Rob Kall (born June 29, 1951) is an American
inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an id ...
,
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
, and founder of the
OpEdNews
''OpEdNews'' is a United States-based progressive/ liberal news, antiwar activism, and opinion website founded by Rob Kall in 2003.
It is a hybrid news, community blog and article aggregation site that publishes opinion-based articles, news st ...
website,
a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
-based
progressive
Progressive may refer to:
Politics
* Progressivism, a political philosophy in support of social reform
** Progressivism in the United States, the political philosophy in the American context
* Progressive realism, an American foreign policy pa ...
/
liberal news, antiwar
activism
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fr ...
, and opinion
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...
founded in 2003.
[ Kall also hosts the 'Bottom Up Radio Show'] as well as being founder and president of 'FutureHealth' and host of 'FutureHeath Radio'. In 2014, Mediaite
Mediaite is a news website focusing on politics and the media.Howard PolskinHow the Washington Examiner became a traffic monster ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (May 15, 2020). Founded by Dan Abrams, it is part of the Abrams Media Network.
Conte ...
showed Kall ranked as one of the top 200 print/online columnists.
Background
Inventor
In 1976-77, while Kall was a graduate student, he learned of the physiological finding that cold hands can result from the vascular constriction that indicates stress. He then developed the "Bio-Q ring" to detect stress through use of 13 liquid crystals to detect changes in the temperature of the hand. The concept was that if a wearer were forewarned of approaching tension, they could mitigate their actions and thus reduce stress. In 1978 and 1979, he took early design samples of the Bio-Q ring to BSA meetings in Albuquerque
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding i ...
and San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. Encouragement from biofeedback
Biofeedback is the process of gaining greater awareness of many physiological functions of one's own body by using electronic or other instruments, and with a goal of being able to manipulate the body's systems at will. Humans conduct biofeedbac ...
experts Thomas Budzynski
Thomas Hice Budzynski (October 13, 1933 – February 14, 2011)''U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014'' was an American psychologist and a pioneer in the field of biofeedback, inventing one of the first electromyographic biofeedback traini ...
, Edward Taub, and others, kept him focused on the concept. Raising money as a freelance
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance ...
medical writer, he founded Futurehealth Inc as a manufacturer of biofeedback instrumentation/materials. By 1984, 185,000 Bio-Q units had been sold, and according to the Futurehealth.org website, by 2014 that quantity has reached over 300,000 units sold in over 50 countries.
Radio
OpEdNews
Rob Kall relates how in early 2003, he had heard a Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...
speech about why the United States "had" to go to war with Iraq and felt that Powell's reasons were disingenuous.[ Wishing to "publish the Truth", Kall began a personal ]blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
which developed into OpEdNews.
Kall's articles on the OpEdNews website have been cross-posted in ''The Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
''. He has been mentioned in an op ed in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', by Judith Warner
Judith Warner (born July 4, 1965) is an American writer.
Warner is a senior fellow at American Progress, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Time.com as well as the author of a range of nonfiction books, amon ...
.
Recognition
Kall is ranked by Mediaite
Mediaite is a news website focusing on politics and the media.Howard PolskinHow the Washington Examiner became a traffic monster ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (May 15, 2020). Founded by Dan Abrams, it is part of the Abrams Media Network.
Conte ...
as one of the top 200 online/print columnists.
Awards and nominations
In July 2013, Kall, along with his ''Opednews'' (new media), became the first media winners of the Pillar Human Rights Award
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression memb ...
for International Persons of Conscience for supporting whistleblower
A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...
s and the first amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
, awarded by the 2013 Whistleblower Summit for Civil & Human Rights as hosted by ACORN 8 and Federally Employed Women-Legal Education Fund (FEW/LEF).[transcript]
/ref>
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kall, Rob
1951 births
Living people
21st-century American journalists
American alternative journalists
American bloggers
American columnists
American inventors
American male bloggers
American male journalists
American online journalists
American publishers (people)
American radio hosts
Journalists from Pennsylvania
American opinion journalists