. He wasn’t going to pass on a chance to meet an Academy Award winner.

“You’re the best,” Popovich gushed as Whitaker stuck out his hand.

Whitaker thanked him. As Popovich turned to leave, one of Whitaker’s acquaintances called out to the Spurs coach.

“I love your work.”

For more than a decade now, Popovich has been content to leave the big-ticket roles to others. Among coaches, he is the critically acclaimed indie actor. He doesn’t do how-to books, commercials or $3,000 suits, yet everyone within his industry knows he ranks as one of the best.

[snip]

Under Popovich, the Spurs have operated as one of the NBA’s model franchises for more than a decade now, but that counts for only so much with Stern. Larry Brown has told friends that Popovich didn’t get the Olympic coaching job because Stern didn’t like him, and while that’s a stretch this much is true: Few teams rankle the commissioner the way these Spurs do, and it’s not just because they kill TV ratings.

Popovich has long valued his team over his standing in the league. If Tim Duncan doesn’t like the dress code, then Popovich has a problem with it. If the NBA’s czar of discipline, Stu Jackson, warns Bruce Bowen about his feet without first notifying Spurs officials, then Popovich will criticize the league. If the Spurs have too short of a turnaround between playoff series then Popovich won’t hesitate to blow off the mandated media session and eat the fine so his players don’t have to come to the gym on their day off.

[From Popovich has had starring role in Spurs' success - NBA - Yahoo! Sports]

I'd like to see a Kevin Garnett vs. Tim Duncan matchup in the Finals, personally. Who cares what the media wants (I'm guessing a Lakers vs. Celtics series would draw the highest ratings, and David Stern would allow himself an extra smirk), those are two of my favorite players. Plus Doc Rivers vs. Gregg Popovich would be amusing, well, perhaps not for Bill Simmons. [bonus: Kevin Garnett vs. Tim Duncan in high-pressure games]

Criticizing the same corporate media that gave Bush sycophantic coverage in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 (slight blip with Katrina, but overall sycophancy), 2006, 2007, and most of 2008 for an interview that from my reading was overly deferential. Way to stay classy, GW.

The White House got involved in a media feud, criticizing NBC for its handling of a recent interview with President Bush and questioning whether its cable talk-show hosts are skewing the broadcast network's point of view.

The broadside by White House counselor Ed Gillespie, in a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, elevated a battle over network coverage that has previously pitted MSNBC's left-leaning Keith Olbermann against Fox News's conservative Bill O'Reilly. Recently, each has intensified his attacks on the other's parent company and on executive higher-ups. Fox News is owned by News Corp., which also owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. NBC is owned by General Electric Co.

In his letter, Mr. Gillespie describes NBC's editing of the Bush interview piece as "deceitful...misleading and irresponsible," and asked the network to air Mr. Bush's complete answers to a couple of questions. The administration's primary concern appeared to be that the correspondent, Richard Engel, suggested Mr. Bush views negotiations with Iran as "pointless" under any circumstances, when the administration's policy is that it would negotiate with Iran if it verifiably suspended its uranium-enrichment program.

[From White House Criticizes NBC Interview - WSJ.com]

Is it 2009 yet?

Lest anyone is fooled by McCain's schtick about ethics reform, pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Sorting out the lobbying entanglements of his campaign advisers is proving to be a messy business for Senator John McCain.

On Monday, just days after it issued new rules to address conflicts of interest, the McCain campaign was furiously sifting through the business records of aides and advisers. The new rules were prompted by disclosures that led to the abrupt departure from the campaign of a number of aides who worked as lobbyists, including some with ties to foreign governments.

Mr. McCain’s political identity has long been defined by his calls for reducing the influence of special interests in Washington. But as he heads toward the general election as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he has increasingly confronted criticism that his campaign staff is stocked with people who have made their living as lobbyists or in similar jobs, leaving his credentials as a reformer open to attack.

The process of trying to purge the campaign of conflicts that in appearance or reality might violate Mr. McCain’s stated principles or cause him political trouble has so far focused only more attention on the backgrounds of his aides and advisers.

[From McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort - New York Times]

Or to be more blunt, McCain is a liar, and has the ethics of a lizard (all apologies to lizards).

