Don’t Just Sit There!

Got a screen? Just say no! (Apparently)

According to the study conducted by a group of international researchers, anyone who devotes more than four hours daily on screen-based entertainment such as TV, video games or surfing the web, ups their risk of heart attack and stroke by 113 percent and the risk of death by any cause by nearly 50 percent compared to those who spend less than two hours daily in screen play — and this is regardless of whether or not they also work out.

[…]

“Assuming that leisure-time screen time is a representative indicator of overall sitting, our results lend support to the idea that prolonged sitting is linked to an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and premature mortality,” notes the report’s lead author, Emmanuel Stamatakis of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College in London. “Doing some exercise every day may not compensate for the damage done during very long periods of screen time.”

[…]

Stamatakis adds that since modern life has moved to the sluggish end of the activity continuum we need to find ways to make moving and standing the default states and sitting the exception.

Even though a formal workout program didn’t appear to offer protection from the ill effects in this study, Stamatakis still cautions that avoiding sitting is not enough to make up for lack of exercise; we should all still aim for a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity daily.

Source: Too Much TV, Screen Time May Mean Earlier Death

But what if there’s no screen involved (such as just sitting there at a sewing machine)?

I suppose the results are the same.

I guess I’m doomed.

Choice Books and Simon Schrock

Simon Schrock recalls visiting Dulles International Airport with his daughter many years ago and being shocked to see Playboy magazines sold at one of its newsstands.

“She pointed at Playboy and said, ‘Oh, Daddy, look there,'” said Schrock, 74. “I said, ‘I’m concerned where this is going. What’s it doing to the nation? What’s it doing to young people?'”

So Schrock got involved. In 1968, the journeyman carpenter and part-time Anabaptist preacher persuaded a newsstand at National Airport to add 10 Christian titles to its racks. By the 1970s, he was selling 600 books every two weeks, he said.

By the 1980s, he’d helped found Choice Books, a Harrisonburg, Va.-based company that describes itself as a distributor of “inspirational, wholesome and family-oriented reading materials.” Today, with eight offices stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf states and Northern Virginia, the company sells about 8,000 books a day, Schrock said – more than 5 million books a year through more than 10,000 kiosks at highway rest stops, drugstores, department stores and airports.

Source: Choice Books’ faith-based paperbacks bring readers into the fold

Bro. Simon is fighting lymphoma.

Late last year I had hoped to land a Choice Books job here in Oregon. It didn’t pan out; I withdrew from the Applicant Mix due in large part to our needing to finalize a new place to live.

We sell several of Simon Schrock’s books. One of them is mentioned in the above article: What Shall the Redeemed Wear? And if you go to Anabaptist Bookstore‘s catalog home page and search for his name, you’ll see a list of all his books we sell.

Passport ‘Wisdom’

Children are no longer born to mothers and fathers.

They’re born to parents; specifically, Parent One and Parent Two.

At least so says the US Department of State. And a very sorry state that is indeed.

And it will get sorrier, is my forecast. At some point, they will “get real” and make room for Parent Three.

But never mind the forecast. Here’s shades-of-Dr-Zeuss the story:

The words “mother” and “father” will be removed from U.S. passport applications and replaced with gender neutral terminology, the State Department says.

“The words in the old form were ‘mother’ and ‘father,’” said Brenda Sprague, deputy assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services. “They are now ‘parent one’ and ‘parent two.’”

A statement on the State Department website noted: “These improvements are being made to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.” The statement didn’t note if it was for child applications only.

The State Department said the new passport applications, not yet available to the public, will be available online soon.

Sprague said the decision to remove the traditional parenting names was not an act of political correctness.

“We find that with changes in medical science and reproductive technology that we are confronting situations now that we would not have anticipated 10 or 15 years ago,” she said.

[…]

The new gender-neutral passport application will be rolled out in February.

“Improvements”? Then we measure by different standards.

“Not an act of political correctness”? Oh. OK. Right.

“Changes in…reproductive technology”? Eh? Two men can now reproduce together? As can two women? 😯

America’s downward slide accelerates. And the condition isn’t unique to the United States.

Shed My Beliefs?

Yesterday I read this in a story about the trial of the Woodburn bombers:

When they entered deliberations for the death penalty, jurors knew they had to shed any personal or religious beliefs about possible redemption and follow the judge’s instructions and the legal process that requires answering four questions affirmatively to deliver the death penalty, including the future danger of a defendant.

And there is a secondary reason why I could not serve on a jury.

I do not want “to shed any personal or religious beliefs” — not about possible redemption, not about right and wrong, not about justice, not about returning good for evil.

If You Can’t Trust the Doctor or the Preacher…

This evening I came across and rapidly scanned two pieces of commentary and/or news.

Scandal of Evangelical Dishonesty

No matter how we rationalize it, all deception within the evangelical community dishonors Christ, and serves the devil’s agenda. We need to identify deception, repent of it, and embrace the truth of Christ which will set us free to represent Him accurately to a world sick of being lied to John 8:32.

[…]

I take no pleasure in addressing these issues. I hope it will serve Christ’s body by initiating some much-needed self-examination and dialogue.

Which Christian colleges, missions organizations, speakers, musicians, publishers, and authors will come forward and confess past misleading practices and commit themselves to the highest ethical standards before the Audience of One, even if it means forgoing financial gain? Who will, in the name of Christ, raise the bar of honesty, integrity, and truth?

Only when Christian leaders establish new and higher standards will others feel the positive peer pressure and accountability to do the same. Only then will reform be widespread, with direct unspun truth-telling becoming the established norm.

Only then will we gain the trust of both the Christian public and a skeptical secular culture accustomed to deception, but desperately needing the truth.

That one is a very lengthy exposé. See what you think of it.

Well, that was the preacher part of the title. Next, the doctor part:

Retracted autism study an ‘elaborate fraud,’ British journal finds

A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an “elaborate fraud” that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.

[…]

The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80% by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.

In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90% of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.

And there you are.

😳 Oooops! I didn’t mean it that way! I’m not suggesting the deception highlighted above is a shoe that fits your foot.

While we can point fingers and wag tongues against others’ deception, who can discern and discard the guile lurking in his own heart?

Above all, love God!

since November 9, 2005