Help Beat Cardiovascular Mortality With Your Phone

 

Lots of research indicates that heart rate is a good indicator of an increased risk of heart disease, demonstrating a “link between heart rate and sudden death.” They say fewer than 64 beats per minute is good, and 80 beats per minute is a bad sign.

Thinking it is a good idea to know my own rate, especially when exercising, I bought a heart rate monitor, but it can sometimes be inconvenient to use. I was delighted to discover this iPhone app called Cardiograph, from MacroPinch, Ltd.

 

Somehow, all you have to do is hold a finger lightly against the camera lens on your phone, and it measures your heart rate, and draws it on a little chart, just like at the doctor’s office. I’ve found it to be pretty accurate compared with my other monitor.

It’s easy, convenient, and, well, hard to beat.

 

Let me know how it works for you....

Could There Be Anything Worse Than Using Your Phone In A Public Restroom? Apparently So....

I generally don’t pay much attention to the facilities when using public facilities, but in the past few weeks I’ve noticed a few things that seem odd.

Take this sign, for example. How would you like to be the person who has to clean this restroom, where it is necessary to ask patrons not to scale fish in the sinks.

This one, at our local minor league baseball stadium, doesn’t seem to have minors in mind, especially considering it is an advertisement for a radio station that plays We've Only Just Begun and You Light Up My Life.

It seems like a good idea, a switch that notifies the custodian, and perhaps management, that the restroom needs attention. But, logistically, um, how do you turn on a switch? Flowers and chocolates? Soft music and breathy whispers? Meg Ryan movies?

Finally, also at the ballpark, cup holders in the stalls, right by the commode. I’m no scientist, but I believe the technical term for that is eeewwwwww.

Just How Many Unsupervised, Tech Savvy 8-Year-Olds With Smartphones Are There?

My brothers and I fought over who got the prize in our cereal box each week. With our corn flakes, we usually got one box of sweetened cereal a week, usually, Super Sugar Crisp, which had the best toys, including genuine Hot Wheels.

Later, the prize ended up on the box rather than in it, those cut-out cardboard records of The Archies that sounded like tin on my tiny record player that could not have thrilled us more.

By the time my children became cereal eaters who fought over prizes, the quality of the toys had gone way down, plastic rather than metal, generic rather than celebrity.

As the Internet became popular, prizes became available online, with secret words children could enter on special web sites. Each box carried the warning to be sure to ask an adult before getting online.

Today, after several years away from eating cereal, I found myself staring at the back of a box of Frosted Flakes, with scenes from the new Spider-Man movie. The kiddies can redeem the secret codes for free movie tickets. There is no mention of asking mom and dad for permission, because there is no web address.

Here’s what it says:

“Listen to your Spidey senses and grab your smartphone.”

“Go to the App Store or Android Market on your smartphone.”

“Download the ‘Kellog’s’ amazing Spider-Man exclusive app.”

“Point your smartphone camera at the scene to the right for an exclusive clip from the Amazing Spider-Man!”

Our children aren’t the target market for sweet cereals. They were teenagers before they got cell phones, and they still don’t have smartphones. Can it be true that enough unsupervised and tech savvy 8-year-olds have smartphones that a national ad campaign that requires them can be successful?

The Family That Plays Together

I have an app that sends me daily cartoons, and this one from Off The Mark hits a little too close to home for us. We have a strict no-phones-at-the-dinner-table policy, but otherwise there are always as many phones in the room as there are people.

We play games, watch videos, check e-mail, read daily cartoons, and text text text. Our middle school girls average about 4,000 text messages a month, so I don’t see how they have time to watch television. The children check Facebook regularly, and Kelly reads her favorite blogs.

With thes letters, what woud be your next move?

When we visit my in-laws, who have three computers, two iPhones and two iPads, the electronics have to be hidden away before we get there or none of us will speak to them.

At times I long for the good ol’ days, when we had fun-filled family games around the dining room table after supper, but that is just wishful thinking and false memories. The only time we all sat around the table playing games – my parents and brothers – was by candlelight, when there was a storm and the electricity was out. Otherwise we kids were all doing our own things, throwing a ball around, watching TV, listening to records or the radio, reading, sometimes playing games, while my parents did whatever it was they did.

I really don’t remember what my parents did in the evenings, so I guess my kids will have an advantage over me. In 15 or 20 years, they’ll surely remember that we all ignored each other after dinner behind our perhaps inappropriately named smart phones.

Breast Enlargement And Birth Control: That's Asking A Lot From Your Phone

From Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. by Alex Boese, who claims that only one of these is a hoax:

Breast Enlarging Ringtone, Page 32:

Japanese women can purchase a breast-enlarging ringtone for their mobile phones. Its inventor, Hideto Tomabechi, promises the ring tone will "increase the breast measurements of those who listen to it." Just how is unclear. The ad copy states only that "it's a technique involving subliminal effects." I've had the good fortune to hear the ring tone, and it sounded like an extended Jimi Hendrix guitar riff. So far, I have experienced no breast development.

Sperm Killing Accessory, Page 59:

Does a cell phone accessory project a high-intensity electromagnetic sound cone, inaudible to the human ear but fatal to sperm cells, thus serving as an effective means of birth control when placed nearby during moments of intimacy? The Belgian company Prophy-Lectic debuted the Nippit 3000 mobile-phone birth control accessory [in 2004].

From me:

You gotta love the Internet. And smart cell phones. And guys like Alex Boese.

Judging from a quick search online, it is hard to tell which, if either, product is made up. The breast enlarging ringtone seems to be a legitimate bit of merchandise, if a less than likely theory. The sperm killing acessory seems not to have fooled ABC News, but other organizations have a lot of good to say about it. I especially like the name, Nippit 3000.

What do you think?