Sunday Sermonette: More house beautiful
Chapter four continues with the description of the Temple. Some of this is lifted from 1 Kings 7, notably the " sea, " (including the fact that pi=3)  but it ' s followed by other material. Whether the Chronicler created this pastiche himself, or was copying from some earlier patchwork, is unknowable. Note that he skipped over Ch. 6, in which Solomon builds his own palace which for your information was far larger and grander than the Temple of Yahweh. I also can ' t say why all these details matter, since by the time this was written the First Temple had been destroyed about 200 years earlier. 4 He made a br...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 25, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: Design specifications
Chapter 3 basically lays out the design of the Temple. It ' s generally consistent with the description in 1 Kings 6, but is not copied from it. Some different details are mentioned and the organization and language are different, so there must have been another description of the Temple that the Chronicler relied on. 1 Kings also has an interlude in which God tells Solomon he ' ll stick with the people if they follow his commandments, which is omitted here. Other than that, nothing interesting to say about this. Since the Temple certainly existed, there ' s nothing odd about two different people describing it.3 Then ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 21, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

I Had Lunch at the CIA
Ever since reading Michael Ruhlman’s The Making of a Chef in 2007, I’ve wanted to have a meal at the CIA. No, not that CIA, although I hear they do have a half-decent cafeteria. This CIA is the Culinary Institute of America, one of the world’s finest cooking schools, located in Hyde Park, NY. Long term readers of this blog may recall that it was Ruhlman’s tales of life at the CIA that led me to my first food blog – Butter Pig – whose author Tom Dowdy had written a diary of his own 3 months at the school. Blown away by what I had discovered, I bought the CIA textbook The Professional C...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 23, 2022 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Restaurant Reviews Bocuse Restaurant CIA Culinary school Hudson valley Hyde Park Restaurants Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: The End
This is the last chapter of the Book of Kings, and the conclusion of the Deuteronomic History. It describes the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple. As far as historical accuracy, the only important quibble would be the number of captives taken to Babylon. Most likely it was not in the thousands, but more like the dozens. In essence, Nebuchadnezzar wanted to remove the literate priests and scribes -- what we might call he intelligentsia in a modern context -- and any military leaders or aristocrats who could challenge Babylonian rule. This chapter describes the massacre of some of them, but apparently...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 24, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: Architectural Digest
Chapter 7 describes Solomon ' s palace, which as I noted before is 4 times bigger than the Temple and takes almost twice as long to build. Make what you will of that. While the First Temple probably existed, the lack of archaeological evidence for it is not surprising since the Temple Mount cannot be excavated. However, no such excuse exists for this structure. Remains of a defensive city wall from about 1,000 BC have been found in Jerusalem, but this is not evidence for the existence of the palace as some people want to claim. In fact there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of a king Solomon; there are no in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 6, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 31st 2022
In conclusion, the effects of MR on the gut barrier were likely related to alleviation of the oscillations of inflammation-related microbes. MR can enable nutritional intervention against age-related gut barrier dysfunction. Clearing Senescent Cells from the Neural Stem Cell Niche Rapidly Improves Neurogenesis in Old Mice https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/01/clearing-senescent-cells-from-the-neural-stem-cell-niche-rapidly-improves-neurogenesis-in-old-mice/ Neurogenesis is the generation of new neurons in the brain, and their integration into existing neural circuits. It is essential to learning a...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 30, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Assessing the Ability of Urolithin A Supplementation to Improve Human Health via Increased Mitophagy
Mitophagy is the name given to cellular quality control mechanisms responsible for destroying worn and damaged mitochondria. Existing mitochondrial divide to make up the losses. Mitophagy is critical to mitochondrial function, but it declines in effectiveness with advancing age. A number of dietary supplements are thought to upregulate mitophagy in older individuals, thereby improving mitochondrial function and overall health. Urolithin A is one of them, various vitamin B3 derivatives such as nicotinamide riboside another, as well as mitoQ, SkQ1, and other mitochondrially targeted antioxidants. The mechanisms are varied, a...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 27, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible Study: Writer's workshop edition
1 Samuel 14 is a) very long and b) not very well written. The narrative is jumbled, it contains details that seem irrelevant and on the other hand fails to explain others that are. Saul continues to be inept, but this is more about the adventures of his son Jonathan, who has not previously been introduced but suddenly here he is. And as usual, there ' s plenty of slaughter.14 1 One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.” But he did not tell his father.This is the first time the concept of an armor-bearer has appeared. His du...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 20, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Mo rambles on
Deuteronomy 8 doesn ' t say a whole lot that ' s new -- it ' s just more of the endless exhortation to worship YHWH and not to stray, and more recapitulation of events of Exodus and Numbers. The book generally is very turgid and this chapter is pretty much filler. There are a couple of items worth noting, however.8 “All the commandment which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which theLord swore to give to your fathers.2 And you shall remember all the way which theLord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 13, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Rock Stars
With Numbers 20 we start killing off the generation of Moses. As important as this chapter is to the plot, much of it is vague and a bit mysterious. First Miriam dies, and that ' s it. No further information, no ceremony, no nothin ' . At least she is one of the very few (two, unless I ' m forgetting something?) women the since the Exodus to even have a name. Then there is the terrible crime committed by Moses and Aaron that apparently results in Aaron ' s death. It ' s a bit hard to discern.20 In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 20, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Wednesday Bible study: What's in a name?
