The Leading Edge Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Stranger Things is the best new TV show in decades!

Thinking Matters — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 01:16:41 -0000

Cheque's in the mail - didn't you get it yet?

Re: Stranger Things is the best new TV show in decades!

Brendon Ward — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 20:47:59 -0000

I like totes like this program and will be invoicing your organisation for the time it takes me to watch the series in its entirety.

Re: Why Road to Perdition is a totally underrated movie

Wayne Widdowson — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 21:18:35 -0000

Hi Brendon. I was wondering if I could chat with you about your Blog? My school email is w.widdowson@ghs.school.nz. Many thanks, Wayne.

Re: So Donald Trump is now worse than Adolf Hitler?!

Fletch — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:23:37 -0000

Meanwhile, a KKK leader endorses Hillary Clinton. Media silent....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...

Re: Why we need to challenge the $26 million that was spent on the flag project

Wayne Widdowson — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 18:40:19 -0000

It isn't an open or honest process. We now have celebrities endorsing the flag change and John Key promoting it whenever he can. The element of choice is a fiction. For me the money is not the real issue. It is the process that was deliberately employed that gets me.

Re: Why has the NZ Herald fallen so far from grace?

Wayne Widdowson — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 15:55:26 -0000

I agree with you here. We need a paper that exposes, challenges and inspires and I don't get that from the Herald. It's all about property, fashion and dining out. I would love to be a subscriber of the Herald but I can't bring myself to subscribe with how they are at present. The UK has the Guardian, America has the NY Times and we have... The positive spin off is that I have started looking to quality blogs for opinion and insights into what is going on. And I wonder if that trend will continue?

Re: How Marvel and Disney are destroying movie-making creativity and the enjoyment of cinema

Wayne Widdowson — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 15:49:52 -0000

I felt that watching the new Civil War trailer. It just seemed boring to me. Too much of a good thing, ends up being a disaster. I agree with you there. The law of diminishing returns applies. Economics 101.

Re: Why does Hollywood keep doing this to the disability community?

Eleonor — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:07:34 -0000

What? Who says that their life aren't worth living? It's a movie about an issue that some people have to face: that some people with dissabilities don't feel like a whole person because of their dissability. And in this movie it's gone so far that the person feel like just end it all would be the best thing to do. Why can't we let writers write any more without putting in their mouth what they mean? With this way of looking at it quentin tarantino is a racist (inglorius bastards) , E.L James thibk it's okaj to rape people (50 shades of grey) and chirstopher nolan thinks it's ok to murder people (joker- the dark knight). Please just stop it.....

Re: Will cracking down on VPNs simply promote piracy?

Fletch — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 17:09:39 -0000

In all honesty, it probably comes down to advertisers and money. Companies in NZ like Lightbox et al want you to view it on their service and watch the ads that their sponsors provide. I don't think anyone really cares how soon a movie or program is seen in which part of the world, otherwise.
But you're right. Netflix shouldn't complain. They are still being paid for their service, whether here or overseas. People will just torrent stuff if they can't watch it legally.

Re: Here’s what Labour has to do to get my vote back

Lenny R — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 18:46:20 -0000

Yeah, I'll never vote for Labour. Apart from the Greens, they are the most immoral party in the country. Pro-prostitution, pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, etc., etc. The people that vote for them are only after financial benefits they promise. And that is not at all a good reason to vote for such people. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and the rest shall be added unto you". In other words, God's justice comes first; material things second. That's also why the National won't be seeing my vote. It is sinful to vote for a party which is in direct opposition with Him Who gave them the authority and power they have.

Re: Why do we have a crisis of male friendlessness, and what can be done about it?

Fletch — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:35:16 -0000

Great advice about the humility etc!

Another thing I've read recently is Anthony Esolen's book, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments For Sanity. In the chapter Argument Five, he laments the lack of male-male friendship these days and says that a great reason for it stems from the sexual revolution and particularly the homosexual or gay revolution. He says men used to actually have deep feelings for each other - used to love each other - and it had nothing to do with homosexuality. He talks about David and Jonathan in the Bible; Abraham Lincoln and his friend Joshua Speed and how they used to share a bed when they were boarding in the same house; that Shakespeare's sonnets were about a young man he "loved". We have lost all of that now. Men now shrink from each other for fear of being seen as gay. To put a hand on a man's shoulder, etc, is now a sign (true or not) that the two men are in a relationship.

Esolen (edited)-

How have we come to this pass? The corrupted language has driven out the natural. We no longer have words to describe these friendships— or even to conceive of them. Except among certain well-protected groups, in most unusual circumstances, the reality itself must disappear, and the “friendship” of man and man or woman and woman must wither and fade into a wraith of its former self.

