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!
Rescued!
A rather strange thing happened recently in Japan. A guy was rescued off Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in the nation (12,400 feet). And people are mad.
Not because of the rescue, of course. But the fact that it happened … twice. To the same person! In the same week!
According to the Associated Press, a 27-year-old Chinese student trying to ascend Fuji-san developed altitude sickness (what the body suffers due to lack of oxygen at higher altitudes before it has
Heartbeats!
For a long time we thought heartbeats would save our identities. How, you ask?
Cybersecurity experts thought they had deepfake videos all figured out. You see, there are subtle color changes to our skins caused by the pulsation of blood through our vascular system, timed with our heartbeats. But AI wasn’t explicitly programmed to mimic these nuanced changes caused by blood flow, so fake videos would lack these physiological signals.
Deepfakes have become ubiquitous in
Haunted?
Hannah-Ireland Durando, 24, a costume designer and actress from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, woke up one morning, having lost her “zest for life.” Tortured by headaches and struggling with forgetfulness. Particularly unable to recall the lyrics to her favorite Taylor Swift song, “Haunted.”
You and I walk a fragile line,
I have known it all this time;
But I never thought I’d live to see it break,
Nicknames?
There was an interesting piece by Mark Oppenheimer in The Wall Street Journal the other day: “Where Have All the Nicknames Gone?”
Nicknames used to abound, reflecting belongingness in a family, echoing a bond between the caller and the named, expressing the warmth of informality. For the longest time, I was “AK,” which then turned to “Abe” when I got to the shores of this nation (that had a famous “Abe” in its history).
Generally such appellations are affirming,
Deliver?
Monash IVF (in vitro fertilization), that operates across Australia, ran into big trouble the other day—its branch in Brisbane.
A couple (that had had an IVF baby earlier) requested their remaining embryos to be transferred to another IVF provider. That’s when the big trouble began. Monash IVF acknowledged in a statement that:
Instead of finding the expected number of embryos, an additional embryo remained in storage for the birth parents.”
Or, in other words, the woman
Healing!
Swiss doctors are doing something unprecedented. Writing prescriptions for strolls in public gardens, art galleries, and museums. Yes, so saith reporters for Reuters.
You got a chronic disease or mental health condition? Yup, take a stroll in a place of art or beauty.
The city of Neuchatel, in western Switzerland, recently launched this pilot project with doctors to help struggling residents and to promote physical activity.
Said Dr. Patricia Lehmann, a Neuchatel doctor taking
Fall?
Falling out of love, you say? And you think it is all happening rather unpredictably? Betrayal, fight, drift, distancing, breakup?
You may be wrong, assert social scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz the University of Bern in “Terminal Decline of Satisfaction in Romantic Relationships: Evidence from Four Longitudinal Studies,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recently.
Researchers analyzed data from four major longitudinal
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.