Baggas’ Blog

Don’t know if this’ll turn out to be a regular segment or not but occaisionally it’s good to read blog posts where they just briefly list a few of the things that they are currently into. So here’s a few of my currents :

LISTENING : lately I’ve been listening a lot to the music of Bruce Cockburn - he’s a Canadian singer-songwriter who’s been around since the 70s. He plays a mean acoustic guitar and has a lot of folk and jazz influences. His lyrics are often quite socially agressive in the tradition of Dylan, strongly influenced by his left wing politics and Christian faith.

Also I’ll briefly mention The Decemberists, whose album Castaways and Cutouts is playing on my iPod as I type this. They are an alternative pop band with a penchant for narrative, verbosity, and nautical/pirate themes. So if you like alt-pirate-pop then check them out.

PLAYING : Slot cars - last week Owen used his saved up pocket money to buy a figure 8 AFX racing car set. I’ve since discovered you can get this stuff cheap on eBay so we’ve got some more track on it’s way to construct a huge race track. Lots of fun.

WATCHING : current shows we’re watching on DVD are House MD (which is medically preposterous but the House character is so engaging - almost a role model to me … lol); and the 5th season of Frasier, one of the best ever sit-coms.

READING : Books - Scot McKnight’s ‘Praying with the Church’ which is an interesting and challenging introuction to traditional set prayers. Jaroslav Pelikan’s ‘Christian Tradition Volume 1′ Bible - focussing on Romans lately, whilst reading N.T. Wright’s ‘New Interpreter’s Bible’ commentary. Nice to delve a bit deeper. Studying - haven’t done any actual study for a while but this week I’ve started Bill Mounce’s ‘Greek for the rest of us’ which is a very accessible introduction to Koine Greek, including lectures and exercises on CD ROM. I’m loving it so far - I just hope the enthusiasm lasts… [see my library page for Amazon links of all these books.]

EATING : just had a nice ham and salad roll, courtesy of my friendly Pfizer representative, with some Pineapple juice to wash it down.

TREATING : some of today’s medical consults : heart murmur, colds & flus, chest infections, anxiety, contraceptive implants, pregnancies, rashes, ear infections, immunisations, ovarian mass, tonsillitis, jaundice, hypothyroidism, and ear wax.

So there you have it - a brief list of where I’m at. I’d be interested to hear what you are listening, reading, watching, eating etc too.

By jove… it explains everything… right here!

Well I saw the movie the other night and it was not the best. I imagine if I had never read the book and hadn’t heard all the hype and just saw this for the first time on DVD I’d probably say it was not a bad thriller, albeit with some heretical elements to it. But after all the hype this movie was quite a let down. It just didn’t have anywhere near the level of suspense and “edge of your seat” factor that made the book so hard to put down. And some of the mysteries like the identity of the “Teacher” were handled so sloppily as to be very obvious even to people who’d never read the book (like Jennifer). As for the more controversial elements surrounding Mary Magdalene and Jesus, they were watered down so much as to be a big “so what?” - the pagan and “sacred feminine” aspects were virtually ignored so as to make the whole figure of Mary and the threat to the established church a much less coherent theme. Of course there were still several blatant historical untruths including the parts about Constantine, the Council of Nicea, and the Gnostic gospels. (for more resources on all that see my previous post and in particular Mark O’Brien’s entry and the article by N.T. Wright) Overall the movie was okay, but it could have been a lot better. Perhaps the mediocrity of this movie will help speed the inevitable dying down of all the fuss and controversy.

Amazon.com: The Secret Message of Jesus : Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything: Books: Brian McLaren

I thought I’d post some brief thoughts on this book, which I finished about a week ago. Now I’m usually a big fan of McLaren’s work. Though I don’t always necessarily agree with what he says, I generally find his books to be both gracious and thought provoking, which I’d imagine is what Brian would want. Certainly those who jump to condemn him are not catching the spirit of humility and questioning with which he writes. Looking at the Amazon reviews for this book you can see the usual diverse spread of ratings, evenly split between the scathing 1 and 0 star reviews (many of who I suspect have not even read the book, or who read it with their minds already made up) and the gushing 4 and 5 star reviews (some of whom may be reading with their minds made up as well, but which usually represent more fair appraisals, at least in my opinion).