Open homosexuality, loudly and defiantly celebrated, changes the language for everyone. If a man throws his arm around another man’s waist, it is now a sign, whether he is on the political right or the left, whether he believes in biblical proscriptions of homosexuality or not. One of my students told me that he was at a bar with his best friend, and the fellow was weeping freely because his fiancée had broken up with him. In came a girl, chirping, “Oh, are the two of you gay?” Nobody would have assumed that when my father was a boy. Nobody would have assumed it even when I was a boy.

Think about that friendship the next time you see the aging adolescents parading in feather boas or leather underpants as they march down Main Street, making their sexual proclivities known to everybody whether everybody cares or not. With every chanted slogan and every blaring sign, they crowd out the words of friendship and appropriate the healthy gestures of love between man and man. Confess: has it not left you uneasy even to read the words of that last sentence? What do the paraders achieve, with their public promotion of homosexuality? They come out of the closet, and hustle a lot of good and natural feelings back in. They indulge in garrulity, and consequently tie the tongues and chill the hearts of men, who can no longer feel what they ought, or speak what they feel.

You can read the chapter on Google Books, here -
https://books.google.co.nz/...

I do agree that men need to get together more and share. I guess that is the thinking behind the Fraternitas club as seen on The Catholic Gentleman site (although they charge a monthly fee) - http://fraternitas.club/the...

Re: What did David Bowie and Johnny Cash have in common?

Thinking Matters — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 04:27:40 -0000

I respectfully think he's confusing Bowie's artistic method with the themes he is touching on. The man who sold the world, for example, is a profoundly deep song about searching for meaning and completeness in your self-identity. He may not have spelled that out explicitly in the artistic method he used to create that song, but the depth of what he is expressing is still there none the less.

Re: What did David Bowie and Johnny Cash have in common?

Fletch — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:45:44 -0000

Hmm, I dunno. I just finished reading a piece written in 2013 by veteran journalist/author Steve Turner (who is also a Christian, and has written a biography of Johnny Cash, which I have also read) and he reckons that Bowie's lyrics don't really say much, thanks to an approach he believes Bowie uses (or used) of cutting up lyric lines and jamming them together in arbitrary ways. It makes interesting reading.

This very lack of opinion became, I believe, the key to Bowie’s art. Near contemporaries like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend and Bruce Springsteen developed style that was consistent with their political, moral or spiritual substance. Bowie just developed style. He made such a virtue out the packaging that conversation about him centred on costumes rather than content.

[...]

His lyrics reveal little of what the author believes, thinks or feels. They are opaque not because of profound and complex poetry but because they are fragmentary and imprecise. In the mid-1970s he latched onto the cut-up method of composition pioneered by artist-poet Brion Gysin and beat novelist William Burroughs. This involved physically slicing up texts and putting the pieces back together in arbitrary sequences.

This suited Bowie well because it avoided the demands of linear logic and enabled him to bury his thoughts. He cut up his own lyrics and rearranged them in random order so that all of the original meaning was destroyed. In the 1990s he helped develop a computer programme ‘Verbasizer’ that performed the same function.

On the day in March that he took out full-page adverts displaying all the lyrics from his new album The Next Day, I was called by a newspaper keen to discover what Bowie was ‘saying.’ After at least an hour of intent perusal, I had to admit that I had no idea what he was trying to tell us, if anything.

http://stereosubversion.com...

Re: New daily video podcast starts tomorrow!

Wayne Widdowson — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 18:55:11 -0000

Great, that your back! I was wondering when the ball would get rolling. Sounds like a great initiative. It's funny but I was thinking the same thing yesterday about a lot of social media sites I have visited over the holidays. From politics to religion, to current events the tone is often ugly. Everyone is out making a point - their point - but it's at the expense of anything relational. I welcome a platform that aims to promote something more relational. We need more of this today, not less. Also, I would like to write for the Leading Edge, so if you ever feel that you need a few more writers on board let me know. God bless, here is to 2016 and all that it brings.

