I completed a task to obtain sub-second timing accuracy in my code to reduce Hubble spectra of Hot Jupiters, and that spells Christmas. So I got my little fake plastic Christmas tree here on my desk, with three strings of AA powered LED lights. One string is rainbow, one is white, one is purple, the wife's favorite color, and certainly a color of Christmas I do not recall from childhood in late 70s / early 80s. Also has a lapel pin of that angry ice cream sandwhich meme guy. Used to have Lego keychain guys. Cats love to eat it. As I speak, it clearly needs new batteries. But I like the feeling of slow-burning embers...
Posts by rmt1
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32How Many Enjoy Celebrating Holidays? Birthdays?
by minimus ini admit that i do enjoy it, especially with my grandkids.
birthdays, too.. i believe we missed out on a lot of fun and normal activities because we were witnesses..
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Okage Takes Issue with: November 1st 2013 Watchtower Magazine
by okage injust a few issues i had from looking at this potential new york-printed toilet paper:.
pg 4: the lie that made god nameless.
this sub-article talks about how god's name is jehovah and quotes isaiah 42:8 "i am jehovah.
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rmt1
This is really astounding. It serves as evidence to my own suspicion that TWS could care less about fulfilling their ostensible mission, to make Jehovah's name known, if the primary argumentation to the recipient who does not yet know Jehovah's name is at a primary school level. And a simplified version? (What in the name of <>?) From a corporate standpoint, I understand if they want to limit their overhead to finding sufficiently illusioned new feedstock, which encompasses what I call mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, psychiatrically, economically marginal or marginalized persons. From a corporate standpoint, does that mean they are willing to risk the insufficiently 'sunk' catching a wiff for the savings of lower overhead to retaining the sufficiently 'sunk'? By the scientific term 'sunk', as in one-time hook/line/sinker 'sunk', I mean to include persons who are actually stupid, and the much greater crowd of persons who are held hostage by family and social support systems, JW employers, sunk cost fallacy, etc.
Am I the only one for whom the URL http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible returns the error message "Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request", and then you have to refresh it, and then you can only see four older threads?
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23
Okage Takes Issue with: November 1st 2013 Watchtower Magazine
by okage injust a few issues i had from looking at this potential new york-printed toilet paper:.
pg 4: the lie that made god nameless.
this sub-article talks about how god's name is jehovah and quotes isaiah 42:8 "i am jehovah.
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rmt1
This is the first time I have heard there is a public 16 page version of Watchtower. This so totally makes my day.
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32
How Many Enjoy Celebrating Holidays? Birthdays?
by minimus ini admit that i do enjoy it, especially with my grandkids.
birthdays, too.. i believe we missed out on a lot of fun and normal activities because we were witnesses..
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rmt1
Totally love Christmas since its a convolution of multiple inputs, not least of which is celestial mechanics, and not least of which is the bitter huddling cold that invites you to take stock of what's good. I could not give a fig's leaf how arbitrarily made up it is. It's got music that no other holiday has. It's been diluted since secular forces have been taking religion out of schools. So being an ex-JW and trying to get in on the (scientifically invalid but emotionally) vibrant experience that was missed as a kid is practically a no-go. The holiday has been sucked dry by the money changers and politicians (I say this as an atheist).
Thanksgiving lost its nationalistic or exceptionalist meaning, so it's not anything particular now. Secular excuse for kicking back. Eh. There's a bit of national pride to be gleaned, but what is the nation to be proud about right now? It's becoming a police state.
Halloween is too much of a grab bag or catch-all of detritus. Has no meaning anymore (not that Thanksgiving or Christmas absolutely do, either). I watch a good many supernatural suspense/thriller movies to get my dose of chills. No chills in Halloween.
Birthdays are a great thing to do if you remember them. Real life / exiting young adulthood has a way of shelving them, since their significance is inversely proportional to quantity.
Easter is tainted from Memorial - Never got up a good sense of envy about rabbits and easter eggs, since the pagan roots were kind of un-provocatively obvious and not hotly contested. At least Christmas pagan roots had some subtleties, niceties, grist for the supposition that ancient Christians may or may not have given gifts on the 25th, stuff like that. Easter's just kind of you and Jesus and little cups of watercolor paint and mess. Not engaging, unless you perhaps have kids.
New Year's is of course a secular accomplishment to partake in. Doesn't have to be any spiritual dimension to it, no gratitude to god, no forgiveness, no promises, no resolutions. Just a general satisfaction of a year under the belt, whatever that brought you.
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43
Former L T Elder- Head Quarters & Great Tribulation
by James Jackson inthe local needs talk this week was about helping with the building project in warick new york.
the speaker said twice that project was for building the "world head quarters"!
then he added twice; that the "great tribulation" cannot start to after the "world head quarters" is built!