Anyway for some reason I just couldn’t get into this book as well as McLaren’s previous efforts. Maybe it was just that my head was not in the right place, but it just didn’t grab me in the same way as the New Kind of Christian trilogy for example. There was nothing I really disagreed with or found controversial (though no doubt others will find plenty of meat for their condemnation), and there was plenty of stuff I found myself nodding in agreeance with, but overall it just didn’t have a strong impact on me. It didn’t seem to flow as naturally as Brian’s other books, but once again that might be more due to where I was at than any inherent flaw in the book itself.

Overall it’s not a bad book, and I need to give it another chance with a re-reading at some point in the future, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the inspiring manifesto that it was hyped up to be. For a much better recent exposition of the heart of Christianity, I would recommend N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian, which I personally found to me not only more powerful and profound in it’s message, but more readable. Wright’s book is destined to be a classic, whereas there’s not much new in McLaren’s latest that hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I’m still a McLaren fan, but this is not his best work.

For some reason I seem to have bad luck with clock radios. After a period of time something always seems to go wrong with them, either the alarm or the clock or the music fails in some way. Anyway I hope my luck is going to change with my latest purchase, which I picked up on Saturday at Target - it’s a Jensen iPod clock radio. As well as a standard digital AM/FM alarm clock this baby is a charging docking station for my iPod, which means I can choose to wake to whatever tunes I like in the morning. I could even wake to a Podcast if I wanted to - maybe I should start the day with the Daily Breakfast (although that would annoy two people - Jennifer at 5:30am and Owen on the way to school. He loves listening to the podcast and just today was asking “What’s Father Roderick talking about now?”)

Anyway it comes with a remote control which allows you to work all the functions of the radio, as well as Play/Pause and skipping tracks on the iPod itself. The speakers are quite good for such a small unit and the sound is very listenable, unlike most clock radios I’ve ever owned. Even at higher volumes it still sounds good, which has already provided the soundtrack to some heavy duty dancing on the bed by the kids. Perhaps the only negatives about it are that it doesn’t have dual alarms (which I’ve found to be quite useful in the past) and the clock is not very clear from across the room. Oh, and it only lets you “snooze” 3 times in a row, which may turn out to be a little inconvenient on these cold winter mornings. But overall, I’m very happy with it so far.

FOXNews.com - Beatles, Stones Top Hillary Clinton’s iPod Picks - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum

Likely US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is the latest US politician to reveal the contents of her iPod (a gift from husband Bill), in what seems to be becoming a standard form of political disclosure. In the future, in addition to disclosing investments, academic record, and other pieces of information, will all candidates be required to submit their iTunes playlists for public scrutiny?

I haven’t been able to find the full list anywhere online, but the news summaries of Hillary’s tunes suggest she hasn’t got bad taste - lots of Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Motown. Certainly seems to be a substantial improvement on the current First iPod of George W Bush. I’m not sure if I would want to know the contents of Australia’s leaders iPods. I wouldn’t be too surprised if PM John Howard has one, considering the amount of power walking he does, but the contents might be a little too scary for me (Slim Dusty, anyone?). Peter Costello (was was looking very comfortable in the Prime Ministerial chair the other day) might have a much cooler list. And I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath on Kim Beazley’s list being very interesting at all.

Like never before, I sure was glad I drive a 4WD today. Around 7:30 this morning we had a deluge and by the time I left at 8:30 the roads were flooded. Driving down the main road through Warnbro was like driving in a river - it was up to a foot deep in places. Broken down cars were littered everywhere, and as often happens in bad weather, everyone went a little bit crazy and put on a display of insane driving. Owen was stressing in the back seat but with 4WD engaged I felt secure and almost found myself enjoying the adventure.

