Posted on

One Thirty Over Eighty: How America Lowered the Hypertension Line While Europe Held Steady

A single edit to a single table turned tens of millions of healthy Americans into patients overnight. The question is whether the line was drawn for them or for the people who bill them. In November of 2017, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association released a clinical guideline that ran to roughly four hundred and eighty pages, and somewhere in the front matter they moved a single number. The threshold for diagnosing high blood pressure fell from 140/90 to 130/80. Nobody’s artery changed that day. No chest tightened, no vessel narrowed, no symptom appeared. And yet, by the arithmetic of that one revision, about thirty-one million Americans who had been healthy the previous evening were now classified as having a chronic cardiovascular disease. National prevalence of hypertension climbed from near thirty-two percent of adults to near forty-six percent between one edition of a document and the next, and among adults under forty-five the rate more than doubled. Nothing about the population’s arteries had changed; only the boundary of the word had moved.

Continue reading → One Thirty Over Eighty: How America Lowered the Hypertension Line While Europe Held Steady

Posted on

When the Radiologist Becomes the Expense

On March 25, 2026, at a Crain’s New York Business panel discussion of the city’s hospital sector, Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, told the assembled executives what cost-cutting now sounds like in the largest public hospital system in the United States. “We could replace a great deal of radiologists with AI at this moment, if we are ready to do the regulatory challenge.” Sandra Scott, MD, who runs One Brooklyn Health, one of the city’s safety-net institutions operating on tight margins, replied that the move would be “a game-changer.” The exchange appeared in Crain’s coverage of the panel and was picked up by the radiology trade press within forty-eight hours.

Continue reading → When the Radiologist Becomes the Expense

Posted on

Seeing Around Corners

The phrase “seeing around corners” gets tossed around boardrooms and strategy meetings as though it were a compliment, a kind of secular beatification for the executive or thinker who got there first. But the phrase deserves closer scrutiny, because what it actually describes is a discipline, and one that most people refuse to practice because the conclusions it produces are uncomfortable.

Continue reading → Seeing Around Corners

Posted on

Mad eBay Dash to Mask Up!

With the novel Coronavirus in full flush, I have never been more self-educated in needing to know more about protective masks. Since the beginning of April, I have wondered at all the face covering options, while knowing, and accepting that the medical grade masks — the now non-ubiquitous N95 masks — are not available to the public. I’ve been searching everywhere for a lead on a KN95 mask or a surgical mask — the lesser protective cousin to the full N95 mask — or some sort of other, non-optimal mask that can protect Janna and me from the vulgarities of Covid-19. We are not having any luck.

Continue reading → Mad eBay Dash to Mask Up!

Posted on

Paris and the Superficial Memes of Selfieness Tragedy

Any tragic world event is an opportunity to convey meaning for profit — personally, politically, fiscally or morally — and the instant rise of the “Peace for Paris” logo designed by Jean Jullien “one minute” after the tragedy, and then immediately posting the image to Facebook and Twitter, begs a larger human question of “selfieness” and cynicism: Is an Artist trying to give hope against trafficking in evil, or is it all a rather cunning ploy to “make the meme” for a tragedy by propagating self-interest-as-a-logo over the perils of human interest?

Continue reading → Paris and the Superficial Memes of Selfieness Tragedy

Posted on

The Eight-Year Jersey City Crossing Guard Who Lost His Heart

I do a lot of walking in New York City and Jersey City.  There’s one particular corner in Jersey City that always strikes fear deep in my heart and stabs me down betwixt my toes with absolute pity and terror:  The “crosswalk” — angularly located at the bisection of Nardone Place and John F. Kennedy Boulevard West — spans five lanes of traffic, at least six turning car angles aiming straight at you, and a long walk that means you actually must run as fast as you can to make it safely across the street.

Continue reading → The Eight-Year Jersey City Crossing Guard Who Lost His Heart

Posted on

1Password Protects and Prevents

We live in a threatening and dangerous world where we cannot even trust our own government not to deceive and disappoint us.  Security of our proprietary information is paramount in the vulnerable warp and woof of our social fabric, and that’s why — even when I first reviewed 1Password way back on December 8, 2009 — I knew securing all my passwords in a single, super-hardened, space was not only important, but necessary:

It took me several days to change and update all my passwords — but once that dirty deed was done, I was able to relax a bit in my core knowing I now had randomized and much more secure passwords covering my life — and the great thing is I don’t have to remember any of them!

1Password remembers all those passwords and usernames and automatically logs me in with the touch of a button on my web browser.

1Password also has an iPhone app that will sync — unfortunately via WiFi only, and both your computer and iPhone must be on the same WiFi network — your desktop accounts and passwords back and forth so you can be safe and secure when you’re online with your iPhone as well.

Continue reading → 1Password Protects and Prevents

Posted on

The Dangerous Blurring of BDSM Fantasy Lives and Fifty Shades of Grey

We have seen how American culture has descended to the worship of Honey Boo Boo, discussed how violent video games  can sensitize us to the consequences of violence and shuddered at the thought of some of the classics of literature being re-written to include sex scenes that never were  which nicely brings me to 50 shades of YUK.

Continue reading → The Dangerous Blurring of BDSM Fantasy Lives and Fifty Shades of Grey

Posted on

Being Fined for Poor Hiking Preparation

Being ill prepared usually brings about it ill consequence, depending on what is being done — sometimes disastrous, even. There are not too many examples I have seen of people being fined by the police for being poorly prepared for something, however — until I came across an example of exactly this. A gentleman in Victoria made plans to go on a three day hike and only took the most paltry of provisions — potatoes and naan, to be exact.

Continue reading → Being Fined for Poor Hiking Preparation

Posted on

The California Parenting Institute Does Not Like Satire

There are many new and exciting things that are discovered about parenting, and what is safe and dangerous to do in terms of the technology we use and the techniques we use for everything from feeding our children to putting them to sleep. The way we slept when we were babies would be considered dangerous and perhaps life threatening to babies raised today — take the back versus belly debate for sleeping, which each continues to have its champions depending on the age of the baby.

Continue reading → The California Parenting Institute Does Not Like Satire