"The Thief of Bagdad - Criterion Collection" (Alexander Korda)

I've always wanted to see this movie, but just never have gotten around to it. Joe Morgenstern adds one more tick to 'should see this film' column of my imaginary list of films to be seen eventually.

I've just had my own eyes opened, once again, by "The Thief Of Bagdad," a 1940 fantasy that I've praised before. The film was shot in three-strip Technicolor, a process uniquely able to withstand the ravages of time. I thought the colors were sumptuous in an MGM DVD that's been on the market for several years, but they've been bumped up to sublime in a magnificent Criterion version to be released later this month. The two-disk set also includes commentary by Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who recall their own childhood enchantment with great children's films in the process of explicating this one.

But how to find such films when you need them? The search needn't be a taxing one. If you Google "great children's films" as I did you'll find lists of lists containing enough titles to keep a kid busy until graduate school. And the striking thing about those lists is the extent of the consensus -- way beyond such obvious picks as "The Wizard Of Oz," "Mary Poppins" or "The Black Stallion" -- even though our film heritage is as vast as it is rich.

There's no way of putting the genie of overstimulation back in the bottle -- a feat accomplished with a more congenial genie and some endearingly naïve special effects in "The Thief Of Bagdad." Kids live in a world of ever-increasing excitation (as well as genuine excitement). But we can expose them to alternate visions and alternate rhythms at an age when their little noggins haven't been completely wired. We can show them the best, and then hope for the best.

[From Morgenstern on Movies - WSJ.com]

Actually the non-Criterion Collection version is on Netflix, so I could at least add it to my queue.

• b3ta.com challenge: extending album art
  clever
  (tags: humor images music_history)
• TidBITS Opinion: Kensington Saddlebag Ultra: The Same Old Bag, in a Good Way
  I just wish the Saddlebag fit my 17" MacBookPro
  (tags: laptop bags)
• Internet Archive: Movies
  public domain feature films. If you've got the space, or the ability to burn DVDs, why not browse? Free beer, man.
  (tags: film free copyright movie television)
• Reinforcing the Stereotype
  I tend to leave it out myself, but then sometimes have moments of doubt. Good to know I'm not crazy (well…)
  (tags: grammar language)

"Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis" (Kingsley Amis)

Much more fun than being a hunger artist if you ask me.

Kingsley Amis was a hangover artist. Had he written nothing more than his description of Jim Dixon regaining consciousness after a bender, his place in literature would be secure. "He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning," Amis writes in "Lucky Jim," his first (and best) novel. Dixon's "mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad."

Feeling bad isn't such a bad thing, from Amis's point of view. With its "vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure" of guilt and shame, the hangover provides a "unique route to self-knowledge and self-realization." In his book "On Drink," Amis recommends a raft of remedies for the Physical Hangover and then gets on to the Metaphysical Hangover, a combination of "anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future" that may or may not be the result of alcoholic overindulgence. Dealing with the Metaphysical part of the equation entails reading Solzhenitsyn, which "will do you the important service of suggesting that there are plenty of people about who have a bloody sight more to put up with than you (or I) have or ever will have," and listening to Miles Davis, which "will suggest to you that, however gloomy life may be, it cannot possibly be as gloomy as Davis makes it out to be."

"On Drink" is one of three slender books Amis cobbled together from his newspaper columns on the subject in the '70s and '80s, the others being "Everyday Drinking" and "How's Your Glass?" (the British equivalent of the expression that serves as the title for this column). They are back in print at last, Bloomsbury having gathered them into one delightful volume under the title "Everyday Drinking" that's now hitting bookstore shelves. It is essential reading for any literate bibber.

[From The Hangover Artist - WSJ.com]

There is an art to writing well about drink and drinking, and about other drugs too. Easy enough to write under the influence, ahem, but writing about the experience itself is more of a challenge.

Oh, and my memory serves, Amis was for a time a mentor and close confederate to Christopher Hitchens. Don't really have a point, just trying to see if my fingers still capable of translating thoughts to the page. There were some doubts.

I personally would choose an Irish whiskey over Scotch, but the important thing is to drink eight glasses.

(click to embiggen the cartoon)

I shouldn't be grossed out by the thought of making still suits for an entire city, but I'll admit I am, even if California has been talking about this plan for a while now.

