Category: Status

Saving Lives with Apple Watch

“I participated in the Heart Study too. Like Perlow, I forgot about it for long stretches. I’m fortunate that I didn’t receive the sort of alert Perlow did, but in September, Stanford sent me a notification that my participation in the study was ending. It turns out that over the course of 188 days, Stanford collected 1,743 heart measurements from me. Multiply that by the thousands of people in the study, and the potential the Apple Watch has for medical research is remarkable, while at the same time helping individuals like Perlow one at a time.”

How the Stanford Heart Study App Saved Jason Perlow via MacStories

I too participated in the Stanford Heart Study via the Apple Watch (my stats above). Males in my family have a history of Heart Disease and Afib, so I was nervous but eager to see if this seemingly innocuous contribution to science using my watch would catch anything. I’ve also been trying hard to “get in shape” given that I’ve just turned 40. I’ve lost 24 pounds since May and continue to try to live healthier with food and drink choices.

I was sort of relieved the day I got a notification that the study had ended. There had been no updates to contact Stanford during the study. Evidently if the Watch app detected anything that was suspicious of Afib, you were patched through to a Stanford Cardiologist via FaceTime. While that’s an amazing technological experience, I didn’t want to participate in doing so for this situation.

So, it’s amazing to read the testimony above by someone who did have the experience of catching a very deadly condition early simply because they wore an Apple Watch. The device is certainly saving my life by the daily motivation to get healthy and stay that way, and I see a bright future where conditions will be caught early by devices such as these.

Episode 148: Faith Is a Boomerang

The Rev. Lauren Larkin joins Sam to discuss birthing pangs in Genesis, the merits of demythologizing, and Dialectical Theology in the 21st Century.

Special Guest: Lauren R.E. Larkin.

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Starting your career at 40

I’m “here for this” as the young people say…

“We need a new model,” Carstensen says of the current norms around career pacing. The current one “doesn’t work, because it fails to recognize all the other demands on our time. People are working full-time at the same time they’re raising children. You never get a break. You never get to step out. You never get to refresh. . . .We go at this unsustainable pace, and then pull the plug.”

Source: Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen says careers should be mapped for longer lifespans — Quartz at Work

“Invisible Wire Pullers”

Eerily familiar to the American left…

Prideful of their own higher learning and cultivation, the intellectual classes could not absorb the idea that, thanks to “invisible wire-pullers”—the self-interested groups and individuals who believed they could manipulate the charismatic maverick for their own gain—this uneducated “beer-hall agitator” had already amassed vast support. After all, Germany was a state where the law rested on a firm foundation, where a majority in parliament was opposed to Hitler, and where every citizen believed that “his liberty and equal rights were secured by the solemnly affirmed constitution.”

— Read on www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-its-too-late-to-stop-fascism-according-to-stefan-zweig

George Lucas’ Plan for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 (Meet The Midichlorians!)

I take back every negative thing I’ve said about The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and the treatment of cherished characters.

Yikes… midichlorians

“[The next three ‘Star Wars’ films] were going to get into a microbiotic world,” he told Cameron. “There’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.”

— Read on www.indiewire.com/2018/06/george-lucas-episode-vii-episode-ix-1201974276/

Romans 13 and American Appeals to Authority of the Government

Good read on the historical uses of Romans 13 in American history to justify obedience to the government in light of our Attorney General’s use of that text today to defend the deplorable and immoral and utterly un-Christian internment camps we’re setting up along the Mexican border for children that we’re forcibly separating children from their asylum-seeking parents…

As I wrote at my own blog, I’m not sure we should “act as if the New Testament has any kind of authority over the religiously plural officer corps that protects a democratic republic that separates church and state.” But Pence is hardly the first prominent American to make such public use of these Christian scriptures — though what they mean has been hotly contested since even before the Republic won its independence.

— Read on www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2017/05/mike-pence-romans-13/

7 Reasons Why LGBTQ+ People Don’t Want to Go to Your LGBTQ+ Inclusive Church

Important read:

But more profoundly, the very structure of society is changing before our eyes. Churches used to anchor communities, and were a space where people met outside of the routine of daily, commercial life. Parishes were determined by geography; Protestant churches were determined by denominational affiliation. Nowadays, people form their communities through other means. People develop their values more privately. People no longer go to church out of a social commitment, but out of a personal (some would argue consumptive) one. People go to churches where they feel like they’re being “fed.” Church is a commodity, and an optional one at that.

