For the Love of my Country

My new blog.
Andy Moore's web-development blog: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash...
http://fortheloveofmycountry.blogspot.com
Named after the song "For the love of my Country", from the album Chrono, by Poor Old Lu.

Powerpoint And All Its Works

By Geoff Thomas, pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church, Aberystwyth in Wales, UK. I had the honour of meeting this great preacher when I stayed, with my family, at his home. A strong Reformed Baptist man, Mr. Thomas also has a good sense of humour.
Article from www.banneroftruth.org
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My friend the national children's work coordinator of the Presbyterian Church in Wales writes to me to announce a "Creating a Powerpoint Presentation" Saturday Conference. It will be "A practical session to create a finished PowerPoint presentation" and costs £10 including a two course lunch. You will need to bring a laptop and your Microsoft PowerPoint software," I was told, and was warned, "There will be a restriction on the number of people who will be able to attend the courses."

For lectures and seminars one has no objections to blackboards and white boards and overhead projectors and Powerpoint, but one welcomes them to Sunday sermons as much as a girl would welcome being proposed to by her boy friend with the assistance of Powerpoint, or that a sincere apology were to be made via such a form of communication. So barriers are erected.

The Powerpoint presentation has much to answer for. It has gained ground in churches because it fits into the idea that the purpose of church services is for 'teaching' and also it goes along well with the current thinking that the first half of the service is about 'worship', that is singing, and that the second half is about 'Instruction for the Thinking Person who Brings a Notebook to Church', and in assisting them
Powerpoint comes into its own. But if your idea of Sunday services is that every part of them is for 'worship', and that the climactic aspect
of worship is hearing God speaking to us in the sermons during which the congregation are repenting and loving and pleading and trusting and praying because they are under the living word then Powerpoint is a fearful distraction. Dismantle the thing. What it does is give you the crusts but not the warm fresh bread inside and it's making the crusts thicker and more inedible. It tells you the MAIN POINTS; they are written there on the screen in large capitals, and they are often also on the Worship Sheet Sermon Outline printed beneath the songs of the day so that you can't miss the MAIN POINTS, but just in case you did miss them the speaker laboriously repeats them, reading his slide words word for word like a news anchor holding up the autocue. Pretty toe-curling stuff. But we don't want the crusts; we want the winsome convicting affectionate soul stirring contents.

If a preacher had ever grasped the grace of oratory then he let it go again the day someone introduced him to Powerpoint. A Cambridge Baptist pastor I heard could really use an overhead projector. No clumsy blunders as he picked up each slide in the right order, put them on the screen the correct way up, used the different coloured felt-tip pens for the sub-headings, moved away so that his shadow didn't obliterate the screen. The master of the OHP, what would he have done with a Powerpoint? Other amateur speakers develop a certain camaraderie with the congregation, with sympathetic smiling watchers as the slide is put on upside down or too near the top. That is never the problem with Powerpoint. It is utterly arrogant. At a recent wedding the groom, who was a preacher, gave his tongue-in-cheek speech with Powerpoint. It was not quite hilarious, but it was enough to make every other preacher present vow they would keep their Powerpoint locked away on the hard disc.

Powerpoint flattens everything to the same emotional level. The thunderings of Sinai, the crossing of the Red Sea, the raising of Lazarus, the cursed anathema and darkness of Golgotha, the furnace of hell, the beseechings of the gospel are all reduced to three bullet points and a bar chart. How will a pulpit that thinks in no more than three bullet points ever move a congregation by the incredible news of the incarnation of God the Son?

Soon there will be day conferences on the necessity of the preacher dressing down in the pulpit, but when a congregation decides that its
pulpit is a chinos and chambray free zone then that must be recognised throughout the entire church for the humanitarian gesture it is. The
sight of the gut falling over the belt is distracting. The greatest dress-down fallacy is that it makes preachers look cool. Formal workwear in the pulpit was like school uniform, it was claimed, and it built a barrier between the suited preacher and the smart casual of New Labour,
or fifty somethings abroad. But at least a suit contains the middle-aged body, lending it structure and boundaries, especially concealing the ministerial corporate stomach. The congregation are properly fearful that the distraction of the dressing down will be greater than the distraction of dressing up. Their minister is God's ambassador, knowing the terror of the Lord, warning sinners of hell, and persuading then to flee from the wrath to come to the crucified Redeemer who alone is life and salvation.

Abortion figures continue to be a tragedy for teens and families

Family First Media Release - 14 JUNE 2007 - www.familyfirst.org.nz

The abortion figures for 2006 released by Statistics NZ today continue to paint a terrible picture for our teenagers.