Faced with a persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies, Los Angeles plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies, joining a growing number of cities considering similar measures.

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who opposed such a plan a decade ago over safety concerns, announced the proposal on Thursday as part of a package of initiatives to put the city, the nation’s second largest, on a stricter water budget. The other plans include increasing fines for watering lawns during restricted times, tapping into and cleaning more groundwater, and encouraging businesses and residents to use more efficient sprinklers and plumbing fixtures.

The move comes as California braces for the possibility of the most severe water shortages in decades.

[From Los Angeles Eyes Sewage as a Source of Water - New York Times]

But the idea of using recycled wastewater, after intense filtering and chemical treatment, to replenish aquifers and reservoirs has gotten more notice lately because of technological advances that, industry leaders say, can make the water purer than tap water. San Diego and South Florida are also considering or planning to test the idea, and Orange County, Calif., opened a $481 million plant in January, without much community resistance, that is believed to be the world’s largest such facility.

None of the proposals or recycling projects already under way send the treated water directly into taps; most often the water is injected into the ground and gradually filters down into aquifers.

That is what Los Angeles would do, too. But the city abandoned that idea seven years ago in the face of political opposition, and is likely to face some debate about it now.

Fran Reichenbach, a founder of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association, one of the groups that opposed the plan, said she remained unconvinced the water would be safe.

“I appreciate them trying to save us in a time of water shortage, but the fact remains the kind of toxins and chemicals that are created on daily basis cannot be tested for,” Ms. Reichenbach said, disputing industry claims to the contrary. She said the group would push for independent testing and analysis of the treated water.

"Narrow Stairs" (Death Cab for Cutie)

I was lucky enough to watch a radio broadcast of Death Cab for Cutie at the Chicago Cultural Center. I enjoyed the show a lot, but apparently the latest album is sort of sucky, at least according to Garrett Kamps of the Village Voice.

Forget all that, because Death Cab is a good band. Here's a list of great songs this good band has written (in no particular order): "Photobooth," "405," "A Movie Script Ending," "Lightness," "Transatlanticism," "Lack of Color," "Your Heart Is an Empty Room," "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." That's a compressed list. As a songwriting and producing unit, respectively, Gibbard and guitarist Chris Walla (with help from bassist Nick Harmer) have given us the gift of unabashed, high-grade romantic pap for 10-plus years now. Not an overstatement: Theirs is the most tender body of work you're likely to encounter in the history of recorded music, full of melancholy pianos, light-in-the-loafers melodies, and percussion so earnest it's like a nervous wallflower willing his way across a junior-high dance floor with a question in his throat. Feeeeyyyyy! Which certainly turns a great many people off, and if you're one of those people, you probably already stopped reading anyway. So this is for the converted: Narrow Stairs ain't that great.

There's a little hum out there saying this is Death Cab's experimental album. It's not. It's their mediocre album. The lolling bassline and chillaxed guitar of "Your New Twin Sized Bed" sound like Jack Johnson. "No Sunlight" shoots for the uppity pulse of "Sound of Settling" (complete with snappy chorus), but the melody doesn't stick. More agreeably, "You Can Do Better Than Me" has some Phil Spector–y flourishes of sleigh bells and timpani, while "I Will Possess Your Heart" is a half-heartedly trippy eight-and-a-half-minute single that evokes Joy Division if you squint real hard. But these only sound like risks next to the otherwise solid body of work these guys have built up by playing it safe. The best tunes here are the simplest: "Talking Bird" is sparse and shimmering; "Grapevine Fires" tickles with one of those nervous beats and a harmonized chorus promising that "Everything will be all right." At least for a song or two, all those young lasses will be relieved.

[From village voice > music > Death Cab for Cutie's Narrow Stairs by GARRETT KAMPS ]

I took a bunch of photos of the band even though I didn't bother bringing my flash. Click to embiggen

• Planning Your Own Funeral / Having the last laugh first
  planning my own funeral? Hmmmmm. I should probably write my obituary too.
  (tags: death obituary)
• Gapers Block: Transmission, a Chicago music site
  excellent. I love finding an album overlooked by everybody that is really a great album. Like a hidden treasure.
  (tags: music_history music_snob)

