Baggas' Blog

Genealogy — Adam, King David, the Queen – bizarre website this. It traces the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II back through to King David of Israel and then on back to Adam, via a bunch of Irish monarchs with unpronounceable names. It would be interesting to see if this Irish-Jewish connection has any validity to it at all. Also interesting are some of the eschatological conclusions the owner of the website (the aptly named “David King”) draws elsewhere on his site…

Queen Elizabeth II is of the House of David, of the tribe of Judah. Her throne in London will eventually be taken over by the Son of David, Jesus Christ the Messiah, when He returns to the earth in power and glory

The Vanquished Honda

Originally uploaded by baggas.

Hard to believe that all this is the handiwork of a poor “innocent” letterbox. The car is now staying at the repair shop to get the damage assesed.

Here’s an idea for an invention if anyone wants to patent it : aluminium/plastic safety letter boxes with “crumple zone” technology – I sure could have used one of those this morning instead of the heavy duty limestone letter box we have. Lets just say in the battle of Honda vs Letterbox the letterbox had a clear and decisive victory.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and others to be chewed and
digested.

~ Francis Bacon

I’m seriously looking forward to this weekend and having somewhat of a rest. This week has been incredibly busy, though good. Thus far this week I have had 5 babies born, with another on the way at the moment. I think my obstetics work seems to have jumped up a notch now, and although I don’t expect to be quite as busy as this week, it certainly looks like things are going to be consistently more active henceforth. I had a quick look through my logbook this morning and counted about 50 deliveries for last year. This year I have 9 already and we’re not even finished January. It’s all good, but I look forward to spending tonight watching a DVD, with lots of junk food and a nice glass of wine, and most importantly with my mobile switched off!

EDIT – better make that 6 babies now!

Amongst the fascinating political intrigues at federal and state level in the paper at the moment, there was one story which I was pleased to read in today’s West – Perth is to get a Border’s Bookstore, to be built in the Hay Street Mall, complete with a Gloria Jeans cafe instore. This is long overdue – it’s about time Perth had a large, quality bookshop where you can spend hours browsing, reading, drinking decent coffee. As is so often the case with many large retail chains, Perth seems to be one of the last places on earth to get the good stores. International and interstate people might be surprised to hear that there is still not a single Starbucks cafe in Perth (although I’m not sure if that’s such a bad thing). I guess it’s the inevitable result of being the most isolated city of it’s size on the planet. But anyway, bring on Borders!

As you may have noticed I haven’t been especially diligent at blogging lately, a combination of continuing busyness and a lack of motivation. The busyness continues on the home front and now work is starting to get crazy again after a bit of a lull over the New year period. I delivered a baby at 7:30 this morning and have at least another 2 due this week.

With our house we have nearly got it set up the way we want it. The home theatre is done, with a new amp and 7.1 speakers, thanks to a lot of help from my brother Kyle. He also improved the video connection to the projector from composite to component, so the picture is much clearer, especially for HDTV.

We have our “library” set up now with some big bookcases and a little sofa, making the perfect reading nook for me and Jennifer. The only challenge is that I can now sit and look at all the unread books I’ve accumulated in the last year or so and feel inspired/pressured to churn through them. I seriously need to avoid Amazon.com for a while I think.

The pool area still needs some work. The previous owners had a grassed area on 3 sides of the pool which we have discovered is a pain in the neck. Every time someone gets out of the pool they end up spreading grass all over the place. It gets traipsed into the house and also blows into the pool, creating extra dirt which is especially bad when the lawn gets mowed. I’m in the process now of arranging to get some limestone concrete poured around the pool area to solve this problem. The most difficult part of that is going to be removing all the existing grass.

The other big job remaining is to get the air-conditioning upgraded. The house has an evaporative system which seems to struggle a bit in the hot weather, and has no heating facilities for winter, so we are getting a refigerated reverse cycle system installed next week. It turns out the easiest/cheapest option was just to add the new system in and leave the existing system in-situ. So in-effect we will have the choice of two different air-con systems from next week – weird.

Anyway I’ve got more patients to see now so I’d better get going. Just thought it mightn’t be a bad idea to touch base.

UK accused of spying via rock – World – smh.com.au – move over Maxwell Smart! This is a great story about some British “diplomats” were allegedly caught placing a spy transmitter hidden inside a rock in a Moscow park. This is the sort of thing you see in old spy movies – I never would have thought it would happen in real life, especially in the 21st century. Very cool.