— Read on bookishbearblog.com/2018/06/11/7-reasons-why-lgbtq-people-dont-want-to-go-to-your-lgbtq-inclusive-church/

Your Domain and Your Home Address

I often shock potential small business or nonprofit clients by knowing their home address or cell phone number during our first or second call. It’s easy if they have already purchased a domain. I don’t do it as a scare tactic, but as an educational moment about the need to plan ahead and think through security issues.

By the time someone or a business or group has come to me with an idea for a new website or marketing strategy needs, they’ve purchased or at least thought about a domain name. There are copious services out there that will sell you a domain for a range of prices. GoDaddy is perhaps the most popular due to its marketing over the years. Unfortunately, GoDaddy has a reputation in the tech world of being the Monarch of UpSells. You can go there to buy a domain but you have to wade through the other options of website hosting, email addresses, security services, and a fee to protect your domain name privacy.

That last one is something that has irked me for a while about GoDaddy and similar domain name sellers (including Google) that don’t offer free domain privacy and private registration. Again, many of my clients are shocked when they find out their home addresses are now public records tied to their great idea for a domain or their business’ domain.

Before private individuals started buying domains and GoDaddy / Squarespace / Wix / Weebly (all who will sell you a domain) started marketing how “easy” it is to build a website, it made sense that domain information would and should be public. Most domains were bought by agencies or companies tied to specific interests. However, that has all changed and domains should include domain privacy when purchased in 2018.

People are more and more becoming interested in privacy and security matters, and this only makes sense for everyone. Stop upselling it.

Good move from Namecheap.

When you register a domain, ICANN requires registrars to provide them with your contact information (such as name, email, address, and phone number). This is then added to the Whois database. This database lists the owners of every domain name online, and it can be searched by anyone on the Internet.

— Read on www.namecheap.com/security/whoisguard.aspx

Episode 145: Thinking About the Term Partners

Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the term "partners" in its modern context and whether or not it is performative for certain couples. That leads to a discussion about the role of social media in our lives if we could, in fact, delete Facebook.

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Episode 143: Boys Keep Swinging

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss boys' weekends, gender assumptions, the Documentary Hypothesis, the historicity of the Gospels, and Justice850.

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Episode 142: “Too great of a religious hurry”

Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the fierce urgency of now, and why the church should be the gadflies of tension in a time of transition.

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Episode 141: Could Jesus Read and Write?

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss British trivia shows, the concept of literacy in the ancient world, what accent Jesus might have had, and whether we now have historical proof of the prophet Isaiah.

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“Celebrate Valentine’s Day without compromising your Christian faith on Ash Wednesday”

My advice is that American Christians have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than whether or not they can reconcile Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, so stop taking yourself so seriously…

On Feb. 14, many Christians face a dilemma as they try to reconcile their faith with the traditional celebrations of romantic love. How exactly do you observe Valentine’s Day on the day Lent begins, marking the season of atonement leading up to Easter?

Can you be a believer and still celebrate with champagne and chocolate?

Source: Valentine’s Day 2018: Celebrate Ash Wednesday without sacrificing faith — Quartz

Here’s a post from the New York Times entitled “Eat, Pray, Love: An Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day Dilemma“.

Episode 139: Hiring Policy

Dr. Thomas J. Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss beards, Life on Mars, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's hiring policy (and past, present, future).

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“Did they worship this car?”

“He wondered what aliens might think if they ever came across the Roadster drifting through space. After all, SpaceX packed other weird items in the car, among them a small toy Hot Wheels Roadster (complete with a miniature Starman) on the dashboard.

“Maybe [it will be] discovered by an alien race, thinking, ‘What were these guys doing? Did they worship this car? Why do they have a little car in the car?'” Musk said. “That will really confuse them.”‘

Source: Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Is Headed to the Asteroid Belt

Episode 137: The Fertile Croissant

Dr. Thomas J. Whitley and The Rev. Samuel B. Harrelson play HQ Trivia and go to The Good Place to discuss Squab Goals.

“My name is Kierkegaard and my writing is impeccable. Check out my teleological suspension of the ethical.”

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Episode 136: A Million Little Candidates

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss quantum hacks, the evolution of reality TV and its impact on our Gen X lives, and why 2020 will be a different political landscape than 2016.

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