• [Office 2008 SP1] install causes setup assistant to loop (The Entourage Help Blog)
  Hope this never happens to any of the machines I support, but ya never know
  (tags: OSX Microsoft DIY)
• Enough Already! | Comments from Left Field
  I used to read TalkLeft, no more. "Talk Left regularly, you will come away knowing exactly two things; Jeralyn has gone batshit insane, and Armando is a fucking repetitive moron. Oh, and you will know that Obama has a problem with white voters."
  (tags: 2008 elections Obama)
• Salient Factors
  "McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim."
  (tags: Obama Clinton McCain)
• Sound Opinions
  I should listen to this show, sounds interesting. Too bad I don't have time for radio in my current life
  (tags: radio Music)
• Farmers Market Report: May 14th
  Parking increase at Chicago Green Market, that's a big jump.
  (tags: Chicago Green food)
• Taking pictures on LA's Red Line violates the "9/11 Law"
  Totally hate this anti-liberty stance in the US. "Voice: "You can't take pictures sir, we don't know why you are taking pictures."
  (tags: terrorism_theater photography civil_liberties)

"Karibu" (Lionel Loueke)

Sounds quite interesting, I'll have to seek out some Lionel Loueke music. Larry Blumenfeld of the Wall Street Journal writes, in part:

If a film were made of guitarist Lionel Loueke's career to date, the master shot sequence would be his 2001 audition for admission into the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, then housed at the University of Southern California. "He started playing rhythmic patterns and vocalizing off a tune's melody," recalled trumpeter Terence Blanchard, the program's artistic director, "and we were floored." Pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Wayne Shorter were also members of the audition jury. "I turned to Wayne, just as he was turning to me," Mr. Hancock said. "We didn't even have to say it; we just knew: We're going to hear more from this guy."

And we have. By the time Mr. Loueke, who is 35, arrived at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in March to celebrate the release of his new CD, "Karibu" (Blue Note), he'd earned a reputation as one to watch.

[From For One Guitarist, Jazz Is an African Dialect - WSJ.com]

A little backstory:

Mr. Loueke's story begins in the city of Cotonou, in Benin, a small nation of roughly six million people tucked between Nigeria and Togo. His father was a mathematics professor; his mother, a high-school teacher. As a child, he soaked in everyday Beninese songs, with vocals accompanied by beats on hand drums and an occasional sanza (thumb-piano made from a gourd and metal strips). At age 17, he began playing a beat-up, borrowed guitar -- a far cry from the Godin electric with built-in synthesizer he now favors, or the hollow-body Yamaha on which he often taps out percussion.

When a friend brought him a George Benson album, he developed an ear for jazz. He left home on a scholarship to attend the National Institute of Art in Ivory Coast, where he learned to read and notate music, and, following that, the American School of Modern Music in Paris, whose jazz-savvy faculty is drawn largely from Boston's Berklee College of Music. Mr. Loueke earned a scholarship to Berklee, where he first encountered his future trio mates, Messrs. Biolcati and Nemeth.

Mr. Loueke's music is unmistakably jazz, in that it is harmonically sophisticated and flexibly swinging, informed by bebop and blues repertoire, and highly adaptive to each player's improvisations. Yet even in odd, extended meters, the music never sounds overly cerebral or complicated. Its rhythms are based on overlapping cycles, as in African music, which turn in easeful fashion. And even Mr. Loueke's furthest-flung solos are staked to simple melodies that float through nearly all his music, recalling, he says, the songs he heard as a child.

Mr. Loueke's previous recording

Virgin Forest

(Obliqsound), combined trio studio sessions with recordings of percussionists he'd made in Benin. The new CD blends influences more organically. Mr. Loueke set Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark" to a Central African groove; he inserted paper beneath his instrument's strings for one section of John Coltrane's "Naima" to mimic a thumb-piano. Mr. Hancock and Mr. Shorter play on two tracks each; one, "Light Dark," demonstrates the guitarist's comfortable role within one of jazz's closest and most productive dialogues. But the album's truest focus is the trio's interplay, especially the connection between Mr. Nemeth's light-touched rhythms and Mr. Loueke's delicately stated lines.

I'll let you know in a week or so if these recordings are as cool as Larry Blumenfeld makes them out to be.

Stories like this, regardless of the social status of the detained, make me really angry. The border guards involved in this case ought to lose their jobs, at the least. Ideally, they ought to lose their citizenship as well, and be deported somewhere scary.

