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!
Hear?
You think you are going bonkers? Me, too.
I have a solution for all our problems. Hearing aids!
So saith a group of researchers in Singapore in “Association of Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants With Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” published in JAMA Neurology last December.
Bottom line: Using hearing aids significantly reduce the risk for cognitive decline and dementia and even improve short-term cognitive function in individuals
Dr. AI?
I’m in trouble. As a doc. And you’re in trouble. As a patient.
Two artificial intelligence (AI) programs—including ChatGPT (= Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, launched in November 2022)—have passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). This is the standardized examination, given in three steps, to all medical graduates desiring to practice in the US of A.
Two research groups demonstrated this recently, publishing their work in medRxiv as
Relationships!
Last month, Drs. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, wrote a fascinating essay in The New York Times: “The Lifelong Power of Close Relationships,” adapted from their recent bestseller, The Good Life.
The study that these authors direct has been ongoing for 85 years (and is still continuing), tracking an original group of 724 men and more than 1,300 of their male and female descendants over three generations, and asking
Haze?
Waze, the popular GPS app, leads to brain haze. (And so do other GPS apps.)
So claim researchers at McMaster University, in “Orienteering Experts Report More Proficient Spatial Processing and Memory Across Adulthood, in Public Library of Science One.
Orienteering? That’s a group of sports requiring one to employ one’s navigational skills with a traditional map and compass to move from point to pint in unfamiliar terrain in the shortest time possible. In other words,
Longevity?
Talk about long life. This guy, Jonathan, turned 190 years of age last month!
Jonathan is Seychelles Giant Tortoise hatched in the Georgian era and is the oldest known living land animal on Earth and the oldest ever recorded chelonian. He lives in a British overseas territory, St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic.
The world’s oldest tortoise has lived through two world wars, at least forty US Presidents, the Scopes Monkey Trials, the rise and fall of the British
Empathy!
We knew it all along. Women on average are better than men at putting themselves in others’ shoes and imagining what another person is thinking or feeling. But that’s now been confirmed in a vast study across 57 countries and across all ages.
So proclaimed “Sex and Age Differences in ‘Theory Of Mind’ across 57 Countries Using the English Version of the ‘Reading The Mind In The Eyes’ Test,” published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy
Swallowed!
The most dangerous animal in the world is apparently the mosquito, killing up to one million humans each year by spreading diseases including Zika and malaria. Snakes and wolves and bears are dangerous too. But hippos? Those cute, huge, “river-horses” (which is what “potamus” + “hippo” means)?
They are. Five hundred humans are killed in Africa a year by these beasts. They spend most of their time in the water but are aggressively territorial and can attack boaters
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.