Wednesday Bible Study: Keep exterminating those Amelekites!
The Amelekites were exterminated by Saul (1 Samuel 15); then they were exterminated again by David (1 Samuel 27). But here they are again, just a couple of years later! They attack the Philistine city where David ' s band has been staying, but unlike the Israelites, they don ' t kill anybody, they just take captives. Hmm. Anyway, David exterminates them again, except for 400 men who escape on camels. Note again divination with the ephod, a frequent motif in Samuel.30 David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it,2 and ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 15, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Soldier of Fortune
The story now takes a very weird turn. Although Saul has pledged twice not to kill David, David doesn ' t believe him. So he takes his 600 men and -- ready for it -- goes over to the Philistines. And he starts committing random acts of genocide for the Philistine king. Among the people he massacres are the Amelekites, which is hard to explain since, as you may recall, Saul exterminated them just a few years ago in Chapter 15. In fact, it was Saul ' s failure to also kill the Amalekite king, along with a few animals, that cost him God ' s favor. Samuel cleaned up and took care of killing the king and the animals. But here t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 5, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunny Suffolk – Lackford Lakes
Paid just our second visit of the year to Lackford Lakes Nature Reserve in the hope of seeing the Siskins that had been reported there this week. We stopped off at the ringing hut where two of the Suffolk Wildlife Trust team had netted various birds (Treecreeper, Blue, Great and Marsh Tits, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Robin, and others) and were carefully recording the recatches and ringing any new catches for their conservation efforts.
So, what did we see on the day? Not in order of sighting but loosely grouped:
Siskin
Goldfinch
Redpoll
Great Tit
Blue Tit
Long-tailed Tit
Coal Tit
Marsh Tit
Dunnock
Robin
Nuthatch
Wren
Tre...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - November 25, 2021 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs
Type 1 diabetes is no fun
A brown plastic bag sits atop the green dresser in my room. One side has a purple hummingbird flying above the word “Papyrus,” a store at the mall named after the material ancient Egyptians used as a written surface. The other side of the bag features a white hummingbird with red splashes on its wings.Read more …Type 1 diabetes is no fun originally appeared inKevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 30, 2021 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/ryan-ritchie" rel="tag" > Ryan Ritchie < /a > < /span > Tags: Patient Diabetes Endocrinology Source Type: blogs
Medicine May Be an Art, but AI May Be Artists
By KIM BELLARD
Six hundred years ago, Swiss physician/scientist/philosopher Paracelsus disclaimed: “Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art.” Medicine, most people in healthcare still believe, takes not just intelligence and fact-based decision-making, but also intuition, creativity, and empathy. This duality is often cited as a reason artificial intelligence (A.I.) will never replace human physicians.
Perhaps those skeptics have not heard about Ai-Da.
Now, I have to admit, “she” wasn’t on my radar either until recently, when she was imprisoned/impounded at customs by Egyptian...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 26, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Health Tech Health Technology Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Let's do the Time Warp again
You may recall a few chapters back that Samuel gave his farewell address. Then he didn ' t go anywhere. He ' s still here and in fact he will continue to stick around for many years to come. In this chapter, he tells Saul that God regrets making Saul king, that he is no longer king, and God will give his kingdom to someone else. Then Saul goes on to continue being king for many years to come. He fights and wins several battles and engages in much further ado, until he finally loses a battle and dies -- as king. The chapter also concludes saying that Samuel will never see Saul again for the rest of his days. Spoiler al...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 24, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: How can I miss you if you won't go away?
Ch. 12 is billed as Samuel ' s farewell address. But the weird thing is he doesn ' t go anywhere. He continues business as usual as Yahweh ' s representative, even going so far eventually as to depose a king. So this seems to belong several chapters later. A couple of points. He goes to some length to deny being corrupt. Obviously if this is true, the people already know it, and they affirm it. So if this has a point it is to assert a norm that leaders should not enrich themselves at the people ' s expense. As we know, in all of history, this has been violated more often than not.Samuel continues to say that the peopl...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 13, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Job qualifications
1 Samuel 10 has Saul made the first King of Israel. I must tell you that apart from the book we are reading now, there is no evidence that a Kingdom of Israel even existed at the time of these purported events, let alone that there was a king named Saul. But if he did exist, the lack of his footprints in the sands of time is perhaps not so surprising since he does not go on to found a dynasty. God seems to have chosen him because he is exceptionally tall and good looking. God ' s judgment was evidently faulty however. He will turn out to be fairly ineffectual, although the reason he is finally deposed is an extremely bad o...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 6, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Transcript for Experiences of Trainees and Physicians from Minoritized Communities
Below is a transcript of the following Academic Medicine Podcast episode:
Experiences of Trainees and Physicians from Minoritized CommunitiesOctober 4, 2021
Read more about this episode and listen here.