Discovered this interesting quiz over at Phil Baker’s blog. Seems I’m not all that heretical after all. Wish I could say I knew exactly what all those heresies were though, might need to spend a while in Wikipedia brushing up on them…

Are you a heretic?
created with QuizFarm.com

Anyone find themselves irritated by those motivational posters you sometimes see in corporate offices and other places, praising the virtues of teamwork, persistence, creativity etc? If so, then I may have found the site for you. A friend send me an email with a bunch of “de-motivator” posters, which look the same, but have a quite different sort of message…

These posters came be found at despair.com, a company who are devoted to lowering people’s expectations…

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That’s why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an image I found quite humorous, but it’s the sort of think you’d probably get only if you are familiar with both author Brian McLaren and the Veggie Tales TV show. If so, then click the link below, if not then please ignore this post…
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a bit of light reading for you from Wikipedia – Omnipotence paradox. This is basically the question of “whether or not an omnipotent being is able to perform actions that would limit its own omnipotence, thus becoming non-omnipotent” or to use an example “could an omnipotent being create a stone that it could not lift?” To me it’s interesting reading, but the question itself seems a bit silly. I like Aquinas’ solution best I think.

But perhaps the best expression of the omnipotence paradox was given by the great philosopher Homer, who asked his neighbour “Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that He Himself could not eat it?”
The neigbour’s (Ned Flanders) reply “Well sure of course, he could, but then again… wow as melon scratchers go, that’s a honey doodle.”

The Australian: Amir Taheri: Israel must claim victory over Palestine [January 09, 2006] – the likely demise of Ariel Sharon is the most important story in world news at the moment. Even if he lives it would be a miracle if he was to continue in politics. This piece from The Australian gives a balanced perspective on the man and his legacy and why his unilateral approach to piece may be the only solution that might work to solve the problems of this troubled land. Interestingly, it’s written by an Iranian.

What a great way to start the year! The first book I’ve read for 2006 is “Christ the Lord – Out of Egypt” by Anne Rice. Yes that’s Anne Rice, the author of the Vampire Chronicles. In this book she turns her hand from horror novels to something entirely different – an historically credible, reasonably biblically faithful portrait of the child Jesus, written in the first person. The pace is slow, the prose fairly simple (as you would expect given that it is the thoughts of a seven year old boy) but elegant, yet there is a stunning attention to detail. Even before reading the fascinating afterword (in Rice gives some of her story of faith) you can see the incredible amount of research that has gone into this book.

Essentially the plot consists of Jesus’ extended family travelling back from Egypt to Nazareth following the death of King Herod and their adjustment back into Jewish life in Galilee. At the same time we see the progress of Jesus’ own self awareness as he begins to question who he really is, given his unusual abilities and the secrecy surrounding the events of his birth and move to Egypt, the details of which slowly emerge as the story flows.

This is a wonderful novel which gives a credible glimpse into the humanity of Jesus, and also the incredible uniqueness of his life and the struggles he may have faced. In reading this book I couldn’t help but seeing the fingerprints of N T Wright, my favourite Christian author and scholar, whose research into the ‘historical Jesus’ is unsurpassed. This book is almost as if someone had begun to write a novel based on his scholarship, and I was pleased to see that Rice acknowledged her debt to Wright in her afterword, along with a great deal of other writers.

I don’t know how a non-Christian or a normal fan of her other books would enjoy this novel (this is the first of Rice’s books I have read) but for me this was a compelling and inspiring read, helping to “put flesh on” the limited portrait of Jesus we have in the gospels. I would definitely recommend it and hope Rice continues to chronicle the life of Christ in future novels.

I know it’s 4 days late, but this is a prayer by John Wesley, traditionally recited by Methodists in their New Year’s Eve (“Watch Night”) services. It’s a powerful statement of commitment and dedication and surrender to the will of God, in contrast to our own plans which we usually make at this time of year…

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

At some point in the next few weeks I’ll get back into the routine of blogging about interesting subjects, news, websites etc etc, but for the time being life is still far too busy.

Christmas came and went, was very nice. One of the highlights was getting a present of a 12 string electric acoustic guitar from Jennifer which sounds fantastic. But before we knew it Christmas was done and we were into moving house. Lots of family and friends came and helped and we are now in the new place, although far from settled. It’s still pretty much a semi-organised chaos. My brother has done a great job wiring up the sound system in the home theatre, living room, and patio, and we now have a brilliant sounding 7.1 surround sound system to accompany our movies. We’ve been swimming plenty in the pool (well just Owen mostly), at least up until yesterday when the pump seemed to spring a leak and now has no water running through it at all!? I’ve got a pool guy coming to take a look at it tomorrow.

Anyway better go. I’m reluctantly back at work today seeing patients, plus I have a woman in labour in the hospital. Hope she delivers before tonight so I might actually be able to sit down for a while and relax.