Not surprisingly though, half my patients so far this morning haven’t shown up. I’m prepared to let the weather and the roads stand as a valid excuse, but such was not the case yesterday, when I had 8 out of 30 booked appointments fail to show. That’s a quarter of my day wasted. Not only a waste of my time and a loss of income, but it deprives other patients of the chance to get an appointment, which is a big deal in our current climate with a shortage of doctors. More and more now I’m getting complaints from my regular patients that they just can’t get in to see me when they need to and have to settle for someone else. Having a quarter of wasted appointments does not help.

Earlier I did a quick tally, and it seems I currently have six different books on the go at the same time. And this is despite a resolution I made a few weeks ago to not read more than two at a time, and from different genres.

To be fair though, two of those books are just different versions of the same thing (commentaries on Romans) and one of those is nearly finished. I decided in April that I’d spend the month of May delving into Romans - a task that looks like it’s going to continue well into June if not further. And coincidentally, in the last week or so Scot McKnight has commenced a blog series on Romans as well, loosely based on Wright’s commentary in the New Interpreter’s Bible, which I’d just started reading myself anyway. Amazing how things just seem to fit together like that, almost providentially…

Anyway all this blogging is just distracting me from that pile of books, which I’d better get back to.

I might just mention one more little tally first though - according to my wordpress software I now have made 1,001 blog posts! Who would’ve thought this little blog would have the legs to get this far? Here’s to the next 1,000 entries!

Well I still haven’t had the chance to see the movie yet (still waiting for the elusive confluence of a free night and available babysitters), and I must admit I’m rather less enthused after listening to Father Roderick’s scathing podcast review of it. And I know I promised not to blog on the subject any more until I’d seen it, but I just wanted to direct your attention to Mark O’Brien’s comprehensive post, Diluting DaVinci, which includes some very useful links on the subject, some great principles on how to “filter truth” in The Da Vinci Code or anything else, and an excellent podcast message. Do yourself a favour, and check it out.

Well I’m sad to say that the finest television show in recent history (if not all time), The West Wing, has reached the end of it’s seven year run in the US. Of course Australian fans will have to wait at least year or two before the finale gets televised here. Of course you can always get hold of the DVDs when they come out - Amazon UK is releasing the Season 7 box set on September 11 this year - my pre-order is already in. But if you can’t wait that long there are other ways of getting the recent episodes to watch, if you know how and where to look…

I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it, and who probably haven’t seen any of season 7 or even season 6, but I’ll just give a few general comments on the finale. The show bows out in a very graceful, almost subdued fashion, free from much of the hectic, frenetic pace and non-stop drama that has characterised the show. It was a nice end, but felt almost anti-climactic. Now I agree that the end of Bartlet’s Presidency makes a sensible place to finish the show, but they could easily have gone on with it had they wanted to. The recent election campaign has more than adequately built up a range of new and sympathetic characters to staff a new West Wing to make up for those that would be leaving. After a disappointing season 5, the last two seasons have been a welcome return to form for the show. Following the plight of the new President’s administration (I won’t say who won for those Aussie fans who don’t want to know) would have been very interesting to watch. But I guess we’ll just have to leave that to our collective imagination, unless the producers/network have an unlikely change of heart.

TV just won’t be the same without The West Wing. I started watching the new show “Commander in Chief” with Geena Davis earlier this year but gave up on it after a few episodes. It just wasn’t in the same league as The West Wing - more like the White House meets 7th Heaven. All that remains for me on telly at the moment is the Amazing Race - which was in my home town of Perth last week - kinda cool seeing places I know really well featured on a major US TV show! Only one thing for me to do I think, dust off my West Wing Season 1 DVDs and start all over again from the beginning. It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve watched those old episodes so hopefully it will seem fresh again.

Response: The Seattle Pacific University Magazine - Decoding The Da Vinci Code 

Alright this is my final post on the all too common topic of the Da Vinci Code before I get around to seeing the movie. And all I want to do is mention the link above, which is a lecture given by N. T. Wright on the subject last year. If you want to read a reasoned historical critique of the book/movie which also attempts to address some of the wider issues surrounding spirituality within today’s culture then this is a perfect place to start (instead of spending your money on one of the numerous Christian spin-off books I mentioned previously). No Christian should see the movie without reading something like this first (or at least after) - as usual Tom Wright is spot on.

