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!
Electricity!
The Washington Post reported on an interesting story last month. About “Kosher Electricity.”
What on earth?
Here’s the problem Kosher Electricity is trying to solve. The ultra-Orthodox, the Haredim, constitute about 14 percent of Israel’s 9.5 million people. According to their rabbinical rules, it is not kosher to plug into the national grid to draw electricity from the national grid during Shabbat hours, from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays.
The strictest
Intestines!
There are, I’m sure you know, despite all the hullabaloo in society these days, differences between males and females. Besides the obvious, I want us to acknowledge another difference.
As reported by a group of researchers from North Carolina State University, Duke, and University of Minnesota. “Hidden Diversity: Comparative Functional Morphology of Humans and Other Species,” published in PeerJ.
The long and short of it (pun intended, but you won’t catch it till
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;
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. 