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

[From Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face - New York Times]

Is it 2009 yet?

Each year, thousands of would-be visitors from 27 so-called visa waiver countries are turned away when they present their passports, said Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said she could not discuss any individual case. In the last seven months, 3,300 people have been rejected and more than 8 million admitted, she said.

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

Government officials have acknowledged that intensified security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has sometimes led to the heavy-handed treatment of foreigners caught in a bureaucratic tangle or paperwork errors. But despite encouraging officers to resolve such cases quickly, excesses continue to come to light.

One recent case involved an Icelandic woman who was refused entry at Kennedy Airport because, a dozen years earlier, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks. The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, was deported Dec. 10 after what she described as 24 hours of interrogation and humiliating treatment

Spy is such a harsh word. I'd say research instead, or perhaps investigate.

If you are still relying on Google to snoop on your friends, you are behind the curve.

Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don't turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn't already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free.

Zaba Inc.'s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.'s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.'s Wink.com are "people-search engines" that specialize in digging up personal pages, such as social-networking profiles, buried deep in the Web. Spokeo.com is a search site operated by Spokeo Inc., a startup that lets users see what their friends are doing on other Web sites. Zillow Inc.'s Zillow.com estimates the value of people's homes, while the Huffington Post's Fundrace feature tracks their campaign donations. Jigsaw Data Corp.'s Jigsaw.com, meanwhile, lets people share details with each other from business cards they've collected -- a sort of gray market for Rolodex data.

[snip]

The bad news, for those who find themselves targeted by snoops: There is no foolproof way to protect yourself from embarrassing personal-data leaks. But you can avoid many mishaps by going to the root of the leak -- that is, by keeping individual pieces of personal data from being made public in the first place. If you don't want people to find your address online, for example, don't list it in local phone books, which often provide data to online address-search services. If you don't want others to see your Amazon wish list or the photos you've stored on Flickr, visit those sites' privacy pages and adjust your settings accordingly.

Some sites use the ability to snoop as a selling point. The Huffington Post's Fundrace feature, which allows users to enter their addresses and see a map showing their neighbors' political donations, uses this come-on: "Want to know ... whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one?"

[From New Sites Make It Easier to Spy on Friends]

The problem with these, and related searches, is that if the subject is someone like me who has intentionally fed misinformation to various requesters for years, then all results are somewhat questionable. When some website or vendor asks for personal information, I always make some up: why should my information be used as a commodity for businesses?

Perhaps a Cyro Baptista fan?
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyro_Baptista )

Cyro, originally uploaded by swanksalot. corner of Randolph and Desplaines

"SinuCleanse Nasal Wash System, Unbreakable Neti Pot With Salt Packets" (SinuCleanse)

As gross as this was initially, I have found the Neti pot works like nothing else in alleviating nasal irritation, and has the advantage of being extremely mild and non-toxic.

About 50 million Americans suffer from rhinitis, a condition that includes a stuffy nose, sneezing and itchy eyes, mouth and throat, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. It is usually caused by allergies but also can have other causes. Many people suffer chronically from nasal and sinus symptoms, including post-nasal drip, when mucus from the nose runs into the throat.

The neti pot is used to cleanse mucus from the nasal passages, and may also help to rinse out allergens. You fill the pot with salt-water solution, tilt your head to one side and pour water into the top nostril. Gravity takes over and the water pours out the other nostril.

"People say at first that this seems weird and disgusting," says Melissa A. Pynnonen, co-director of the Michigan Sinus Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "But generally, if I can get adults to do it once, they don't want to stop since it treats post-nasal drip and mucus better than anything else."

A neti pot, often made of plastic or ceramic, generally costs from $10 to $15. The saline solution can be purchased pre-packaged, or you can mix it at home. Dr. Pynnonen recommends using the pot twice daily, mixing eight ounces of lukewarm tap water with a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. She tells her patients to make the sound of the letter "k" to prevent the unpleasant sensation of water running into the throat.

Scientific evidence supports nasal irrigation for relief of chronic nasal symptoms. The Cochrane Collaboration, in a 2007 analysis, reviewed eight papers on neti pots and other types of nasal irrigation and concluded there is evidence that it is beneficial for chronic nasal symptoms, either as a sole treatment or in conjunction with standard treatments. A 2006 study on neti pots, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, found regular use improved quality of life for allergy sufferers.