Since 1991, the number of 11-14 year olds having an abortion has increased by 144%. The number of abortions for 15-19 year olds has increased by 74%.

Each week, almost 80 teenagers have an abortion, and represent almost a quarter of all abortions performed in NZ.

"This is a tragedy for the unborn child, and for the girls involved, some as young as 11 ," says Bob McCoskrie, National Director. "It is also devastating for the extended family, who hopefully are aware of what has happened and can offer their support, rather than the young girl having been sneaked off for the abortion by Family Planning or a School Counselor."

"It also provides evidence that the myth of safe sex pushed by Family Planning, the AIDS Foundation and similar groups is miserably failing our vulnerable young people, who are being made even more vulnerable by then being encouraged to have an abortion," says Bob McCoskrie. "This is why 83% of parents in a recent US Zogby poll believe that programs should reinforce the abstinence message."

New Zealand has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy among OECD countries, according to the recently released UNICEF Report on Child Maltreatment 2007. Last year, the teen fertility rate was 28.4 births per 1000 women aged between 15 and 19. Only the United States has a poorer rate.

Despite a small increase in total abortions in the past year, the number of abortions has increased by over 60% since 1990. At the same time as almost 18,000 abortions were being performed in NZ last year, adoptions totalled less than 90, according to the Adoption Option Trust.

"Abortions being performed at greater than 12 weeks has increased by 220%, despite all the pictures and scans we are seeing showing the fetal development of the unborn child," says Mr McCoskrie. "These images are obviously being kept hidden from some of the women seeking an abortion,"

"These latest figures show that the Abortion Supervisory Committee continues to fail both women and the unborn child."

Winston Churchill: the importance of our history

"…When one generation no longer esteems its own heritage and fails to pass the torch to its children, it is saying in essence that the very foundation principles and experiences that make the society what it is are no longer valid. This leaves that generation without any sense of definition or direction…" Winston Churchill.

A Hazy Shade of Winter

by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel

Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the salvation army band
Down by the riverside, its bound to be a better ride
Than what youve got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Wont you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime

But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Look around, leaves are brown
Theres a patch of snow on the ground...

locked in bill's dungeon

30 august, 2001 - by johnmichael patrick monty monteith
from http://www.sanitypages.com/comment/010830.htm

I was on my typical drive home from work on I-405 heading to Kirkland when I was looking out into the sky and saw a stream of bright lights blanketing the sky. In most cities one might think it came from a UFO, or perhaps a NASA experiment gone wrong, but here in the suburbs of Seattle it could only be one thing. A Microsoft operating system roll-out party. As I pondered how it was that Bill forgot to send me an invitation, suddenly a vehicle screamed by me in the emergency lane and nearly took out the front of my little Honda. It was a Ford Explorer with copies of Microsoft Office 2000 piled high inside.

I was so steamed that he almost hit me that I took it upon myself to follow him. As we started East on I-90 I reached a moment of confusion as I noticed it was an Eddie Baurer edition Ford Explorer. One often will find Ford Explorers filled with Microsoft software in the Seattle area. Just not Eddie Baurer Limited Editions. The ugly lime green one, no less. Clearly the only people in the Seattle area driving these two-tone monstrosities were current or former Microsoft employees. But why would one of Bill's Borg be hauling around copies of Office 2000? Sure, most people in the world could find some logical explanation for this. But not me. No. The only excuses I could think of were not pretty. Not pretty at all. Clearly foul play must be involved.

It came as little surprise that we drove right on to Microsoft headquarters and stopped in a packed car park. I watched from my spot as this short man with large rimmed glasses grabbed as many copies of software out of the back of his Explorer as he could carry, and then press the button on his remote to lock his vehicle. I quietly followed him into the crowd of Microsoft employees on a large front lawn boozing up and making merry. We had walked into the middle of the Windows XP roll-out party, although the short geeky dude in glasses was not stopping to try a plastic cup of bubbly. I managed to grab a glass or two during the chase for myself, however.

As I finished my last cup full we had finished walking past all of the people and the party and were walking through some woods. Well, if a collection of trees in the middle of the Microsoft campus could be called woods, that is. After a hundred yards of walking, in the middle of the Microsoft Forest, we came upon a large free-standing Windows XP sign with a digital clock counting the days to release on the left. While these signs were all over the Redmond campus to remind the clan of when the latest bible-ala-Microsoft would hit the streets, it seemed quite out of place in the middle of Software-Central-Park. I could only think it would serve as some sort of early-warning system for employees trying to escape campus on sunny days.

