RaMbLeS
Welcome to RaMbLeS, a collection of weekly musings on life and Scripture. It all began in 2005 on Google’s blogspot as the aBeLOG (a name now recycled), a semi-autobiographical devotional that attempted to keep well-wishers abreast of my activities as I relocated to Scotland for a few years. Since my return, I’ve continued my RaMbLeS, and here’s its most recent incarnation on Homiletix, as random reflections usually based on current news articles and travel experiences and whatever else takes my fancy!
Hotdog!
The other day, The Wall Street Journal ran an essay by columnist Adam Chandler: “The Rise of the $100 Hot Dog.”
Egad!
The hot dog, says Chandler, “has been dogged” (!) by a lowbrow reputation: zero nutrition, hardly any quality, not at all unaffordable. But the edible canine is growing and glowing. Premium toppings, extravagant presentations and supersize varieties are pushing hot dogs into the realm of fine-dining, haute cuisine. (With prices to match.)
Chandler
Kids?
A recent article in The Washington Post had something interesting to say about a new industry in China: Adult children for hire!
An aging population in China is inspiring this trend and enterprising young men and women are making themselves available for hire as companions to lonely elders in their day-to-day activities. The historic demographic shift is driven by: declining fertility = ~1 birth/woman (you need it to be at least 2.1 to maintain a stable population); birth
Travel!
Forget the staycation. Get a doctor’s prescription for a week in, say, Greece. And go!
Essayist, Heidi Mitchell, recently declared in the Wall Street Journal:
Research reveals that travel can build stress resilience, sharpen cognitive health and ward off depression far better than staying home. Apparently it has got to do with exposing the brain to new experiencing forcing greater mental engagement than do those usual routines at home.”
She explained:
At home, the brain
The critters in your bowels could make you psycho saith researchers from the University of Porto, Portugal, and the University of Oxford, U.K., in “Gut and Oral Microbiota Composition Is Associated with Psychopathic Personality,” set for publication—but not yet peer-reviewed—in Translational Psychiatry.
It is bound to be controversial, but the authors claim to have discovered a link between the specific balance of microflora in the gut and psychopathic behavior—a
Lotto!
Seconds can cost you money. In this case, seven seconds cost Joel Ifergan $13.5 million Canadian (about $9.5 million US).
Scooping millions on the lottery would be a life-changing event for most people. Ifergan, likewise, expected that to be the case. But, alas, the guy never saw a penny of the payout.
One night several years ago, he went into a convenience store in Quebec, Canada, shortly before the 9:00 pm deadline, to buy tickets that evening’s Lotto Super 7 draw. The
Odor!
You can, apparently, odorize your way into resistance training.
Or so say scientists from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in “Chocolate Odor Enhances Resistance Exercise Performance Through Appetite Suppression in the Fasted State,” published recently in Frontiers in Physiology.
Smelling chocolate between sets at the gym pushed men to complete far more repetitions than they managed with no scent at all, they found.
Olfactory (pertaining to smell) stimuli may
Words?
Apparently, people speak fewer words a day in 2019 than they did in 2005. So claimeth psychology researchers from Universities of Missouri–Kansas City and Arizona, in “Sliding Into Silence? We Are Speaking 300 Daily Words Fewer Every Year,” published recently in Perspectives on Psychological Science.
We aren’t just missing those long conversations; we are losing thousands of small, incidental daily interactions (like chatting with a cashier or neighbor), which
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.