Home Medical device shortfall

Over ten years ago I wrote about how home medical sensors would become common in the next decade and while that’s become true, there are several shortcomings to how the current sets and suites work. Nobody has yet created the complete home set, a kit of devices that could be prescribed for patients needing long term monitoring for changes in their condition.

This kit would at minimum include the following sensors:

thermometer

pulse-oximeter w/ respiration rate sensors

blood pressure cuff with arrhythmia sensors

weight scale

blood sugar monitor

The kit should be able to record the results by time and date locally, and also store them and share them via the internet. Right now most device and app makers tend to cater to fitness rather than maintaining wellness, something that leaves seniors in the lurch. The data gathered would be invaluable for doctors monitoring their patients for changes, and when anonymized and bulked would provide really great statistics for use by health professionals world wide.

Someone could be making money, but so far none have risen to this challenge. So instead seniors are stuck using a drawer full of devices that do not interoperate, and separate apps that do not play well together – and when you want to share with a doctor you better get out the pencil and pad.

Don’t mess with Pamela Karlan, she lays out exactly why Trump must be impeached.

KARLAN: “Imagine living in a part of Texas that’s prone to devastating flooding. What would you think if your governor asked for a meeting w/POTUS to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for [and POTUS] said, ‘I would like you to do us a favor?'”

Tucker Carlson goes All in for Putin

First here’s the crazy clip that has everyone talking:

You know things are bad when even Fucking Frank Luntz recognizes that the GOP ship of state has fully capsized. 

Of course later in his show Tucker Carlson recants, pretending he was just trying to trigger libs for the lulz, or the standard GOP bullshit you hear when their masks drop & people actually notice.

Russia is fully nationalist / imperialist and their leadership has become deeply entwined with the more fundamentalist wings of the Russian Orthodox church, so what’s not for our christian zealot wing of politics to love about Putin? They LIKE what he’s doing, and the GOP right never met a strong man dictator that they didn’t secretly or openly like.

Representative Adam Schiff Sums it all Up.

My hat’s off to Chairman Schiff for all of the great work but also for this impassioned close.

Throughout the hearings Rep. Schiff has kept a steady hand on the tiller, calmly steering the hearings onward to conclusion in the face of GOP stunts, shrill attacks, readouts of one conspiracy theory after another. The GOP did everything in their power to make this constitutional process appear illegitimate, but the only ones who might have fallen for that are the gullible rubes so besotted by Russian and GOP kool-aid that they are beyond all hope. My hat’s off to Chairman Schiff for all of the great work but also for this impassioned close.

Back to Our Moon: Powering Our Return ; a clip from NASA

It’s well past the time that we should have been back to our moon. Make no mistake: This is an existential task for the human race. NASA’s new partnership with Maxar and their propulsion system explained.

via Powering Our Return to the Moon – YouTube

Goodnight, Anti-Indoctrination Bills, and Good Riddance | NCSE

From Glen Branch at NCSE:

Five measures under consideration in these four states in 2019—Arizona’s House Bill 2002Maine’s House Paper 433, South Dakota’s House Concurrent Resolution 1002 (PDF) and House Bill 1113 (PDF), and Virginia’s House Joint Resolution 684—would have required or urged the adoption of a code of ethics for public school teachers, purportedly to prevent them from engaging in “political or ideological indoctrination.”

If these anti-indoctrination measures sound like a solution in search of a problem, it’s because they are. Despite a handful of ballyhooed counterexamples, it’s rare for teachers to engage in indoctrination. They are trained, after all, to educate. And even with regard to socially controversial issues, surveys indicate that, for good or for ill, teachers tend to teach in accordance with the mores of their communities.

Unsurprisingly, the backers of these anti-indoctrination measures rarely offered any evidence that there is a problem. The sponsor of the Arizona bill, for example, claimed that he introduced it after he was “inundated” by complaints about teachers from parents. But a public records request from the Arizona Republic revealed that he received just a single e-mail from a parent—after, not before, he introduced his bill.

And there are already policies and procedures in place to govern teacher conduct in the classroom anyhow. The Arizona bill, for example, would have forbidden public school teachers from expressing a view on pending legislation while on the time clock. But that’s something that is already forbidden by Arizona law, and two Arizona teachers were (controversially) disciplined for violating the law in 2018.

 

via Goodnight, Anti-Indoctrination Bills, and Good Riddance | NCSE

Nike – Dream Crazy Commercial is Inspirational

I find this commercial both inspirational and true – if you have a problem with Nike’s latest inspirational advertisement maybe the problem isn’t the commercial but rather your preconceptions or bias against people in it. If inspirational commercials fill you with anger, maybe it’s time you confront the fears and biases you were taught that create your anger, your knee jerk responses, that innate willingness to discount primary truths in favor of false bias.

This commercial isn’t divisive: but you can choose to make it so and many will walk that path paved in bile stones.