Now I read a lot of books. I love to sit down at the end (or the start) of the day on the couch in my library with a good book and a good cup of coffee. As I sit there I often look up at all the unread books on the shelves pondering which one I’d like to read next. Consequently, it is with a sense of achievement and great satisfaction that I put a finished book back on the shelf and take a fresh one down.

But ask me six months (or even six weeks) later what a certain book was about and I’ll usually only have a vague recollection. I read a lot of books but do I remember much of them? Do they make much difference in my life? Not really, to be honest.

What I really need is a system. A system to help remember the key points and good quotes from books. I often start off with a pencil with the intention of underlining lots but if you looks through many of my books you’ll find many of them with a couple of chapters full of underlining with many pristine pages in between. I try and take notes but find it too time consuming and also a bit of a hassle having to take a notebook with me everywhere I might read.

So it was with great pleasure that I read today’s post by Scot McKnight (one of my top daily blog reads) On Marking Books. Scot gives some great practical tips on reading, highlighting, note taking, and ultimately remembering and making use of what you read. As usual, his comments are spot on. I will definitely be taking this advice on board, and if you’re a serious reader you should check it out too.

Da Vinci Code Study Bible - purgatorio

This is quite funny. One thing that often bugs me a little is how Christian publishers / authors are such bandwagon jumpers. Any time something makes a big impact in popular culture you can be guaranteed to find a swathe of related products (books, DVDs etc) spring up in your local Christian bookstore, whether it’s Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, or the Da Vinci Code. Now all of these are not unreasonable subjects to be studied from a Christian perspective but do we really need twenty different books on each? For example I put “Da Vinci Code” into the Koorong website search and got 26 results. Call me cynical but it seems like an easy way to cash in.

Anyway the link above is to a satirical “Da Vinci Code Study Bible” - the scary thing is that it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that such a product might actually be released (as an NIV I’m sure). Check it out, and have a browse around the Purgatorio website - Christian humour which is a bit hit and miss but usually enough to raise a smile.

Not sure if I’ve posted this before but it’s a quote I can totally relate to at times, even though I’m not quite 30 yet…

“Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare . . . formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or music . . . I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did . . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” ~ Charles Darwin

Star Wars creator George Lucas gets perhaps the ultimate Star Wars honour as toy maker Hasbro have decided to make a limited edition model of him in Imperial Storm Trooper costume. How cool is that? I guess we now know what side of the Force George is really on, but then again maybe he’s in disguise, like in the original Star Wars movie.

Speaking of the original Star Wars, Lucasfilm have announced that they will be releasing some limited edition DVD sets later this year, with the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy. Many hard core Star Wars fans have been crying out for this for years and will finally get their wish. I can understand where they are coming from but personally I think I’d rather watch the newer digitally restored and enhanced special edition version in 5.1 surround than the original prints in Dolby 2.0 surround, even if Greedo does shoot first. But even so, I think I’ll definitely have to make some extra space on my Star Wars DVD shelf when these ones come out on September 12 this year. You can read more about this story here.

Baxter Bulletin - Global knowledge lacking among young Americans

I’ll admit I read this story with a wry smile, although in reality it’s a pretty sad tale. In a recent National Geographic survey of Americans aged 18-24, their knowledge of global (and indeed US) geography and news was sadly lacking. Some of the results included :

A third of Americans 18-24 could not locate Louisiana and 48 percent couldn’t find Mississippi on a map even after the wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Only 37 percent of those surveyed could find Iraq on a map of the Middle East even after three years of war and American occupation of the country.

Nine out of 10 couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map.

Three-quarters could not find Indonesia on a map despite all the media coverage of the tsunami that devastated the region.

Fifty-four percent didn’t know Sudan is an African country.

Half couldn’t find the state of New York on a map of the United States.

Fifty-eight percent thought the U.S. population is between 500 million and 2 billion people. (It’s a little less than 300 million).

