Posts by neverendingjourney

27

Samuel Herd's statement about donations and Cialdini's social proof

by slimboyfat in

samuel herd made a statement a few weeks ago about halting construction work, laying off bethel workers and reducing printing output: severe cutbacks all round.

he said, like the head of a household, the gb has to make sure the organisation is living within its means.

but he added a very careful phrase, something like: "be assured brothers these measures have not been taken as a result of any lack of financial support on your part.

neverendingjourney

Maybe the GB are aware of this very important influence on human psychology and it informed their carefully worded statement.

Nah, I think they're a bunch of buffoons. Any similarities are strictly coincidental.

15

Antimatter not so different after all ... poor old Freddy wrong again,another light dims in the JW heavens.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

back in the years after ww2, newly discovered antimatter was perceived as destroying ordinary matter, so in one of old freddy's insane nightmares (forget which book, but it was the early 1950's) he envisioned yhwh-jesus hurling antimatter at the hated humans who refused to submit to him, and destroying their bodies bit by bit.. now, his vision dims:.

antimatter not so different after all.

scientists help make first measurement of antiproton attraction.

neverendingjourney

Following up my earlier post, I've been doing some back of the envelope math and here's what I've come up with.

1 gram of antimatter annihilating 1 gram of ordinary matter would release 3 times the amount of energy as the Hiroshima bomb (per Wikipedia). There are 1,000 grams in kilogram.

Therefore, annihilating 1 kilogram of antimatter would release 3,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. This would exceed the largest nuclear bomb ever, the Tsar Bomba, which released about 1,500 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

Say you take a person of ordinary build who weighs 70 kilograms (154 lbs.). If you took 70 kilograms of antimatter and used it to annihilate that person, the result would be an explosion 210,000 the size of Hiroshima.

That's not enough in and of itself to blow up the Earth. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is thought to have released a billion times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb, but the explosion would be roughly 140 times bigger than the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

This is just for one person. Freddy was apparently talking about using antimatter to annihilate the remnants of the "old system." It's possible you could quickly start approaching scales that would blow the Earth into pieces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html

15

Antimatter not so different after all ... poor old Freddy wrong again,another light dims in the JW heavens.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

back in the years after ww2, newly discovered antimatter was perceived as destroying ordinary matter, so in one of old freddy's insane nightmares (forget which book, but it was the early 1950's) he envisioned yhwh-jesus hurling antimatter at the hated humans who refused to submit to him, and destroying their bodies bit by bit.. now, his vision dims:.

antimatter not so different after all.

scientists help make first measurement of antiproton attraction.

neverendingjourney

If you had a penny (U.S.) made up of antimatter and you collided it with a regular penny, the resulting energy released would exceed that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

That's a penny. Imagine using antimatter to annihilate a human being. The result would be the largest explosion ever witnessed directly by man.

32

Invisible Rulership - one of the dumbest things I ever believed in

by Black Man in

jw
friends

having now been out of the cult for a few years, it really shocks me about some of the nonsense i used to believe in.

like for instance, christ ruling in the midst of his enemies, but doing so invisibly.. let's let that one sink in for a minute.

you've supposedly got a king who is ruling for a kingdom, but it is an invisible rule.

neverendingjourney

I'm having sex with Kate Upton at the moment...invisibly.

26

48th ANNIVERSARY of me GOING TO PRISON

by Terry in

i was twenty years old.. as a jehovah's witness, i had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than.

knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of armageddon:).

i was engaged to a 17-year-old witness girl i had met at the mineral wells assembly.. what was our future together?

neverendingjourney

Thanks, Terry. I don't believe you and I have ever interacted, but I've followed your story and find inspiration in your perseverance. Were I in your shoes, I'm not sure I would have adapted as well.

51

Another anti-gay Republican Senator (in the USA) caught advertising his body

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

link.

why do the republicans seem to have a monopoly on this behaviour?.

neverendingjourney

The news story in the OP is several years old.

53

Printing Company to Video Production Company - Insider Information

by thedepressedsoul in

many people think that wt is a publishing company and at one time that was true.

however, they are slowly fading that out into more digital publications.

we all have come to the conclusion that printed material from the wt is going way of the dinosaur.

neverendingjourney

Given their lack of tithing requirement and the fact that they have the lowest educated membership of any denomination surveyed by the Pew Foundation, they have to find a way to monetize their members' labor.

Once upon a time, that was accomplished through field service. Even if members sold one magazine per hour, that was $.25 per man hour the WT was receiving. My guess is the WT hasn't been turning much of a profit on literature placements in a very, very long time.

If they were to turn their volunteer literature-distribution salesforce into a construction force, then they could monetize their labor in the context of a real estate model: construct various buildings using free labor and a few years down the road sell them at market price. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.

As to the video production piece, I think it has to do more with the GB's ego and information control. Instead of allowing talented orators to become powerful locally, they can pump in the desired message directly to kingdom halls across the world. It also solves the problem of having a real lack of qualified public speakers in some parts of the world. A movement towards pre-packaged video content in lieu of talks presented by local speakers might explain why they're doing away with the theocratic ministry school.

98

My Opinions on whats going on in WT land - Insider Information

by thedepressedsoul in

first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.

that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.

they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.

neverendingjourney

Re: poor construction oversight

I know a lot of the assholes who ran the RBC and the assembly hall build in my area. These were almost uniformly low-level grunts who maybe took a CAD or project management class or two and worked at the very lowest levels of construction/engineering firms. Yet they acted like they were gods among men when around their fellow believers.

I don't think that experience was atypical. The OP rings true to me.

98

My Opinions on whats going on in WT land - Insider Information

by thedepressedsoul in

first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.

that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.

they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.

neverendingjourney

Cannot happen, unless there is a complete change of business model.

Interesting. I wonder where that line is set. What if they were to set suggested donation amounts? Seems like mainstream churches get away with "suggesting" their members give them ten percent. Admittedly, I'm not an expert in 501(c)(3) organizations.

98

My Opinions on whats going on in WT land - Insider Information

by thedepressedsoul in

first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.

that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.

they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.

neverendingjourney

The wildcard in all of this is the following:

If things get dire enough, do they accept having a tax imposed on them and go back to charging for everything, a quarter for digital downloads, a dollar per magazine, etc.?

Seems like a lot of their money woes were self-inflicted. Revenues plummeted after they went to the donation-only model.