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!
Distant!
We use lots of cues to make sure we don’t get lost. Familiar landmarks, general sense of direction, an estimate of how far we have walked, etc. Apparently the last is very important—there is a portion of the brain dedicated to that estimation. Yup, a milometer in the brain.
Thus saith researchers from the UK, US, and Australia in “Grid Cell Distortion Is Associated with Increased Distance Estimation Error in Polarized Environments,” published this month in Current
Wait!
Waiting is always boring, and we do anything we can not to have to wait. Scrolling on our phones, perusing our social media, listening to a podcast or music …. We want instant gratification, failing which, we try to keep ourselves amused with something diversionary, so we don’t have to think about … waiting (which only makes time go slower).
But, writes Dr. Ayse Burcin Baskurt, at the University of East London, waiting isn’t always bad. Research has shown that waiting
Autopilot!
You wake up, brush your teeth, make coffee, check your phone, tend to your kids, perform your ablutions, eat your cereal, drive to work, …. How much of that morning routine did you actually think about? According to new research, the answer is … almost none of it.
So claim scientists from University of South Carolina, SC, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia, and University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, in “How Habitual is Everyday Life? An Ecological
Bliss!
A strange thing happened a couple of months ago.
A cargo ship crashed into a guy’s front garden. Yes, his front garden. That’s because his house was close to the edge of the water. And because said cargo ship—all 450 feet of it—ran aground. In the Trondheimsfjord off Byneset in Trondheim, Norway.
And our man’s bedroom was only a few feet away from the stern of the ship. He is safe.
But here’s the strange fact: Johan Helberg had been sound asleep when the catastrophe
Seeing!
You wanna be able to see in total darkness? Without night vision devices? Now you can.
And scientists from University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei), Fudan University (Shanghai), and University of Massachusetts (Worcester) tell you how. In “Near-Infrared Spatiotemporal Color Vision in Humans Enabled by Upconversion Contact Lenses, published in the prestigious journal, Cell, a couple months ago.
Yeah, well, almost without night vision devices, since
Bored!
Boredom, apparently, is a widespread problem. Even in spiritual practices and institutional rituals. These have now been found to be wanting: They are … boring!
So pronounced social researchers from Europe and Australia in “Spiritual Boredom is Associated with Over- and Underchallenge, Lack of Value, and Reduced Motivation,” published earlier this year in Communications Psychology. They investigated spiritual boredom in five different spiritual contexts:
Arms!
There are about a million of these in captivity—in homes as pets, and in labs as scientific subjects: axolotls. A member of the salamander family that is “pedomorphic,” i.e., in the form of a juvenile.
Most amphibians begin their lives as aquatic animals which are unable to live on dry land, till they undergo metamorphosis to reach adulthood, losing their gills and starting to live on land. Our specimen, the axolotl, lacks some of the hormones that stimulate metamorphosis,
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. 