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!
Desensitized!
Frank Abagnale has the dubious distinction of being one of America’s most prominent fraudsters and conmen. His life made it to Hollywood (in the 2002 movie, Catch Me If You Can, where he was played by Leonardo DiCaprio), not to mention into a Broadway musical. He claims to have assumed at least eight identities including a doctor, a lawyer, and a Federal agent. Abagnale also escaped from prison twice.
[Now he is—get this!—a well-respected security consultant, lecturer
Dead?
Continuing last week’s theme …
The other day a couple of scientists, not Christian as far as I know, claimed that human consciousness continues after death.
Stuart Hameroff, Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology and Director of the Center of Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, is one of them. He has always been fascinated by “microtubules,” components of the cell’s “skeleton,” so to speak, that are involved in a number of processes
Dying!
Does basketball and dying have anything to do with each other? It turns out they do, or so claims “He Dies, He Scores: Evidence that Reminders of Death Motivate Improved Performance in Basketball,” a recent article in Journal of Sport and Exercise Physiology from scientists at the University of Arizona.
These researchers had folks play one-on-one basketball games or take shots at the basket on their own. All had to complete one of two questionnaires beforehand—one
Read!
The other day, researchers from the Yale University School of Public Health put out a study in Social Science & Medicine: “A Chapter a Day: Association of Book Reading with Longevity.”
The study looked at 3,635 over-50 subjects divided into non-readers, readers (they read up to 3.5 hours/week), and heavy readers (who read over 3.5 hours/week). Readers and heavy readers survived almost 23 months more than non-readers!
In other words:
Just like a healthy diet and exercise,
Bad?
“Bad” fruit has gotten a bad rap. I’m not talking of rotten stuff, but those pieces of fruit—and vegetables—with cosmetic dents and scars. Ugly f&v are a part of life on the farm. These specimes are perfectly edible and delicious, and just as nutritious as their blemishless fellows. But their cosmetic challenges have relegated them to a position off the shelves of retail grocery stores, and they are consigned to landfills as food waste.
Until now.
Wal-Mart
Sweet!
In the U.S. 33% of adults are overweight, 30% are obese, and 6% extremely obese. That leaves only 31% who have a normal weight or are underweight (BMI under 24.9). Yikes!
No wonder many are on diets of various kinds—Atkins, Zone, Vegetarian, Vegan, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Raw Food, Mediterranean, Paleolithic, etc., etc.
Good news for these folks! Soon these dieters can have their cake and eat it too!
Scientists at the University of London unveiled a gadget recently
Matrix?
Bank of America analysts wrote last month that there is a fifty percent chance that we are all living in a Matrix-sorta simulated world (in that 1999 movie, humans live in a simulated reality created and controlled by machines).
(Of course, they added, that if it were all just a simulation, we would never know about it.)
It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and computing power, members of future civilizations could have decided
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.