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!
Nature!
After a year of viruses, shut-ins, lockdowns, WFH, etc., many have become TV binge watchers. There’s nothing else to do, they complain, bored and depressed.
Well, there might be a cure for this boredom and depression … on TV! Yup, you can sit on your couch and remote-click away your tedium, languor, and ennui.
Or so claim researchers from University of Exeter and University of Vienna, in “What Is the Best Way of Delivering Virtual Nature for Improving Mood?” published
Direction?
These days it is hard to get lost. What with GPS devices everywhere, even on our phones, we can bravely go where no one has ever gone before. Well, almost!
But wait! We had GPS before GPS was a thing.
So say scientists at the University of Durham, U. K., in “Vector Trace Cells in the Subiculum of the Hippocampal Formation,” published recently in Nature Neuroscience.
There are, apparently, cells in a part of the brain that actually function like a GPS. Our current gang
Nocebo?
The other day the Journal of the American Medical Society’s Medical News Summary ran an article: “’Important Conversations’ Are Needed to Explain the Nocebo Effect.”
It starts off with the story of a 52-year-old patient with high cholesterol, peripheral vascular disease, obesity, and other morbid conditions. He needed a statin and wanted to be on one, but had already tried different forms of the drug and discontinued each due to the same side-effect they gave
Help!
Last week, Ben Searancke decided he’d go surfing in Karekare, a remote West Auckland (New Zealand) beach.
Unfortunately, the guy lost his surfboard in the process. The ways were strong and crashed him on to rocks—giving him a deep gash on his leg—before washing him ashore further north, in Mercer Bay.
Searancke tried for over two hours to walk out of the bay, separated from elsewhere by steep cliffs. Bleeding pretty severely, he was too weak to accomplish his ends.
About
Surfeit!
The other day The Global Times reported on an incident at Kunming airport, in Southwest Yunnan province, China.
Four travelers on a business trip purchased 30 kilos (about 66 lbs) of oranges for CNY 50 (about USD 8). Nicely priced. Might as well take some home. 66 lbs.
But at the airport they were asked to pony up money for excess baggage: CNY 300 (about USD 47). Apparently this was “more than they could afford,” so they declined the offer.
Now, I, dense as I am, would
Weather?
A couple of weeks ago Forbes ran an article on the stock market and its relationship to the weather.
Yeah, right, weather! We’re more interested in earnings per share and price-to-earnings ratio and cash flow and industry dynamics and trends and liquidity and stuff like that. Not degrees Fahrenheit and millibars pressure and mph windspeed and percentage humidity. Of course, not!
Well, we might be wrong.
And we aren’t talking about meteorological catastrophes like hurricanes
Face!
I have a patient whom I’ve taken care of for several years, ever since her elementary school days she would always come with a bystander. In the early days, it was always her mother. And I’ve gotten to know this parent quite well. Now a high-school senior, she brings a friend—always a new one every time. We even play a game: I walk into her room asking, “Who have you brought with you this time?”
Last week, I repeated my line as I walked in. “Yes, I have a friend,”
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. 