The Office 2000 delivery dude walked behind the sign, as I sat behind a tree in a cloak of shadows watching and waiting. After a few minutes, I thought he might just be trying to hide from me. Getting sick of the suspense, I quietly walked up and took a peek behind the sign. The dork was not there. Gone. Vanished. I had heard of Novell employees evaporating into thin air before, but never Microsoft. This was quite peculiar.

I searched for a more realistic explanation, and found a bizarre button hidden underneath the Microsoft sign. I pressed it and suddenly a trap door opened with a walkway to a hidden world below. Being the curious fellow I am, I walked down the old masonry stairs to the world below as the door above closed behind me. The space ahead revealed a dimly lit hallway, but lit by some strange futuristic lighting. The Tower of London meets Deep Space Nine.

Down the long hallways there were dozens of doors that opened to small rooms. The spaces behind the heavy wooden doors were dark and had various old computers setup inside. One room had a desk with an Amiga 1000 setup. The next an Atari 520ST. The next a Mac SE/30. Another with a Timex Sinclair. A dungeon of old out-of-date computer systems underneath Microsoft's Remond campus. Who would believe this? I was seeing it with my own eyes, and I could hardly believe it myself.

As I went further down the hallway I could hear a grown man screaming in agony. The sound stood the hair up on my neck as it bounced off each wall and permeated the long hallway. I started to run down the medieval chute to find where the sound was coming from, and eventually I came upon the room. It was locked from the outside, but a small slot was open to reveal the vile happenings inside. Two men were standing on either side of this poor soul sitting in a chair receiving the most heinous torture ever inflicted upon a person. All of those copies of Microsoft Office 2000 that the geek was carrying .. (I can barely type the words.) The God-forsaken individual was being forced to install copy after copy of Office 2000 on what looked to be a 90 MHz Pentium running Windows 98. How anyone could live through such torture is a mystery. It is likely he would reach triple digits in age before finding double digits in installations, yet there were still dozens more in the yuppie SUV I followed. I winced at the agonizing thought.

The man screamed from the inside, "Oh, save me! If I see one more completion window that shows complete and then starts completely over again, I might die!"

Suddenly a voice bellows behind me, "Enjoying the show?"

Click here to read the rest of the story

Download the Document Viewer and Web Browser for the Commodore 64/128

Russian Anthem / Vladimir Putin

Ballantyne's boys

Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system.... They ought to practice leaping >off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man's career with cool, cautious self-possession....
—R.M. Ballantyne, The Gorilla Hunters

Eric Quayle, author of The Collector's Book of Boy's Stories explained that Ballantyne's characters:
...rescued helpless natives from a cruel death at the hands of cannibals, or dashed through smoke and flames to the side of the swooning heroine, or plunged without a moment's hesitation into the shark infested waters for the sake of an injured friend. And, at the end of their courageous display of selfless devotion to duty, they modestly refused to accept any thanks from the victims of the drama other than perhaps a firm shake of a gratefully outstretched hand of the one who had been snatched from the jaws of a fearful death.

Click here to read more about the author, R. M. Ballantyne, and to read some book reviews.

Geoff Botkin: Do children need socialization?

by Geoffrey Botkin
(An excerpt from his book The Great Escape)

    

American parents used to think something called age-segregated socialization was as important for a child as trips to the dentist. Socialization does have a profound influence on the child, but that influence is normally more harmful than helpful. The idea originated with a few radical 19th century educators who were self-professed socialists. They advocated public school socialization as the means by which to reduce an average child's rugged individuality, creativity and intellectual curiosity, so that adult compliance with change in society is easily achieved.
    
Of course, most parents are not worrying about the finer points of mass social engineering or the real intentions of John Dewey. They simply want their child to learn how to be popular and happy and comfortable among his peers. If a child is deprived of the regimented socialization of the public school environment, will he grow up to resemble a social freak, a nerd, or an egghead?
   
Homeschoolers have provided the answer. The evidence shows that when social graces, resourcefulness, personal confidence, and leadership abilities are measured, homeschooled youth turn out superior to their peers from school. Superior is not my word, but the word of the experts who have learned that socialization is merely a fancy term that describes how children become like one another, dependent on one another, dependent on a collective society and mentally and emotionally compliant. This kind of socialization is not good. It should be regarded as the threat that it is. It should be a very uncomfortable concept to parents who know what happens on today's school buses, in today's locker rooms, in today's restrooms, and on today's classroom TV sets. 
   
