Nocebo?
The other day the Journal of the American Medical Society’s Medical News Summary ran an article: “’Important Conversations’ Are Needed to Explain the Nocebo Effect.”
It starts off with the story of a 52-year-old patient with high cholesterol, peripheral vascular disease, obesity, and other morbid conditions. He needed a statin and wanted to be on one, but had already tried different forms of the drug and discontinued each due to the same side-effect they gave
Help!
Last week, Ben Searancke decided he’d go surfing in Karekare, a remote West Auckland (New Zealand) beach.
Unfortunately, the guy lost his surfboard in the process. The ways were strong and crashed him on to rocks—giving him a deep gash on his leg—before washing him ashore further north, in Mercer Bay.
Searancke tried for over two hours to walk out of the bay, separated from elsewhere by steep cliffs. Bleeding pretty severely, he was too weak to accomplish his ends.
About
Surfeit!
The other day The Global Times reported on an incident at Kunming airport, in Southwest Yunnan province, China.
Four travelers on a business trip purchased 30 kilos (about 66 lbs) of oranges for CNY 50 (about USD 8). Nicely priced. Might as well take some home. 66 lbs.
But at the airport they were asked to pony up money for excess baggage: CNY 300 (about USD 47). Apparently this was “more than they could afford,” so they declined the offer.
Now, I, dense as I am, would
Weather?
A couple of weeks ago Forbes ran an article on the stock market and its relationship to the weather.
Yeah, right, weather! We’re more interested in earnings per share and price-to-earnings ratio and cash flow and industry dynamics and trends and liquidity and stuff like that. Not degrees Fahrenheit and millibars pressure and mph windspeed and percentage humidity. Of course, not!
Well, we might be wrong.
And we aren’t talking about meteorological catastrophes like hurricanes
Authorial Doings and Application
I was recently interviewed on the Bible Study Methods podcast (under the aegis of Faithlife, the parent of the Logos Bible software) by its editor, Dr. Mark Ward. We talked of a number of things, but focused on authorial doings and the derivation of application in sermons.
Here’s our conversation …
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.