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rmt1
http://jwleaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/watchtower-warwick-site-plan.jpg
Will the service building have industrial capacity? Printing presses?
https://plus.google.com/111737312357973104330/posts
I wonder if you could quantify how much the real estate of, or under, the lake costs in real dollars? Because that's people's gas money. That's people's grocery money. That's people prescription money. That's people's discretionary income for clothing their children. That's people's monthly auto insurance premiums. That's people's funds for car repair. It's a lot of things...
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rmt1
Lot of anti-MBoBS. I can certainly say I have not clapped eyes on the thing in 20? years. I'm sure some of what I think would change.
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What is more important? Money or the message?
by snare&racket inimagine the dilemma..... you have a message to spread, but spreading it may cost you money when selling your property as your message is a little embarassing and weird.... do you paint over it and secure the sale or leave it be and stand by your message in the hope it saves even one more life?.
it really isn't the same religion i grew up in!
people have died defending and spreading that message from brooklyn, a message that they would now paint over for the sake of a building sale... .
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rmt1
Thank you for these very quantitative answers. It bugged me looking up of the floor plans that there is no obvious 'industrial' center of the new complex. There is no thrumming heartbeat, like you could imagine with the industrial capacity at Brooklyn, or Wallkill, to stretch 'industry'. So that tells me all printing is offshored, which is consistent with modern corporations. Plus the possibility of going where environmental regulations enable competitively low costs. (Who are TWS main competitors, by the way?)
So the lakefront really does spell real estate, which spells at least 30 to 50 years investment. When were the iconic Brooklyn factories/offices built? They got there at the turn of the century, so 100+ years of value for some properties. Losing Brooklyn actually makes me nostalgic of my temp month at Bethel, heh. I stayed in Sands? residence. January, wind tunnels, got chapped everywhere from relentless pointless showers to be ready for the next meal. Did HVAC on something. Did that at Patterson for a month, too. Best part, almost the finest rational, was missing meetings.
One other reason for owning actual lake property, I suppose, is to have some right to keep recreation OFF those water premises.
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rmt1
I know I should be on guard against armchair quarterbacking to the cognitive environment of a 6/7/8 yo in 1980 and that of a 6/7/8 yo in 2013. I'll assume by your vitriol that you were alive in 1980 and would have something to say about how much media the typical 6/7/8 yo had access to. Leaving aside your assessment of how good or bad TWS content is for one's mental, emotional, cognitive, psychological, psychiatric, spiritual, ontological health, which I did not specifically pontificate upon myself in that particular paragraph, I think the odds are high that you would agree with me that the JW child default media of today (videos with jingles) are inferior in mental stimulation to the JW child default media of decades ago. You do not have to consume time arguing a strawman that I claim JW media has ever been cognitively stimulating. You might, however, agree that in a resource-starved environment, a creature adapts to less inputs, makes the most of something, gets by with what it has. Like the difference between meth and lean. For a JW child of 1980, who did not have access to other stimulants, I contend, or claim, that My Book of Bible Stories was a decent piece of media for allowing some kinds of mental engagement or escape. You can react allergically to that claim, and I do laugh along with you, but I'm not making that claim outside the context of comparison to this present form of JW child media.
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Who says Perfect Humans were created, [evolved] to live forever? WT does*, genesis does not. do you?
by prologos inthe only reference to living forever, (or indefinitely long) in the genesis 2&3 account, is in reference to the "tree of life".
gen 3:22 "--eat and live to time indefinite--".
this tree must have been hard to find because wt writers opined that eventually, in their faithful course, a&e would be led to that allowed tree to gain everlasting life's symbolic confirmation.. therefore as the ancients accidentally & correctly wrote, humans did not have inherent everlasting life, but it was gained through diet.
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What is more important? Money or the message?
by snare&racket inimagine the dilemma..... you have a message to spread, but spreading it may cost you money when selling your property as your message is a little embarassing and weird.... do you paint over it and secure the sale or leave it be and stand by your message in the hope it saves even one more life?.
it really isn't the same religion i grew up in!
people have died defending and spreading that message from brooklyn, a message that they would now paint over for the sake of a building sale... .
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rmt1
"Brooklyn bought half a lake"
I'm curious if this was a condition of sale. I.e., was it impossible to parcel the lot smaller? Is there any real value to lake property, itself? Can they use it for boating or recreation? Just seems bizarre, like an attempt to build one of the paradise cartoons, but to never actually live that real paradise. Like they're ok, just ok, being stuck in a spiritual paradise but 'faking' living in a physical paradise, constructed, painted, landscaped to spec. (I cannot imagine bros and sis' going swimming in that area.)