But, parents may ask, isn't it necessary to prepare a child for the real world? Of course it is. But it is not necessary to surrender a child to this world to prepare him to endure it. Homeschooled children know plenty about the real world. Many of them are learning that today's collapsed civilization is unacceptable. They are learning that it should be changed, and that it can be changed. 

   

It appears that the homeschooled children who grow up in family cultures, rather than anti-family cultures, are learning the leadership skills and acquiring the vision to renew American civilization along traditional lines. Family life is the real world, and the reason so many young families and marriages are failing is because our over-taxed, public school-dependent culture created dysfunctional families whose members rarely interacted with one another as they were growing up.

We should ban doctors before we ban guns...

from Nathaniel LeMaster's Blog

Doctors:
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
———
Statistics courtesy of:
U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services.
———

Handguns: Now think about this:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
( B) Accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.
———
Statistics courtesy of FBI
———

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Blood Coffee

This is raw, un-edited, early-morning blogging material.
Some of it's ok.  Some of it's down right strange.

The man stood in the kitchen, his feet shoulder-breadth apart.  His knees were bent, his bowed head cupped in his hands.  Straightening his neck, eyes travelling up the wall and to the ceiling, the man rubbed his face with his hands.

12:36am.

The green LED clock on the microwave told him that he was thirty-six minutes into the new day.  Stepping up to the bench, the man picked up the Marmite lid which was full of freshly roasted coffee beans.  

How long had they been there?

Manhandling the green, marble-textured mortar and pestle from where it sat in the corner of the bench - by the stove-top, the man positioned it in a more accessible position, nearer the sink.  Half of the contents of the Marmite lid were spilled into the mouth of the mortar cup.  The man took up his tool, applying the pestle to the mortar, rending the brittle coffee beans assunder.  A few seconds into his task and the wonderful aroma hit somewhere deep in his nostrils.
---------------

The sweat dripped from his brow and from his nose.  A constant and chilling stream dripped down his bare back, choosing the channels caused by excessive use of the Rhino-hide whip of the excessively judicious and brutal overseeer.  The heavy breathing from the men behind and in front of him.  The occasional scream of agony from a man as the deceptively soft whip tore into the flesh of his back.  The searing sensation of pain felt by every other man.

Chained to the massive mill-stone for sixteen hours of every day, the man had known nothing else from the time he was ripped away from his young mother at the tender age of twelve.  Sharing the same fate as the other eleven men in the room, the man was chained to one of the six huge beams, each of which formed a diameter of the well trod circular path which the men walked for what seemed eternity.

There was the constant stream of coffee beans; a black excretement from the room above them.  Who knew what went on up there.  These men knew only their task.  These men's only task, their life.  The beans in a constant stream, as thick as any one of the men on the mill-stone's fore-arm fell for sixteen hours of every day.  They tumbled down through the gaping
 hole in the top stone and were then crushed between this stone and the stone beneath it.  
The robotic vacum arm travelled round the bottom of the stone, sucking up the ground beans 
through to the next processing room in the factory.
---------------

...Yes, his fingers were stiff from typing.

The man's right wrist was strong and controlled.

"You don't push it down too much..." 

Durian

I wrote this story some time before 30 August 2005, while staying in Singapore. Some details are exaggerated. To say the least. Any resemblance of any characters in the story is not necessarily coincidental.

We had arrived at the house, taking the LRT (Light Rail Transport), pretty much from one side of the city to the other, where the prayer meeting was. LRT is pretty much the same as the tube, (the underground), apart from the fact that it is lighter, often has only one carriage, and is above the ground most of the way. We walked along the sidewalk, two by two, Mr. and Mrs. Chong and their four children, and Si, Lyd and I. An unlikely bunch to be making its way along a fairly narrow road on that warm Singapore evening. Nevetheless, we covered the few steps from the LRT Station's stairs down to the road, and up to the appartment building which was closeby. This block would have outdated the block, (named Daisy), that we were staying in, by several years - maybe a decade. A good fourteen floors later, and we were filing out of the tired and much used elevator.

So much for how we arrived at this appartment - itself, relatively irrelative to the subject, - Durian.

The prayer meeting over, people drifted back into the dining/living/family room, and the contents of some supermarket bags were arranged on the dining table. A 1.5er of rootbeer, and the same of diet Coke, as I remember it, were also displayed next to the other things. Some homemade things, and other things on plates. I say "things", and I suppose it isn't proper; I suppose it doesn't do the so called "things" justice, but I call them this, only because I can't and don't really have any need to remember their names. The rootbeer looked good. Might try it. The sliced rock melon, also - better have a go at that too. One other thing in particular caught my eye. It wasn't the bowl of multicoloured jube-oid lollies. Rather, a log shaped sort of "cake". Probably measuring around 20cm long, it would have been say, four by five centermetres wide and tall. It looked stodgy, wet, solid, and you didn't need your eyes open to see that it was yellow. It screamed out: "I'm yellow!". And, indeed, it was. A terrible yellow, rich, dark, - wet sand. It was kind of shrink wrapped in plastic, with all the details of it's brand and nutritional value, I suppose, colourfully printed on it.

From the kitchen, came the man whose house it was. As he approached the table, his eyes sparkled as he expertly, and without any effort, it would seem, deftly twirled a short but deceptively sharp knife. It's handle was of plastic, with a fake sort of wood veniere. This guy was a pro, and you could see that he was at home with both the knife, and the sodden little plastic wrapped log that he now held in his left hand. He lay down the knife for a moment, pausing to quickly roll up his right sleeve, well past the elbow. Catching up the knife again, tossing it in a 180 degree arc to his left hand, and then back again to his right, underhand, he stood poised, - ready.

I was fully prepared for him to attack the log with the air of a master chef. Chopchopchopchopchop, and it's done, before you can blink. But no, at least, not this time. I stood, leaning somewhat apathetically against the doorpost, just one leg supporting me. A favoured stand of mine I have to add, though, never if I have nothing to lean on. The two fans in the ceiling followed their everlasting trail, the hum adding to the background noise of the people's conversation. The breeze whipped through my almost shoulder length hair.

The first slice was surprisingly quickly done, but with more of a hacking motion than a sweeping slice; Stab in the middle, then, rolling the log over, holding the knife upright, in the same position, till the full 360 was done, and the slice was seperated. In this manner, he continued until 6 or 7 slices were cut. He left the rest.

I had heard about durian, and even eaten some, the other week, fresh, in an open air market. That time, it was quite nice. Fresh, juicy, drippy and, initially with a nice taste, the after taste being "not-all-that-bad-actually". However, it was not quite lovely enough to entice itself to me again. And, this time, it wasn't presented in the same manner. At the market, the stall keeper, a young man, had deftly, and skillfully, hacked the durian into pieces, obviously with years of experience before him. He'd handed me a solid chunk, into which, with not a little ill-founded trepidation, I had sunk my teeth into. Surprisingly enough, it was nothing like what I'd heard, hardly near the shocking descriptions I'd heard of it.

And, definitely not worthy of the fine which you could have got for carrying it with you on the underground in Singapore. It wasn't all that bad!

Still, as I said, I wasn't desperate to get my hands on any more of the material in question.

After eating one or two of the "things" on offer, I poured a root beer. "Ahhh, good". I hadn't had root beer before, and this was great. Towards the end of my drink, one or two obviously hardcore Singaporean men took themselves a piece of the durian cake. Then another man, and a woman. I recieved slightly condescending glances from these people. The sort of look that said to me: "there's no way you'd like this stuff, or dare to have it.". Yes, that's what it was - an unspoken, mutually understood challenge. "These here are New Zealanders", may have been going through their minds. "They won't be able to handle this good stuff - they won't appreciate it.".

I took the challenge.

My hand reached out towards the plate, ominously twitching compulsively. My brain hadn't authorised this action?! What did my hand think it was doing? Too late now, I couldn't withdraw. There was nothing I could say to hide my fear if I did pull my hand back. Composing myself, with a reckless carelessness, I nocholantly selected the largest of the pieces. As I put the piece on my plate and began carefully unwrapping the plastic, I heard gasps from over my shoulder.

Yes! This was it! An audience. Excellent. And I was playing to a packed house. Stifled groans issued forth out of the shocked peoples throats. "No, he was crazy". "What was this foolhardy Kiwi thinking of?". "Nohoho...", someone began, doubtfully, slowly, uncertainly. I looked into their face, searchingly, devoid of understanding. "What?" I asked innocently. After all, here I was - simply eating something that had been set out for the consumption of all present.

The man beside me with whom I had been in conversation leant over, closer, wonderment showing through his face. Two children reached unnoticed through the throng, taking a small fistful of the prized "jube-oid" lollies. "Not for me", I thought, with a bravery that was only on the surface.

After one more questioningly innocent look, I put my head down and set to my task. Without any fiddling round, I took the unwrapped piece of durian cake. It looked damp, but felt quite powdery - dry, but still stodgy feeling. I took a whopping big bite out of the slice.

It hit me then. What was I doing? This was bad - worse than I'd imagined. I'm afraid that I simply don't have the adjectives in my vocabulary. No. Adequate adjectives do not exist. Obviously Mr. Oxford and Mr. Collins never visited Singapore, or who ever it is that "invents" the more interesting, colourful adjectives. If I attempted to describe how the durian cake tasted, I would probably say something like:

The aftertaste was the worst. It left you with this utterly gutting, heavy, stolid odour coming back up your throat, finding it's way into your nose, pervading all the incoming air to your body. It's been a while now since I actually tasted the durian. Around four and a half months, so there's no way I can describe the flavour. But yes, definitely, the aftertaste if anything (apart from the durian itself) would be the thing to avoid.

Quickly, chewing the mass in my mouth as little as possible, attempting to keep it away from my tongue, I got the chewed up piece of cake to the back of my mouth. After a time that would be comparable to the length of the supposed ice age, I swallowed. Oh, heck. this was shocking. I needed some liquid. Something to wash out the taste in my mouth. Water wouldn't do it. It had to be something with kick. No rootbeer left. Right, then there's nothing left for it but to make the ultimate compromise. diet Coke was the only other option open, available to me. I'll let the reader know, here, that diet Coke is just an absolute no for me. The health issue would be one factor, though only small. The fact that it has all this aspartamine, fake sugar, sweetner in it. Secondly, the taste issue. The taste is nothing like Coke - it tastes of sweetners. Third, the image issue. It's a bad image, drinking diet Coke. I won't go any further into the issue anyway.

Standing up, I slowly, with a painfully long and careless look round the room, I sloshed my large orange, slightly see through tumbler full of the black stuff that's bad for you. There was no way I was going to give away the agony I was going through, and so it was with a cheerful grin that I set the glass on the table, that I sat back down, taking another bite of the cake before taking a controlled but large gulp of the heavenly durian-killer. I say killer, but it was not, After a total of approximately 6 bites of the cake, after which there was none left, all the coke was gone too, but not the aftertaste. The dreaded aftertaste stayed with me. The durian-killer was not a killer, but more a duller, temporarily blocking out the repugnant stench from my nose.

Clark's deathwish against Ian Wishart

Helen Clark has gone too far. Download clarkdeathwish.mp3

Quote:

PRESENTER: I wonder what would happen if Mr Wishart was burgled or assaulted, who would he be first on the phone to?

CLARK: Oh he would be bleating to the police, you know, the same people whose reputation he's trying to destroy.

PRESENTER: Well let's just hope the 111 lines are clogged.

CLARK: Might be death to him.

PRESENTER: Righty-oh, Helen Clark thanks for your time.

CLARK: Good on you.

No Good on you Prime Minister, time to go.

----------------------------------------------

Hat tip: whaleoil

Madeleine

WORLDWIDE SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILD

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY!!

Full name: Madeleine Beth McCann

Gender: Female

Parents: Gerald Patrick McCann e Kate Marie Healy

Date of birth: 12/05/2003
Place of birth: Leicester, United Kingdom

Passport: 453847661 – United Kingdom

Date of issue: 04/08/2003;

Expiration date: 04/08/2008

Date of disappearance: 03/05/2007, about 22H40

Place of disappearance: Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal

Physical description:
Height: 90 cm
Eyes: Left eye: blue and green; right eye: green with a brown spot on the iris
Hair: Straight blond hair (may have been cut or colored)

Additional information:
Madeleine disappeared on the 03/05/2007, by 22H40, from the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, where she was on holidays with her parents. She was wearing a pajama similar to the one in the photo beside.


She has a small brown spot on her left leg.

If you have any information, please contact:
PJ Criminal Department, Portimão
Rua Pé da Cruz, 2, 8500-640 Portimão
Phone number: +351-282 405 400
Permanence Service: +351-282 427 671
Fax number: +351-282 412 763
E-mail: dic.portimao@pj.pt
or any other PJ permanence service.

-----------------------------

I hope they find her soon.  It is fantastic to see how dedicated people are to find her.  However, you should ask yourself...

If she were a mentally handicapped African girl, who was not nearly so cute, would there be such a big deal about her having gone missing?

Future New Zealand: Larry Baldock & Gordon Copeland

Fantastic.

Gordon Copeland has had enough of United Future's spineless vote-grabbing, socialist, Clark-hugging.  It is said that he is soon to announce his resignation from United Future.

If there is one positive outcome of this anti-smacking bill, then it is this.

Larry Baldock, the man behind the Citizens Initiated Referendum asking

Should a smack as a part of good parental discipline be a criminal offence in New Zealand?

