The Apple Watch

Apple’s latest invention is upon us.  As with most releases of new technology in our day, there are reasons to shy away from it.

First, because it has the ability for wireless communication, the lifelorish (biological) side must be considered.  The Weston A. Price Foundation recently conducted a small-scale study of the effects of cell phone radiation on human blood.  The results are unsurprisingly dire.  From their report’s ‘Conclusions and Discussion’ section, we have these words:

Results show substantial changes in the blood from short-term cell phone radiation exposure in nine out of ten human subjects. RBC [Red blood cell--W. G.] aggregation and stickiness were mainly observed following 45 minutes of exposure to a smart phone in receiving mode worn by subjects in a backpack. By contrast, RBC morphological (shape) changes including the formation of echinocytes (spiky cells) were dominant after subjects actively used the phone for an additional 45 minutes. It appears that RBC stickiness with clumping is the first stage of the cell phone radiation effect. Subsequently, the RBC aggregates tend to break apart, and then cell shape changes occur, in which echinocytes and other misshapen cells are observed. Not all subjects showed both types of changes. The difference in net RBC aggregates between the carrying and the active use conditions are not significant for this small sample, as indicated by the overlap in the error bar values in Figure 15. However, the differences in RBC shape changes between the carrying and the active use conditions appear to be significant.

Such blood morphologies—RBC clumping and misshapen cells—are frequently observed in ill persons or those eating less-than-optimal diets.^6,7 Echinocyte formation has been associated with aging RBCs and diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver.⁸ In a study exposing mice to cell phones, clumped RBCs were found after short- term exposure, and abnormal RBC shapes were observed over longer exposure times,⁹ which is similar to the results observed in this study.

It is possible that the changes in RBC shape that we observed may be related to functional changes in cell membrane permeability. Other studies have reported changes in RBC membranes following exposure to microwaves, too. Low-power microwave radiation increased membrane permeability and destabilized the cell membrane in rabbit RBCs, and also caused the shedding of particular membrane proteins.¹⁰ Similar effects showing changes in membrane permeability have been reported for human RBCs.¹¹ Some, but not all, studies show a loss of hemoglobin from RBCs irradiated with cell phone frequency microwaves, indicating greater membrane fragility.¹² However, these are in vitro studies in which blood taken from the body was directly exposed to microwaves.

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We did not investigate how long these blood changes last after the cell phone radiation exposure period ends. However, because subjects refrained from using a cell phone for four hours prior to the study, we can surmise that the blood recovers within four hours. The onset, reversibility, recovery time, and chronicity of these blood changes need further investigation.

It is probable that the blood changes we observed would affect blood circulation. RBC aggregation has been widely studied and its importance is well-established in the microcirculation. RBCs that are stuck together in rouleaux or other aggregates increase the blood viscosity, and this affects the passage of RBC through the microvessels throughout the body.¹³ RBC shape and deformability are also relevant to blood flow. The typical round disk shape of normal RBCs is considered optimum for blood flow. The shape of the echinocytes might impair blood flow and oxygen release from echinocytes is known to be impaired.¹⁴ It would be important to explore whether symptoms such as fatigue and poor concentration, characteristic of EHS, may possibly result from the blood changes that we observed in this study.

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Source:  ‘Does Short-term Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation Affect the Blood?’, http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/does-short-term-exposure-to-cell-phone-radiation-affect-the-blood/, posted 16 Jan. 2015, accessed 27 April 2015

Next is the þeodlorish (sociological) side, the dimension in which the people of a land are manipulated by the social ginmen (machine men, engineers).  The Apple Watch offers further ways for them to extend their technocratic rule over unsuspecting people, both by building excitement around the release of the Watch and through the sundry ‘apps’ associated with it:

In the scientifically regimented state, the citizen becomes little more than an amalgam of behavioral repertoires whose every thought, feeling, and idea is the product of external stimuli. From the scientistic vantage point, the populace's motivations can be calculated and systematized, thereby allowing those few conditioners who are accountable to no moral master to develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior. Such a societal model is known as a Technocracy, which Frank Fischer defines as follows: "Technocracy, in classical political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions" (17).

Source:  Phillip D. Collins, ‘The Faustian Face of Modern Science: Understanding the Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Totalitarianism’, http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Articles/Scientific_Totalitarianism.htm, posted 11 June 2009, accessed 9 April 2015

Lastly, there is the ghostly (spiritual) side.  St Ignatius Brianchaninov (+1867) warns us against insensibility to God that results from too heavy a focus on worldly things like this Watch in this lorespell (homily, sermon):

The stone is the soul’s illness by which all the other spiritual illnesses are guarded incurably and which the holy fathers call insensibility.[2] Many will say, what sort of sin is this? We have never heard of it. According to the fathers, insensibility is the deadening of spiritual feelings, the unseen death of the human soul with respect to spiritual things in a life that is flourishing with respect to material things. From a long-term physical sickness all strength can become exhausted and the body’s abilities withered; then the illness cannot find any more food, and ceases to torment the body’s constitution. It leaves the sick man alone and wasted, as if dead and incapable of movement due to the debilitating suffering, the terrible, dumb morbidity that is not expressed by any particular suffering. The same thing happens to the human soul. Long-term slackness of life amidst continuous distractions, constant voluntary sins, forgetfulness of God and eternity, inattention or only superficial attention to the Gospel teachings removes from our spirit any inclination toward spiritual things, and deadens it to them. Although they continue to exist, they cease to exist for our spirit because its life has ended for them—all its strength is directed toward the material, the temporal, the vain, and the sinful.

Source:  ‘Homily on the Sunday of the Myrrh Bearing Women. On Spiritual Deadness’, Nun Cornelia Rees, trans., http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/53230.htm, posted 29 April 2012, accessed 25 April 2015

Father Dumitru Staniloae’s teachings (the Orthodox priest and theologian from Romania) in The Experience of God: Vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification (Brookline, Ma., Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000 [1978 in Romania], Ionita and Barringer, trans. and ed.) make for a fitting end:

‘ . . .  In hell, the absence of life in God means also that normality is absent from the world, which is transformed into a mass of hallucinatory shadows cast up by the movements of chaos.  . . . In the state of sin our very being can advance to such a condition of self-centeredness that it almost no longer knows whether creation really exists’ (pgs. 177-8).

And without proper awareness of the creation (which we lose in overthoughtsomeness towards new gadgets), we lose a mighty mean of communion between God and man and between man and man:

‘We have seen, moreover, that the world has a meaning only because, being malleable, it can be led toward a mode of existence that is higher and eternal, toward the perfect truth or good that consists in love and union between God and the world, between humans and God, and among humans themselves, that is, only if the world is seen as a transparency that grows finer and finer to promote the relationship of total love between humans and God and among humans themselves’ (p. 172).