Re: Why I am troubled by Michael Voris

Patsy Koenig — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 10:08:40 -0000

I agree with the author. Michael Voris focuses entirely on the negative. Sometimes that is useful because negative things do need to be dealt with. However, Voris is always negative...even about things that are positive. He acts like a wan-a-be pope in his pretense to be the highest authority. He condemns Natural Family Planning....while he "blesses" his own mother's utilization of NFP. Why? She had a doctor's permission slip. He pontificates on issues above his pay-grade, so to speak. His videos criticize numerous bishops for their wrong-doings. And that is probably useful: to know what is really going on with our hierarchy. However, he then fabricates a dogma (out of his own mind - like his NFP condemnation) that no one can criticize the pope...for anything whatsoever! That contradicts Scripture, tradition, theology, and the canonized saints. Then he criticizes Pope Benedict XVI - breaking his own fabricated "law" against criticizing a pope. He announced that Pope Benedict XVI was coerced into resigning in his Oct. 25, 2015 video titled "Benedict's Fingerprints" stating that Pope Benedict XVI "surrendered to whatever the forces he thought he could not resist." He is stating that Pope Benedict was coerced into resigning, which invalidates his resignation per Canon Law 332.2. Therefore Pope Benedict XVI is still the valid pope.

Re: No, ISIS won’t be beaten by calling them names or pretending they are weak

Fletch — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:49:15 -0000

Well said.

Apparently ISIS have their own online help desk as well, to help out Jihadis.

NBC News has learned that ISIS is using a web-savvy new tactic to expand its global operational footprint -- a 24-hour Jihadi Help Desk to help its foot soldiers spread its message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more attacks on foreign soil.
Counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army tell NBC News that the ISIS help desk, manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock, was established with the express purpose of helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.

The relatively new development -- which law enforcement and intel officials say has ramped up over the past year -- is alarming because it allows potentially thousands of ISIS followers to move about and plan operations without any hint of activity showing up in their massive collection of signals intelligence.

More - http://www.nbcnews.com/stor...

Re: Proposal to temporarily sterilise all NZ teenage females should raise serious red flags

friardo — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 03:52:35 -0000

Perhaps it would have helped if this quote from the original article had been included in the "Leading Edge" piece. Possibly the blog should be renamed "Misleading Edge", since the majority of comments have clearly been mislead by these wild accusations.

LARCs are effective in reducing teen preg-
nancy (Secura G, et al. N Engl J Med
2014;371:14:1316–23). We propose a pro-
gramme that is PROACTIVE, UNIVERSAL, FREE, OPT-OUT, and includes sex education about sexually
transmitted infection (STI) protection and
healthy relationships.

Re: Pope John Paul II aborted? A truly frightening thought

Dolorosa — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:57:55 -0000

I'm certainly happy his mother didn't have an abortion but the truth will set us free:http://traditioninaction.or...

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Wayne Widdowson — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 03:44:41 -0000

Thanks. Something to mull over.

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Wayne Widdowson — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 03:44:25 -0000

Thanks. Will do.

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Thinking Matters — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 03:33:57 -0000

I think it's a both/and thing - we are meant to go to the people where they are at, but not simply stay with them in that broken place, instead we are meant to call them to the greatness of real life that can only be found in Christ.

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Thinking Matters — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 03:32:48 -0000

Thank you Wayne - for your encouraging words, and your honesty. One thing I would encourage you to do is to simply start having those conversations and loving the people around you with a sincere and Christ-like devotion. The more you do, the more natural it becomes to share the Gospel, and the more enlivening to your faith it becomes. :-)

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Wayne Widdowson — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 19:23:59 -0000

It does say in scripture that we are to met people were they are at. If we talk Paul's call literally does that mean anything goes? How do you meet people were they are at, without forsaking the Gospel message? I guess what we are dealing with today had it's genesis in the 60's with the so called 'sexual revolution'. It is self ascertaining and I wonder if the legalisation of gay marriage' is an example of this. It looks like we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or are we?

Re: Is it the theological language, or our lack of missionary action that’s the real problem?

Wayne Widdowson — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 22:01:47 -0000

This is a call to take a stand and I have to admit I am ambivalent. I think I don't know the Gospel well enough, that my life isn't sorted and who am I to start telling people about Jesus. Deeper down is this fear that maybe I've got it all wrong. That Jesus and Christianity are not real. But there is another part of my that feels my heart stir and I want to draw a line in the sand and say yes. I attended Promise Keepers this year in Auckland and there were some powerful testimonies of men whose faith is evident. I checked out the ink you provided. Very powerful! Keep up the good work of providing a forum for insightful reflection, discussion and a call for action.

Re: M. Night Shyamalan; cinematic prophet: The Village

Mark Hoani Campbell — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 06:49:04 -0000

totally agree with the high praise of this film. regarding the horror aspect it certainly attained a certain sense of dread and suspense early on and kept that up throughout. So despite that label perhaps being somewhat detracting from the masterful cinematic piece that it is, too some extent it lived up to it. It certainly put me on the edge of my seat several times and a walk back to my hotel in unfamiliar London streets after dark following the movie was slightly unnerving.