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!
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
Longevity?
Most of us probably want to live long. What are the factors contributing to longevity? We already know that unhealthy lifestyles can reduce our lifespans: inadequate exercise, imprudent diet, and inadvisable smoking, potentially resulting in heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. What else? How about genes?
Researchers from Israel, Sweden, China, and the Netherlands, decided to take another look at this and published their results in the prestigious journal, Science,
Wonder!
Writes The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank:
I just had a most eventful week. I watched in horror as a terrible storm in the Mediterranean dashed a ship against a rocky coast, forcing its crew and passengers into a desperate attempt to save themselves and rescue their cargo. I soared with the birds among snow-covered peaks in the Rockies, marveling at the many shades of white and blue. And I joined picnickers on a serene hillside along the Hudson River, where I watched
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. 