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!
Socializing?
“Motivational Shifts in Aging Monkeys and the Origins of Social Selectivity” was published recently in Current Biology, by researchers from the German Primate Center in Göttingen, Germany.
They studied non-social and social behavior of 118 Barbary macaques—a small monkey living in Europe and Northern Africa.
Non-social behavior was assessed by looking at the monkeys’ curiosity to explore new things like animal toys and such. Animals in their early adulthood and
Oracle!
I was in Greece last month, and got to visit the remains of the ancient Temple at Delphi, now recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Delphi (DEL-FEE in Greek) is located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, supposedly sacred to the gods Dionysius and Apollo, and home to the Muses.
The site of the Temple was said to have been determined by Zeus, who located the edifice at the center of the earth (which, as Gaia, was Zeus’s grandmother). There the “navel” of the
Dislike!
For years Facebook users have clamored for a “dislike” button to be paired with its “like” counterpart. Finally, it seemed, Zuckerberg and Co. had listened to their 1,650,000,000 active monthly users.
Announced CEO Mark Z. last September:
I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years. Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on it and shipping it.”
While up and down voting scheme is a fixture of the online news
Media!
According to a report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization to help families and educators navigate the complex world of media and technology, on any given day, U.S. teens spend nine hours on media. Watching videos, playing games, reading, listening to media, checking social media, etc. On laptops, smartphones, tablets, TV …. Nine hours, every day!
That is more than what teens usually spend on sleep, more than what they spend with their parents and teachers!
Commons
Friends?
Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford, Robert Ian MacDonald Dunbar, has made a pronouncement you won’t like. Most of your Facebook friends aren’t your friends.
In a recent issue of Royal Society: Open Science, Dunbar contributed “Do Online Social Media Cut Through the Constraints that Limit the Size of Offline Social Networks?”
Our man was also the dude who came up with the Dunbar Number in the 1990s, correlating primate brain size and average social group
Sovereign!
A strange thing happened the other day.
An Israeli dude wanted a restraining order against God. He petitioned the Haifa Magistrate’s Court to issue one.
“Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
Let him who reproves God answer it.”
Job 40:2
The name of the petitioner has not been reported, but he represented himself in court, creating quite a storm with his audacity.
Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said,
Weighty!
If you want to get folks to carefully and thoughtfully consider answers to a weighty matter, then you might do well to make the weighty matter actually weigh something significant.
A few years ago, Psychological Science published “Weight as an Embodiment of Importance,” by researchers from the University of Amsterdam.
Subjects were asked to respond to questions on either a light clipboard (1.45 lbs) or a heavier one (2.29 lbs). Guess what, the folks holding the latter
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.