Is apparently to team up with Gordon Copeland in starting up a new party, Future New Zealand.

Sorry ACT.  You were the best, but I do have high hopes for this new party.

this from www.tvnz.co.nz

United Future MP Gordon Copeland is set to quit United Future over the anti-smacking bill.

The decision leaves the government in a precarious situation. The recent defection of Taito Philip Field and now Copeland leaves the government in a true minority.

The resignation means the government is now effectively being governed by the Greens and the Maori Party and every time the government wants to pass legislation it will need either of the party's onboard.

Prime Minister Helen Clark put on a brave face on her way into the debating chamber, saying it is business as usual. She says Copeland has given his assurance he will support the government on Thursday's Budget.

National deputy leader Bill English put Helen Clark on the spot in parliament over the resignation

He questioned whether the coalition between Labour, United Future and New Zealand First, still enables the Prime Minister to confidently claim she commands a majority of the House.

Clark said English's description of the arrangement is incorrect. She said there is no such coalition, rather a government arrangement which rests on two confidence and supply agreements and on an abstention agreement with the Greens.

Helen Clark said that is why the government continues to enjoy the confidence of the House.

Copeland is planning to reform the old Future New Zealand Party with former MP Larry Baldock.

The catalyst for his departure is the anti-smacking bill, which will get its final reading on Wednesday. Both men vehemently oppose the amendment watering down the bill.

Copeland will stay on as an independent

The shock resignation is not sitting well with one of Copeland's two United Future colleagues in Parliament.

MP Judy Turner appeared visibly upset at the decision.

"I am a bit devastated. It is really sad. Twenty-four hours from now you are going to see the impact that three people can have on the outcomes of a government and he is prepared to walk away from that."

Turner and leader Peter Dunne will be the only two remaining United Future MPs in parliament.

Turner said this week she would oppose the anti-smacking bill when it had its final reading in parliament. While she believes the compromise amendment reinforcing discretionary powers for police was a good move she is concerned it doesn't also apply to Child Youth and Family.

Why is it always sympathy for the perpetrator?

from the Not PC Blog


A shop girl is sacked for stealing from her employer ... and there's outrage and public support for the thief, and a call taken up by all quarters of the blogosphere to boycott the franchise they see as responsible. This morning the website leading the charge for the thief trumpets to loud applause that "the charges have been dropped, but Subway still need to he held to account for their actions." Sorry, Subway needs to held to account!? What about the goddamn thief?

This is just dumb, but it's a kind of dumb for which this example is just a trivial one. It gets worse, much worse -- with that clue, see if you can find a common thread here:

• An Otara couple are convicted of beating the woman's three-year-old son to death "for continually soiling his pants" -- beating him to death with baseball bats, an oar handle and vacuum cleaner pipes ... and when the verdict is announced from the well of the court comes the supportive cry: "I love you, Sis!"
  
  
• For a prank, for an afternoon's 'fun', an Otahuhu fourteen-year-old drops a concrete block on to a speeding car, killing the driver instantly... and people express sympathy for the killer. His friends call him "cool." When asked how he felt about the accident, the 'look-out' for the killer said, "Sad. Not for that man, but for [the killer]. He's my mate." Few point out what it means to have a mate who's a killer.
  
  
• A drive-by gang shooting kills a two-year old, the gang refuses to give up the killer (and the police appear powerless) .... and an MP admits that "the killing of a child is appalling," but said it would be "wrong to blame gangs." "Just like I'm not prepared to say the police are all rapists,' said the MP, 'I am also not prepared to say that all gangs are criminals."
  
  
• A young man drives his car at full speed through a crowd of packed party-goers, killing two ... and his cousin tells sympathetic television reporters that he is "a good man," and the mother of one young girl whom this fuckwit killed says she "feels sorry" for the killer. For the killer!
  
  
• A student shoots and kills 32 of his 'fellow students' ... and a brainwashed dimwit says she feels "incensed" because the murderer isn't memorialised with his victims. "Who am I to judge who has value and who doesn't?" asks the moron. "I am not in that position. Are you?"
  
  
• A "green think tank" says children are bad for the planet" and another environmentalist (one beloeved of many local environmentalists) declares mankind a 'virus' ... and instead of outrage, condemnation and denunciation, these statements are met with yawns. "Haven't we heard this before?" people say -- and of course they'd be right.
  
  
• Islamofascists commit atrocity after atrocity, and outrage after outrage ... and the chattering classes condemn, not the fascists, not the bombers, not the killers, but those who have the temerity to express outrage at atrocity. Or anger at the killing. Or those who draw cartoons expressing derision at the culture in whose name the atrocities are committed.
  

Why am I listing these events in this way? Because I suggest there's a common thread to them all. Do you see it? Can you see what ties these events together? Specifically, what is the common factor in the reactions to each of these outrages?

Could it be, do you think, the inability to pass moral judgement? Rather than moral condemnation of a wrong-doer or sympathy for a victim who is wronged or killed, what is expressed in each is sympathy for the perpetrator.

Have people gone mad? Have some of us completely lost the ability to discriminate between good and bad? To make moral judgements? Are people no longer able to condemn anybody? Not thieves, not people who kill their kids, not even stone killers who show not an ounce of sympathy for those they killed or would have killed ? What's gone wrong?

Inconsequential?

Petermcc defines inconsequential for us.

Michael - oh, I mean Andy Moore

The knife display at Briscoes. I've never seen, or at least thought about a display of knives for sale at a shop before. Or given it much thought. The other day when I was at Briscoes, however, I couldn't get over the extensive arsenal on hand, an entire aisle dedicated to knives. I carefully took some pictures with my V360. Yeah, and I was wearing my "hoody". Huh, I wouldn't have the hoody unless I had been given it by a mate. I don't buy clothes much for myself. The last clothes I bought were two pairs of $9.95 shorts; lost one pair, wearing the other pair now...

Huh, this looks sharp. And it's out on display. Look, I'm holding it...

a nifty set of throwing knives

This cute wee number would cut more than bread.

Well, that really got me thinking. Is it ok for shops to have loose knives on display like that? Bread&butter knives, maybe. But there were some blimmin sharp, dangerous looking tools on display there, gave me a bit of a shock.

Bring it on Michael Moore!

Aria MacDonald

Visit the website where Aria's family are fundraising for a much needed opperation for this little girl, as well as raising awareness of the rare disease: Hirschsprung's disease (Wikipedia).

Aria MacDonald

Aria was born on Saturday 3rd June, 2006.

Two weeks later she was diagnosed with a very rare condition of the bowel known as total intestinal aganglionosis or total Hirschsprung’s disease. There is no cure and it means she would never be able to digest food.

This news was devastating to her parents Hamish and Anita who were told that nothing could be done to save their baby. It looked like the end of the journey for Aria but really it was the start of something amazing. Dear friends visited the next day and brought hope. That hope was the possibility of a bowel transplant and also the idea of Aria going home on TPN (total parental nutrition).

Aria has now lives at home with Mum and Dad and receives her ‘food’ thru her Hickman line in her shoulder directly into her blood stream. She also has a gastrostomy that drains her stomach of the bile that has no where to go.

Life is not straight forward however. Arias faces the threat of line infections as bugs can easily get into Aria’s blood stream thru her Hickman line. Connecting her to TPN each night must be done under sterile conditions to avoid this. TPN is also very hard on the liver. For babies that live only on TPN the risk of liver failure is high leading to death. However 9 months on and Aria’s liver results are testing NORMAL! Amazing!

Bowel Transplant

Aria’s only hope of long term survival and a chance to eat rests in bowel transplant. This operation is not done in NZ or Australia but the best place is America with the cost of $1-$2 million US dollars. It is still a risky operation but the odds of survival are getting better as advances in medical knowledge continue.

Her family and friends are busy fundraising for the operation and the cost of living in America with no income for 2-3 years. Please consider some of the many ways in which you can help out or support Aria and her family.

Aria is a bright smiley little girl who handles the trials in her life amazingly well. Her life is a precious gift from God who is taking the MacDonald family on a journey according to His great purposes.

Sue Bradford: unborn babies are fully realised humans

from the New Zealand Herald, 14 April 2005

Sue Bradford: "Babies and children are actually fully realised humans and should be treated as such from the time they're born. This is the first thing I learned, obviously having started from the same place we all do. But many of us forget this and treat our babies and children as if they deserve less respect than adults. Smacking kids is a good example of this: we can legally hit children, but not adults. The results are physical damage, but more so the psychological damage."

Bradford is saying: babies should be treated as fully realised humans from the moment that they are born.  That means, that before birth, babies are still babies according to Sue, not fetuses or tissue.

She's busy fighting for the rights of children to be allowed to grow up without smacking, thereby forgoing the right of the parent to discipline their own child how they see fit.  And on the other hand, she's busy fighting for the rights of women (mothers) to be allowed to kill their unborn child (read the quote above again - she lets slip that unborn babies are just that, babies!).