Toni Gallo:
Hi everyone. I’m Toni Gallo. I’m a staff editor with the journal. Every year, Academic Medicine publishes the proceedings of the annual Research in Medical Education sessions that take place at the AAMC’s Learn Serve Lead meeting. This year, there will be on-demand presentations of the RIME papers, available through the Learn Serve Lead virtual meeting platform, and live Q&A s...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - October 4, 2021 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: amrounds Tags: AM Podcast Transcript Audio Academic Medicine podcast bias discrimination diversity and inclusion equity learning environment practice environment professionalism Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Political Science
In my opinion, 1 Samuel 8 is the most interesting chapter in the Bible so far. It requires some exegesis. Remember that we believe King Josiah commissioned the deuteronomic history as a mythic validation of religious orthodoxy and central authority -- specifically his. Ancient states were typically ruled by an alliance between a priestly caste and a warrior king. Israel got there, but we don ' t know exactly how or when - this history is certainly fictitious. But it ' s crafted to support a conclusion.As we have seen, the era of the judges -- of which Samuel is the last -- is a highly repetitious tale. The Israelites are w...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 29, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Lost in translation
I have warned you that some weirdness goes down in 1 Samuel. Exactly how weird Chapter 6 is depends on whether you ' re reading the King James or the New International Version and kindred later translations. The Philistines realize that holding on to the Ark is probably not a good idea so they ask their priests how to appease Yahweh. In the KJV they propose sending the Ark back accompanied by 5 golden mice and 5 golden hemorrhoids. In the NIV it ' s 5 golden rats and 5 golden tumors. The tumors seem strange enough but it ' s hard to imagine what a golden hemorrhoid would look like. (I suspect the Hebrew word encompasses bo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 22, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
House 2022 National Defense Authorization Act Amendments on Arms Sales and Security Assistance
Jordan CohenThe House is set to vote on theNational Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022. Prior to the structured Rule for the act, there were a total of fifty amendments that, if passed, would directly impact weapons sales legislation. Overall, these bills are divided into five broad themes: congressional power, increased monitoring and reporting surrounding human rights violators, weapons sales to the Middle East, weapons sales to counter Russia, and weapons sales to counter China.Readers should examine the2020 Arms Sales Risk Index for our latest data on risks associated with the weapons sales proc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 21, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jordan Cohen Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: War, what is it good for?
All of a sudden, for no discernible reason, the Israelites are at war with the Philistines. The writer gives not the slightest indication of the reason for this. It ' s evidently not about territory, because the Israelites get clobbered but as far as we can tell the Philistines don ' t take a centimeter of ground, they just go home. They do capture the Ark of the Covenant but that didn ' t have anything to do with the reason for the war, it wasn ' t even there in the beginning. Maybe the Israelites started it in order to conquer them? But why?Anyway, this never happened, at least not as described. The Israelite population ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 15, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Sing that thing
1 Samuel 2 is very long. It isn ' t clear why the monks didn ' t split it in half because the first part, Hannah ' s prayer, is really unrelated to the rest of it. The text doesn ' t say that this is sung rather than spoken, but one suspects it is intended as a song. These songs are commonly put in the mouths of women. Miriam organized an all female song and dance party after the exodus, and we see women singing and dancing on other occasions. We don ' t know the provenance of this poem or song -- nor really of any of the material so far. But it does seem anachronistic in referring to a king, since there had never been an ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 8, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The cancelled moth
In the US and elsewhere, there’s been a call to give many plants and animals new vernacular names because their well-known common names contain terms and words considered inappropriate. The Gypsy Moth, Lymantria dispar, is a case in point.
L. dispar was, according to the UK Moths website, “a common species in the East Anglian and southern fens” in the early 1800s, a century later it was extinct as a breeding species here. Meanwhile, having been introduced to North America in 1869 it has spread there and become a larval pest of deciduous trees. It is already more properly known as the LDD Moth in North Am...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 23, 2021 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs
