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!
Rodents!
Want to know the latest tourist craze in New York City? Rat tours. Yup, you read it right. Rat tours!
Tourists are flocking to the Big Apple to check out its exploding rat population, and tour guides are tailoring excursions to introduce them to the city’s most beady-eyed natives—rodents!
Well-known Tik Tok star, Kenny Bollwerk, of “Rat Tok” fame, helps connects tourists with a yen for vermin with rodents:
People are walking by, there’s rats running across people’s
Fragrance!
Once upon a time, specifically about 3,500 years ago, in ye olde Egypt, lived a noblewoman named Senetnay, a wet nurse to Pharaoh Amenhotep II. She was obviously regarded as a “somebody,” because she was buried in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. In an early 20th-century excavation conducted by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun fame, the jars containing her organs were removed and stored in the Museum August Kestner in Hannover, Germany. Recently, researchers from Germany,
Kosher?
Of course, the question was bound to come up. Are self-driving cars kosher?
Self-driving cars—aka robotaxis, autonomous vehicles or driverless cars—with their whirring sensors have by now become a familiar sight on the streets of San Francisco.
Familiar they might be, but not without controversy. With local incidents of self-driving cars trying to drive into active fire zones, stalling en masse and even crashing into a fire truck this month, reports of autonomous misconduct
Overweight?
Obesity costs this country about $200 billion a year wreaking havoc by means of diabetes and heart disease. But there seems to be hope. In the form of drugs that help folks lose weight—lots of weight.
These medications, originally developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, mimic a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, that helps suppress appetite and makes people feel full sooner when eating. So they eat less. And—voila!—many of the deleterious effects
Sound!
Sound can take years off your life, apparently. Or so The New York Times reports.
Jet planes, jackhammers, sirens, loud dogs, truck engines, and stuff like that rattles the neighborhood over 280 times a day, more than 105,000 times each year. Chronic loud noise is a health threat that is increasing the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks worldwide, including for more than 100 million Americans. One might think one has adapted to the noise, but even if that is
Walking!
Last year had the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in the last 40 years: 7,508 walkers slain by vehicles. So saith the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Up 77% since 2010. And in 2022, 20 people were killed each day, walking in the street. (Oklahoma had a technical issue and failed to send in a report, but NBC reports that the state averages 92 pedestrian deaths each year; that means last year’s total is probably even higher.)
Pam Shadel Fischer, senior
Burnt!
Apparently, it is so hot in Arizona these days that people who fall on the ground are suffering burns! Folks are being brought into the emergency room with significant, sometimes life-threatening burns caused just by falls.
Dr. Kevin Foster, director of burn services at the Arizona Burn Center at Valleywise Health:
This is really unusual—the number of patients that we’re seeing and the severity of injuries—the acuity of injuries is much higher.”
He added that every
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.