Two-thirds didn’t think it was absolutely necessary or important to know about other countries

Pretty astounding isn’t it, especially the last point which I think is most telling. The reason for this deficiency may well be in part due to holes in their education, but primarily it’s because they just don’t care. I’d like to imagine that Australians would not be quite as insular but perhaps I’m wrong and we would do just as bad?

The Baxter Bulletin provides some surprisingly honest  editorial comment on this :

A general, accurate knowledge about the world outside the United States is helpful if only to better understand the news.

Understanding the outside world is becoming more and more important. In the last few years, it’s become evident events on the other side of the world can affect life in the United States, even here in the Ozarks. Who would have thought a few years ago that differences between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq would mean anything to people in the Twin Lakes Area? It does to those who have family members serving in Iraq.

From avian flu outbreaks in Asia to Middle Eastern oil prices to terrorist attacks that used to only happen “over there,” knowledge about where this news happens can help Americans be better prepared and to better understand its implications for them.

As much as Americans want to insulate themselves from the rest of the world, it’s impossible. Even with talk about building a wall along the U.S./Mexican border, America can’t wall itself off from the entire world. Therefore, it’s essential Americans know as much as they can about the rest of the world, and that young Americans especially be encouraged to learn as much about it as possible.

Anyway, if you want to test yourself you can do a sample of 20 of the questions at National Geographic. I got 18/20 which was slightly disappointing for me. One of the questions I got wrong was the percentage of US growth made up by immigration, which was fair enough. But I dispute the validity of this question :

Which of these cities is the setting for the original television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation? San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago or Los Angeles

That’s not a question on geography - it’s a question based on what TV shows you watch, and does not belong in such a test. (The answer by the way is Vegas.) Still I wonder how many people would have got it wrong if they had’ve asked what city CSI : NY is based in…

For several months now, I’ve been using as my main “search engine” A9.com (I posted my initial thoughts on it here .) It’s Amazon’s own search page and I’ve made heavy use of the half Pi (1.59%) Amazon discount, and have valued it’s ability to search multiple sources in different columns simultanously. For example I usually have 3 columns configured to search Google web, Google images, and Wikipedia all at once.

But now Google seems to have disappeared from my A9 and replaced by Microsofts ‘Live‘ search. Frankly the results aren’t as good an I want my Google back! But I can’t seem to find any way of getting it back into my columns. I may have to revert from A9 back to Google plain as my main search page if I can’t fix it. If that’s the case I’ll just try and do enough token A9 searches to keep my Amazon discount current … although I really need to wean myself off Amazon as well - spend way too much time (and money) there…

Rise a pre-emptive strike, says PM | Business | Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au (03-05-2006)

I’m sure glad I signed up for a fixed interest rate when we bought our house a few months back, since rates went up today. I can’t say it’s a surprise and with booming housing markets it’s not necesarily a bad thing, although it will make things harder for those who have already overstretched their budgets. Predictably, the comments on the news site are all full of people blaming “Johnnie Howard,” when in reality the RBA’s decision is completely independant of the government. It will be interesting to see how this might affect the upcoming budget though. I’ve just about given up on any prospect of all those big tax cuts that there was a lot of talk about a few months back,

Don’t you hate it when you try to follow the instructions in a manual to the letter, and it still doesn’t produce the desired results?

Lately the colour on our LCD projector has been getting progressively worse, and as the lamp life counter indicated the projector lamp was approaching it’s end, I ordered a new lamp from Japan on ebBay (very quick shipping - only took about 5 days.) Anyway I installed the new lamp yesterday and the picture is now brilliant. The only job remaining was to reset the counter. “Press these four buttons in order for less than 5 seconds each” said the manual. “Less than 5 seconds” is a little vague, but I tried so many combinations - 4 seconds, 1 second, half a second etc, all to no avail - the counter is stuck on 1776 hours. Looking on the net, it seems that I’m not the only one who’s had this problem with this particular projector. Now why can’t Sony make it more straightforward?? Well, at least the projector is working better anyway.