New Zealand Conservative

Torch Song : Shine on me. Needs a good sound system.

Stolen shamelessly from CoNZervative , a new commercial where the old Spock squares off against the new Spock. At the end of it, you are supposed to buy an Audi. Or maybe a Mercedes. Or maybe watch The Hobbit. Can't remember, I was distracted by just how sneaky those Vulcans can be. LLAP:

Video set to gorgeous music.

Thanks to StMichaelsPress for this video.

An aspect of our society is to reduce everything down to the individual. Every man is an island and all that. On the other hand, we have that classic phrase from Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire: "You complete me". What if a husband and wife were not just two people, two desiring units of indifferent gender, living for an indefinite time in the same house, but the perfection of male and female as if "marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman"? Perfection thus understood is not another form of individualism. When man and woman are made one flesh, they belong to each other. I am my wife's husband, and she is my wife – not just a little on the surface, or according to a legal contract, but to the very depths of our being. Likewise, I do not play at being father as a "role." I am a father. My wife does not play at being a mother. She is a mother. If marriage is to have meaning, we shall have to embrace again this revolutionary truth. --Benjamin...

It's in Italian with sub-titles, however, it's still incredibly compelling. Even thought I've already read the transcript in the Dominion Post today, I was hanging onto every word.

An old newsreel on Poles finding refuge in Persia (now Iran) during WWII. Just one minor error that I noticed in what the commentator was saying - the Poles were not pushed out of the Soviet Union by the Nazis - they were released by the Soviets, as they had been prisoners in the Soviet Union right up until the Soviets were attacked by their ally, Nazi Germany. This then necessitated agreements with their new allies, whom they'd been formerly attacking and imprisoning. It seems during WWII, any mention of this embarrassing fact was omitted. Anyway, I was quite excited to find this newsreel on YouTube. My Dad was one of those who made it to Persia as a 14 year old. Actually, he was probably a little younger, but saying he was 14 got him into the Cadets, which didn't make him old enough to fight in the war, but did mean he got vocational training as a welder. For more about my father's family's story, see my experiences of motherhood and conservatism , where I...

And here's Carly's Blog: Carly's Voice

“The Way” is the story of Tom (Sheen), a widower, sometime Catholic and a Malibu dentist, whose son, Daniel (Estevez), decides to leave his doctorate behind and see the world. As Tom drives Daniel to the airport, he scolds him for not taking his place in the world. Daniel answers that he needs to find what that place is and gently suggests that his dad might do the same. Not long after, Tom’s golf game is interrupted by a call with the news that Daniel has died in a small town in the French Pyrenees. Tom leaves immediately to bring his son’s body home. But once there, a kind police detective informs him that in this remote town his son was about to leave on a spiritual pilgrimage to the medieval shrine of Santiago de Compostela, where many believe the relics of St. James the Apostle are interred. Tom has Daniel’s remains cremated and then decides that the two of them together will make this journey, which is also called pilgrimage, the way, or camino. People make this camino ...

Somewhen in the distant future, perhaps as distant as the year 2014, sugar is an illegal substance, and possession of such is almost a capital crime. So it was portrayed by Judge Dredd, of 2000AD comic fame in " The Line " and other Judge Dredd stories written back in the 80's. Tony Falkenstein thinks starting with a 20% tax on the wicked white powder is the way to go. MacDoctor explains in more rational terms why it is a bad idea: Sugar Sickness . Why do so many (progressives*?) think that there isn't a problem that cannot be solved by a new tax and the strong arm of government? Sweet dreams are made of these, who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas Everybody's looking for something Some of them want to use you Some of them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused * Maybe Tony can drop in and explain his political stance to satisfy my curiosity on why people reach for the IRD when ...

It's so easy to forget what Christmas is really about - the birth of God made man, our Saviour. In a country where so many people treat Christmas as the day that they set out on their holiday and jam up the roads, a reminder of what we celebrate on that day is necessary. Dear Brothers and Sisters, As Christmas approaches, I offer prayerful good wishes to you and your families for a spiritually fruitful celebration of the Lord’s birth. At Midnight Mass, we sing: “Today a Saviour is born for us”. This “Today” evokes an eternal present, for the mystery of Christ’s coming transcends time and permeates all history. “Today” – every day - we are invited to discover the presence of God’s saving love in our midst. In the birth of Jesus, God comes to us and asks us to receive him, so that he can be born in our lives and transform them, and our world, by the power of his love. The Christmas liturgy also invites us to contemplate Christ’s birth against the backdrop of his p...

When viewing a woman wearing a bikini, the part of a man's brain associated with "tool use" lights up.

Election day and I was going to post about a significant non issue but then I realized it might be construed as being in violation of Paragraph (g) of Section 197(1) of the Electoral Act - even if unintentionally. So instead and to be completely on the safe side, what do you think of Tanya Tagaq's music?

To save you time and to allow you to spend the evening in good company with your family - I present a summary of tonight's debate compressed into 119 seconds. Hopefully this preview will help you to make some sense of tonight's event.

The above clip is from Archbishop Fulton Sheen's TV programme Life is Worth Living, and first screened in 1955. He was America's first TV evangelist and had a huge following of devoted viewers at the time. Here, he talks about education and it's purpose. My partial transcript starts mostly after the 3:40 mark. There are a number of jokes as part of the lead in - I won't spoil them by transcribing them. He starts with a general philosophy of eduction in college (university)... Aim of eduction is to train the whole man, intellect and will, not just the mind. If we went into a store to buy a suit of clothes, we would not take a suit that had only one sleeve, and if you bought shoes, you'd want toes - unless you wanted to be in style. And so with education. Tonight we'll only talk about the intellect. Now the intellect, if it is to be properly trained, should be developed along these three lines.

Pope Benedict XVI is currently visiting Germany. Here is his speech to the German Parliament, where he talks about the necessity for justice in politics, else the State is nothing more than a band of robbers.