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!
Calf?
Yup, your calf. Measure the calf diameter. It predicts how long you will live. Bring out the tape measure.
Muscle decline, sarcopenia, increases after your pass the Big 6 Oh—it affects 10–15% of the elderly worldwide. And that creates problems: decreased mobility, greater chances of falling, all adding to the general morbidity that accelerates one’s decline to death.
Several studies have found evidence that suggests a person’s calf size relative to the rest of
Gut!
You thought it was only touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing? I did, too. Apart from the other less-than-classical position sense and, of course, the “sixth” sense—whatever that is. Well, we may just have to call that the “seventh” sense, because … a real, physiological, organic sixth sense seems to have been discovered. That’s according to scientists collaborating across a variety of institutions in Durham, Cambridge (MA), Philadelphia, and Mexico City.
Do?
A Space-Out … competition? Yes, it is a thing. And it involves being spaced-out for 90 minutes, all of 5,400 seconds! No sleeping, no noise, no checking phones, no eating, no nothing! Just being spaced-out!
The current champion, Denis Kwan Hong-Wang, wrote about his experience in The Guardian the other day:
From an early age I worried if I was doing enough. That brought a lot of anxiety. I started to practice mindfulness in 2012. It helps a lot with my emotions, and I
Day?
Wednesday, July 9, 2025. A most unusual day they said it was. Likely the shortest day of your life. And mine. And everyone else’s, too.
Because … it was the shortest day period. In history! Scientists discovered that July 9, July 22, and August 5, were/will be 1.30–1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard day.
What happened? Well, the earth’s rotation has sped up in recent years.
And how did that happen? Who knows! It’s still a mystery, but scientists believe
War?
There is, apparently, an account on X, called “Pentagon Pizza Report.” It monitors pizza takeaway spots in Arlington County, Virginia, home of America’s military headquarters, using Google’s restaurant footfall data.
According to the Telegraph, a few weeks ago, on a Thursday night, every establishment slinging dough within three miles of the Pentagon saw a sudden spike in customers. Just 10 minutes later, there was a significant drop in footfall in each
Mind!
The latest is an AI called Centaur. And it can read your mind! So reported researchers, collaborating across several institutions in Germany, the UK, and the USA, in an article published recently in Nature: “A Foundation Model to Predict and Capture Human Cognition.” I.e., it can predict and simulate human behavior in any experiment expressible in natural language.
The human mind is remarkably general. Not only do we routinely make mundane decisions, such as choosing
Music-making
Hundreds of millions of us engage with music each day.
Writes Daniel Bowling, Director of the Music and Brain Health Lab at Stanford School of Medicine, in Translational Psychiatry:
As far as we know, music has been with humans since our earliest existence. The first known evidence of human preoccupation with music comes from Stone Age flutes, carefully carved in wing bones and mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago.”
In the modern day, these values that we place on music
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. 