Numbers 13 advances the plot, but in a strange way. I don ' t know why it was so important to list the names of all the explorers and their fathers. Only two of these characters take on any individual importance. And then there is the report of what they find. I ' ll discuss that when we get to it.13 TheLord said to Moses,2 “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”3 So at theLord’s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders of the Israelites.4 These are their names:from ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 26, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

COVID-19:  Too Much Time to Think
Slights, mistakes, embarrassments, accidents, catastrophes. Are these things flooding your mind? Is your self-esteem in the toilet? Have you stopped to ask yourself why? Here’s the reason — COVID-19 is doing a number on our brain. Pre-COVID, we had a million distractions. It was safe to roam the earth. You could go to a store for a little shopping without fearing for your life. You could venture out to a restaurant and have a meal cooked for you. Heck, you could even take your kid to a drama class, which is now being taught via ZOOM meetings. Since March of 2020, there are just fewer things to do to take out mind o...
Source: World of Psychology - July 8, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Laura Yeager Tags: Personal Self-Esteem Self-Help Boredom coronavirus COVID-19 Embarrassment Memory pandemic quarantine Shame social distancing Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: Bez does it all
Yep, he ' s not just a carpenter and a goldsmith and a perfumer, he ' s a tailor and a jeweler . . .Thank God [sic] Exodus is almost over. There ' s one more chapter after this, then we get into Leviticus, which is maybe slightly more interesting than all of these specifications. However, the narrative doesn ' t start up again until Numbers. We ' re going to spend the next few months mired in the intricacies of various categories of rules, including believe it or not a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Skin Diseases. The interesting thing about these last few chapters of Exodus is that nobody pays any attention to them ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 12, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Sunday Sermonette: God as fashion designer
Yep, this is still tedious and absurd. Now God fancies himself an exhibitor in Paris Fashion Week, but I have to say these designs are a bit over the top. Some of the vocabulary is obscure. Nobody knows exactly what the Urim and Thummim were. In Samuel they are used for divination, so that is presumed to be the idea all along. It isn ' t specified here as " divination, " but it does say " for making decisions. "At some point use of these priestly garments was abandoned, obviously, and as far as I know there haven ' t been any archaeological finds that could illuminate their nature. Of course the cloth would decay and the j...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 27, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Life on Athens and Kythira
A trip to the Greek capital Athens and the island of Kythira yielded some good times, lovely views, lots of laughs with new(ish) friends, and sightings of quite a few species of bird, invertebrates and plantlife we’d not all “ticked” before. Here are a few snaps of the various species: Scarce Swallowtail Marginated Tortoise Dark Bush Cricket, Pholidoptera griseoaptera Striped Shieldbug, Graphosoma lineatum Egyptian Grasshopper, Anacridium aegyptium with its striped eyes on mullein Lesser Kestrel, Falco naumanni Grayling on Sea Squill Blue-winged-Grasshopper, Oedipoda caerulescens European Skipper, Thymeli...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - October 3, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs