Wednesday Bible Study: Divine Right
Psalm 72 is one of those elevating the king to a kind of demigod status and extolling his power and glory. As I have said many times, the basic structure of Judean society, as was the norm throughout the region, was an alliance between a priestly caste and warrior kings, so that ' s what this is all about. But yes, it ' s weird that it ' s called a Psalm of Solomon, and concludes with " The prayers of David, son of Jesse, are ended. " It ' s doubly weird because many subsequent psalms are in fact ascribed to David. The likely explanation is that the Book of Psalms we have today is a compilation of several books, usually th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 28, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The Just World Fallacy
The " just world fallacy " or illusion is a cognitive bias that assumes the consequences of actions are morally determined -- that people ultimately get what they deserve based on the rightness of their actions. Psalms 36 and 37 are among many that express this fallacy as fact. Indeed, the just world fallacy is central to most religions -- God rewards the righteous and faithful, and punishes the wicked and impious. Of course this is not true. Note verse 11 of Psalm 37, which the RSV translates as " The meek shall possess the land. " KJV translates this as " The meek shall inherit the earth, " and I suspect that ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 31, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Petitioning the Lord with Prayer
To me, one of the strangest conceits of religion -- and it seems to be pretty much universal among theists -- is that it ' s worth your while to beg The Almighty to conform to your wishes. He is supposedly all knowing, all powerful, and infinitely wise, but evidently he needs your advice in order to do what ' s right. Obviously, he doesn ' t always take it, but that doesn ' t stop people from continuing to give it, as in Psalm 28. Psalm 29 is a panegyric to God ' s power and greatness, quite reminiscent of parts of the Book of Job. However, if you read this literally it seems to refer to a natural disaster of so...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
My Light, My Sky – AI artwork for a song
I realise there’s a lot of ongoing debate regarding generative AI tools, especially those that have putatively been trained on copyright material without permission from the creators. It’s generally impossible to know what work has been used as source data for the likes of Dall-E, ChatGPT, and MidJourney etc, unless you work in their back office, presumably. However, I do know that some of my copyright material, books, potentially website content, photos, and perhaps even some of my music, will have been used to train various AIs over the last few years.
AI-generated artwork with sullen sky, mountains, a centra...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - November 17, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Artificial Intelligence Music Source Type: blogs
Za ’atar
I’m excited about this season’s Za’atar, because its almost entirely from foraged or home-grown spices.
We picked the sumac along a dirt road in Northern New Hampshire in late June. It was the most luscious, oil-packed, fragrant sumac I’ve ever encountered. (Read about how to find and dry sumac here.)
The oregano and thyme hailed from Pennsylvania and New York City, grown in sis Rosemary and friend Paula’s container gardens, as well as my own window box in the mountains. I dried the sumac by laying them it for a couple of weeks on a cooling rack atop a baking sheet, and the other herbs...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - November 16, 2023 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Uncategorized food gifts handmade holiday gift homemade gifts spices Sumac Xmas gift za'atar Source Type: blogs
The corporatization of medicine: Part two
2016 was in fact the first year in which fewer than half of
physicians had an ownership stake in their practice, based on a survey by the
American Medical Association.[i] The
pace of acquisition of practices by hospitals and health systems during this
period was astonishing. From 2014-2018, just four years, corporate ownership of
practices increased from 24.1% to 45.6% of all physicians in a nationally representative
sample. After selling out, physicians actually experienced a reduction in their
income.[ii]The evidence that increasing concentration of medical
services is associated with higher prices is consistent and exte...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 21, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
From patient to protagonist: the importance of narrative writing in medicine [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! Join us in this episode as we sit down with Najat Fadlallah, a pediatric resident in Lebanon, to discuss the untapped potential of health care data and personal experiences in medical research. We’ll explore how health care professionals can use their unique access to
Read more…
From patient to protagonist: the importance of narrative writing in medicine [PODCAST] originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 28, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: The Podcast by KevinMD Tags: Podcast Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Let the slaughter begin
The action in Ezra 3 is pretty straightforward. The priests build an altar and start up the sacrifices, then they lay the foundation for the temple. This does serve to remind us that the basis of this religion is the ritual killing of animals by a hereditary priesthood to propitiate a narcissistic deity. That ' s what he demands: kill animals and burn them. If you do different rituals to propitiate other gods, he ' ll have you murdered en masse by other tribes. If your hereditary priests kill enough animals and burn them, he ' ll be good to them. That ' s the theology.3 When the seventh month came and the Israel...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Government Proposes To Make Bad Standards on Race and Ethnicity Worse
John F. EarlyI recently laid out the case to stop government classification of people by race and ethnicity in a CatoBlog post. Those observations were stimulated by The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posting a notice for comment in the Federal Register with respect to a report from the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group and Race and Ethnicity Standards to revise the existing standards for collecting data by race and ethnicity. Comments are due by April 27, 2023.Ipublished a similar op ‐ed in the Wall Street Journal, which subsequently printed a singleletter to the editor in re...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 18, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: John F. Early Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: A shaggy dog tale
(Posting late today because I had a meeting all morning.) Portions of this story are told in 2 Kings 14 but it seems to come largely from a different source, or in this case sources, the lost Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. Amaziah ' s big mistake is to get involved with the northern kingdom, which is out of favor with the big guy in the sky, and that seems to be the main point of this. Why the Chronicler is so obsessed with trashing the northern kingdom is hard to fathom since it had long since ceased to exist by the time he wrote this. But whatever.25 Amaziah was tw...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 8, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
What Would John Henry Rauch Do Today As A HIT Entrepreneur?
BY MIKE MAGEE
Health entrepreneurs today tend to give themselves very high grades, and seem surprised when their creations fall short of expectations due to a disconnect with funders or regulators with legal authority. But Medicine isn’t fair, and genius is not that common.
What other conclusion can you draw from the thousands of references and citations featuring Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush and his wild ideas on how to heroically treat Yellow Fever in 1793, but likely never heard of Dr. John Henry Rauch. The former signed the Declaration of Independence but directly or indirectly contributed to many an un...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 8, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Tech Benjamin Rush John Henry Rauch Mike Magee public health sanitation Source Type: blogs
ConFinement IV
“So Kelly, how was your weekend?” Glad you asked! Had the pleasure of spending the weekend at a small sci-fi con in Lebanon, TN called ConFinement, organized by Michael Z. Williamson and Jessica Schlenker. Had a great time, participated in a few panels, told a few outrageous stories, and autographed a bunch of books. The ... (Source: A Day In the Life of An Ambulance Driver)
Source: A Day In the Life of An Ambulance Driver - February 28, 2023 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: ambulancedriverfiles Tags: Books Sci-fi/fantasy cons Sweet linky love Source Type: blogs
Muslim Anger at Sweden over Qur ’an Burning Is Misplaced
Mustafa Akyol andJohan NorbergThese days, there isanger across the Muslim world against Sweden. Large protests against the small Scandinavian nation have taken place in Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. In some places Swedish flags were burnt, and some even chanted, “Death to the Swedish government.”All this is a reaction against an act of one man: far ‐right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan, who also happens to be a Swedish citizen. On Jan 21,he publicly burnt a copy of the Qur ’an in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Turkish authorities responded with st...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Mustafa Akyol, Johan Norberg Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: More boasting
The first part of Ch. 9, the visit from the Queen of Sheba, is lifted from Kings. The rest is more ridiculous boasting about Solomon ' s possessions and the vastness of his empire, all of which comes from a parallel universe. The Chronicler gives a bibliography toward the end, but for some reason does not mention Kings:" Nathan the prophet, in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat. " All of these books are lost. Presumably they are excerpted in Chronicles, but we have no way of knowing which is which. We do not know how the Tanakh was canonized,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Ridiculous boasting
Chapter 8 is absurd. It gives Solomon a vast empire, including numerous tributary kingdoms, a marriage to the daughter of the Pharaoh, and a tribute from Hiram of 50 metric tons of gold. The reality is that Israel at this time was a minor domain consisting of a few villages. There really isn ' t any more to be said about this, it ' s complete bullshit.8 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built the temple of theLord and his own palace,2 Solomon rebuilt the villages that Hiram[a] had given him, and settled Israelites in them.3 Solomon then went to Hamath Zobah and captured it.4 He also built...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 8, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
