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!
Late?
Last week I touted (well, I quoted touts) the values of waking up earlier.
To be an equal opportunity touter, this week it is the other side: the values of waking up earlier (and staying up late).
Culture favors the larks, not the owls. Discrimination, saith I. Even proverbs are prejudiced; after all, it is the early bird that catches the worm. (Though I’ve often wondered why no one seems to be concerned about the fate of the early worm!)
Said one commentator in TIME
Early?
Yup, “they” (whoever “they” might be) were right, it seems. Early birds (and I don’t mean avians) are more religious than the ones who retire late.
So claimeth scientists from the University of Warsaw in “Godless Owls, Devout Larks: Religiosity and Conscientiousness Are Associated with Morning Preference and (Partly) Explain Its Effects on Life Satisfaction,” published this month in PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science).
So, if you want a sign from heaven, wake
Old?
They say you are only as old as you feel. It is not only “they” who say this. But respectable scientists from the University of Greifswald, Germany, affirm this to be the case. They said so in “Gain- but not Loss-Related Self-Perceptions Of Aging Predict Mortality Over A Period Of 23 Years: A Multidimensional Approach,” published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
This study began a long time ago. In 1996, 2,400 participants in the ”German
Thirst!
Ms. Lilliam Ip set out optimistically to Bright, at the base of the Victorian Alps, a large mountain system in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria. But this 48-year-old woman failed to check in with relatives five days later, and they raised the alarm.
Rescue authorities scoured the remote, hilly terrain and her car was finally spotted at the end of a dirt road by a police helicopter.
Wodonga Police Station Sgt. Martin Torpey said:
She used great common sense to
Lower?
“Comparison Between Concentric‑Only, Eccentric‑Only, and Concentric–Eccentric Resistance Training of the Elbow Flexors for Their Effects “n Muscle Strength And Hypertrophy.” How about that? It’s a study published about six months ago in the European Journal of Applied Physiology by a group of researchers from Niigata and Fukushima, in Japan.
What’s with all that, you ask? Here’s the bottom line: You don’t have to lift weights to grow those muscles;
Selfie!
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an intriguing article that dealt with a published report late last year in the peer-reviewed Italian art journal Critica d’Arte.
Michelangelo may have secretly painted himself onto the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, portraying himself as God with arm outstretched to spark life in a lounging Adam. How about that?
Said the author of that journal report, Adriano Marinazzo, a curator of special projects at Virginia’s
Earworms!
No, these aren’t actually those slimy creatures with cylindrical bodies devoid of limbs or eyes.
Earworms are bits of music that keep echoing in your brain and you can’t get rid of it. AKA stuck song syndrome, sticky music, musical imagery repetition, intrusive musical imagery, or involuntary musical imagery.
A 2020 study of American college students showed that 97 percent had experienced an earworm in the past month. One in five had these creatures crawling in their
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.