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!
Pothole!
Earlier this year, a miracle happened.
Vineeta Shukla, 50, of Bareilly, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, who had collapsed in her home, had subsequently been declared “brain dead” by doctors in a local hospital. So she was being transported back home in an ambulance with her husband, Kumar, who said:
I was preparing for her funeral. I told my family to prepare for her last rites. She was not breathing, there was only a sinking heartbeat. And medical professionals
Chocolate?
Chocolate is good for you. Saith scientists. Again!
This time, in “Astringent Flavanol Fires the Locus-Noradrenergic System, Regulating Neurobehavior and Autonomic Nerves,” published Current Research in Food Science, published recently by scientists from Japan and Italy.
You’re right, it didn’t say anything about chocolate directly.
You see, astringency, is a stimulant property—almost a bitterness of sorts—unique to only a few compounds, typical ones being the
Diagnosis?
That is the African Giant Pouched Rat (aka Cricetomys gambianus). An incredible rodent: it has been trained to smell out land mines in some parts of Africa. But here’s a new one: it is now capable of smelling out tuberculosis, too. We have, in short, a better diagnostician. Take that, doctors! A lab rat has done us better!
Every weekday, this trained rodent, named Tariq, and eight of his brethren take turns in a cage at Eduardo Mondlane University’s College of Veterinary
Swallowed?
A TikToker in Mexico thought her cough that wouldn’t go away was just a reaction to the changing weather. It wasn’t.
Instead, it was her own nose ring, lodged deep within her lungs.
The 26-year-old, Monica Deyanira Cabrera Barajas, recently went viral on TikTok, amassing 4.7 million views after revealing the freak medical accident.
Deyanira, who has a large number of piercings, didn’t initially notice the jewelry was missing. It wasn’t until she developed a chronic
Bixonimania?
Sounds like a disease, right? It is.
But it is not!
If you consulted “Dr. Google” (or any other chatbot) and entered “sore, itch, red eyes”, this is the answer you’d get: “Diagnosis: bixonimania.”
This condition doesn’t show up in medical literature. Because it doesn’t exist.
The prestigious science journal, Nature, did a news feature on this oddity.
Bixonimania was invented by a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg,
Risen!
He is risen! He is risen, indeed!
And Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) thinks so, too. There has been, since 2006, an X account for “Jesus Christ.” @Jesus, describing him as:
Carpenter, Healer, God”
Nope, he ain’t dead. He’s on X.
And what’s more, his is a “verified” X account—with the characteristic blue check mark validating that it was no bogus bot who created it.
The profile picture, however, seems to be AI generated: a broadly smiling and winking “Jesus”
Reading?
The other day a burglar was arrested. Not surprising. Burglars do get caught. And this was in Rome, Italy. That’s not surprising either: 8,699 burglaries were reported in ye olde city in 2024, about 317 burglaries per 100,000 residents (Italy: 226/100K; USA: 229/100K; the UK: 316/100K). These things happen. And the perpetrators are caught … sometimes (Italy: 8% of the time; USA: 13%; the UK: 5%). So, yeah.
But this guy got caught because of a most unusual reason. He
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. 