[From A Pot, Short and Squat, To Clear Your Nose Out - WSJ.com]

There are alternative devices (electric ones even), but the Neti pot benefits from being simple, with a long history.

The NYT had a similar article a few months ago, with a surprisingly similar title:

Seeking the advice of a masseuse and acupuncturist, Jana Warchalowski, Ms. Hakman was urged to try something she didn’t even want to think about. “Jana said she had two words for me: neti pot,” Ms. Hakman said. “I’d heard about it before. I just kept thinking, ‘No way, that’s gross.’”

But this fall, Ms. Hakman relented.

“I went out and bought a pretty little ceramic neti pot from Whole Foods,” she said. “I’ve used it every day since. Now, I can breathe again. It’s even gotten rid of the bags under my eyes.”

Originally part of a millennia-old Indian yogic tradition, the practice of nasal irrigation — jala neti — is performed with a small pot that looks like a cross between Aladdin’s lamp and your grandmother’s gravy boat. The neti pot made its way into this country in the early 1970s as a yoga meditation device, but even as yoga became mainstream, the neti pot remained on the fringes of alternative culture.

[snip]

The practice gained wide exposure last spring when it was introduced on Oprah Winfrey’s show by a frequent guest, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and an author of health books. Dr. Oz explained that bathing the sinus cavities in a warm saline solution can reduce symptoms of allergies, cold, flu and other nasal problems.

He called upon a chronic sinusitis sufferer, identified as Amy from Texas, to demonstrate the neti pot. “Welcome to your nose bidet,” Ms. Winfrey said enthusiastically as the woman inserted the spout of a ceramic pot into one nostril, tilted her head and let a solution of non-iodized salt and water flow up her nose and out the other nostril.

A month later, in a follow-up, Amy spoke by phone on air and reported she’d used a neti pot every day since, with happy results. She had not had a single sinus headache, she said.

[From Short, Stout, Has a Handle on Colds - New York Times]

"Himalayan Institute Neti Pot Nonbreakable - Same day shipping!" (Himalayan Institute)

Whole Foods having a discount…

Save Ten Percent with Pippin, originally uploaded by swanksalot. Six would be a lot though

• YouTube - Bill O'Reilly Goes Nuts!
  He actually is nuts, but here he demonstrates it
  (tags: Youtube Rethuglicans)
• How to find images on the internet « Random knowledge
  "mages can be found just about everywhere on the mighty internet. Below you’ll find some interesting gateways to larger image collections."
  (tags: photography design copyright)
• xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
  XKCD randomizer. Some funnier than others, of course.
  (tags: cartoon comic)
• Old gas pumps can't handle ever-rising prices -- -- chicagotribune.com
  Unfortunately, haven't run into one of these pumps: today the cheapest gas was $4.08. Over $60 to fill up. Yikes!
  (tags: gasoline energy)

The Metropolitan Planning Group (an influential group of business and civic leaders) came out strongly against the Chicago Children's Museums plan to relocate onto public land.

"We deserve better than being presented with the proposal to relocate the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park as a faitaccompli without the benefit of a thoughtful planning process which would have added and provided answers to many of the issues circling this controversial proposal," said the statement co-written by MarySue Barrett, the group's president and former top Daley aide. "In the absence of those answers and a public planning process, we cannot support this plan."

A spokesman said the council has hired a lawyer to look into the long-standing court decrees banning buildings in the park. Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) and other opponents said the museum would violate those decrees, but museum officials said their largely underground design is within the law.

…there were no ideas generated or discussed on how to [create family-friendly activities at Daley Plaza] before the museum submitted its proposal, said Peter Skosey, the group's vice president of external relations.

The museum did not do enough to explain why other Chicago locations would not work, he said.

"They're asking for free public land out of Grant Park, access to funds from the Museums in the Parks and they will likely be asking for additional capital support," he said. "If they come to the public looking for concessions, we have a right to ask these questions."

…

Museum officials have stated they will not seek public funding for construction of the $100 million site but may seek government grants for exhibits and projects.

[From Grant Park idea panned -- -- chicagotribune.com]

Billings for Hill & Knowlton just went up