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!
DeathFest!
Yup, there was a “DeathFest” the other day. In Nonthaburi, near Bangkok, Thailand. This was the second year it’s been held. The unusual fair broached a subject that is uncomfortable for some, fearful for others, and taboo for many, inviting people to confront their own mortality.
As a business venture, the event brought together experts and organizations involved in health care, financial planning, palliative care, funeral services, and memorial innovations. And activities
New!
The Register online reported on an interesting study recently:
It seems that when a major music artist releases a new album of certified bangers, one of those bangers is your car banging into a tree, or a light pole, or another car.”
Yup, there’s a greater chance of car crashes on days of new music releases. Now, who doesn’t like streaming music while driving. But a working paper from researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School showed an association between
Shoes!
Athletic footwear has entered a new era of ambition. Here’s what Nike claimed a few months ago: “Nike Debuts its First Neuroscience-Based Footwear to Help Athletes Feel Calm, Focused and Present.” Wow! Footwear and the brain!
No longer content to promise just comfort or performance, Nike claims its shoes can activate the brain, heighten sensory awareness and even improve concentration by stimulating the bottom of your feet.
Nike’s chief science officer, Matthew Nurse,
Sounds!
Results of a massive study of 272,229 European adults were published this week, “Metabolic Profiles of Nighttime Road Traffic Noise Exposure,” in Environmental Research, by researchers from Finland, Netherlands, UK, and the USA.
Annual average nighttime road traffic noise was linked to the individual residential addresses of all the subjects at the time of blood sampling, using national noise maps. We utilized high-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomics
Parents!
What’s the secret to having a fuller social life with thriving relationships? We might not know all the answers, but there are hints. A new one: your relationship with your parents during your teenage years.
So claim scientists from Columbia University, New York, in “Family Connection in Adolescence and Social Connection in Adulthood,” published recently in JAMA Pediatrics.
A two decades-long study suggested that close relationships with family members during teenage
Destination?
He thought he was headed from Los Angeles to Managua, Nicaragua, with a layover in Houston. He thought wrong. And ended up in Haneda airport, Tokyo, 8,000 miles (about 12,000 kilometers) off target!
The passenger reportedly realized mid-flight, after about six hours, that he was on the wrong aircraft, when he asked the flight attendant why the trip to Houston was taking so long (should’ve been about 3 hours from LAX to IAH). That’s when the error was discovered. The
Frozen!
As with most of the continental United States, Florida, too, has been experiencing record low temperatures in the last couple of weeks. The other day, the mercury dipped to 25ºF (-4ºC), the lowest ever recorded in February in at least a century.
All kinds of problems occur in temperatures such as these: frozen pipes that burst and flood homes (yup, been there, done that: see here), all kinds
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. 