Hi all.
Still haven't quite got to grips with this site yet. I haven't found a way to subsribe to a thread yet. Any hints? or can you only do the "add friends" trick?
I haven't got any friends :-(
Black Sheep
JoinedPosts by Black Sheep
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7
Is anyone here...
by SYN infigured i'd ask here first, since i know quite a few people from this board.
it seems like a nifty site, but only seems to be any use if you actually have some people connected to your friends list :).
[syn], staring around wondering where all the xjws are on that site class...
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Anyone Vegetarian???Need advice...
by LyinEyes inwell i just got my blood work done, it was way over due , it has been three years.
it came back good on the sugar, but bad on cholestoral...... and very , very bad on triglycrides.
my family on dad's side, everyone has trouble with this from a very early age, and all of them have to be on meds even thou they changed diet, lost weight, and exercised.
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Black Sheep
Ex vegetarian.
I started to get chest pains after exercise, this happened while I was slim, fit, had excellent blood pressure and (I thought) healthy, and was on a strict vegetarian diet.
These have gone now that I have cut back on fruit, grains, potatoes, vege oils (except olive) and sugar and increased my veges, meat, fish, eggs and fat. Last BP was normal for my age, haven't had lipids done for ages.
There is a general perception (deception?) that a vege diet is healthier than an omni diet, but....
...I have never found any long term trials that show that the vegetarian's all cause death rate is any better than the omnis'. That includes the often quoted SDA studies that should have shown a signifcant advantage as SDAs would have less smokers, alcoholics, promiscuous male homosexuals, IV drug users etc.
I have no doubt that an all raw vegan diet has therapeutic value for many diseases including heart disease and cancer but you really have to do your homework and make sure your info is coming from educated sources and not from fanatics. Despite what anyone says, I believe that it would not be possible to maintain health for long periods on this diet unless you can go totally organic and even then today's definition of organic is being watered down to suit commercial production.
Beyond Vegetarianism is a website by vegetarians and ex-vegetarians and should be read by anyone considering any vege diet, especially. some of the more radical ones. http://www.beyondveg.com/index.shtml
I found this website some time ago. Dr Byrnes' diet recommendations were very close to what my diet had evolved to and I have also taken tips from him. http://www.powerhealth.net/
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questions about 1975 and other dates
by Leander inmy wife and i were discussing the date of 1975 earlier this week and she basically was of the opinion that the individuals who thought the end was coming in that year came up with the date based on their incorrect assesment of published information.
i replied that would it make sense for thousands of people across the continent to sell their homes and all of their valued possesions if they really had the slightest doubt that armageddon was not coming in 1975. she did'nt have an answer for that retort but still she insisted that somehow these people must have made a mistake in their judgement.
so for those of you who may have lived through the 1975 fiasco and those who have in-depth knowledge about the events that took place in that year maybe you can answer a few questions for me.. how widespread was the belief that 1975 was the year of armageddon?
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Black Sheep
My parents were both firm believers in the 1975 armageddon scenario.
I can remember my mother going on about young people getting married and having children. Fools all of them. Woe to the ...etc.
My father recently tried his old end is nigh scare tactics on me and was given a well deserved earful and it was made plain that he had overstepped the mark and outstayed his welcome. We get on quite well as long as we don't talk religion.
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Drug Legalization
by Euphemism inokay, well there haven't been enough heated political debates here recently, so let's start another one... j/k, mods!
seriously, if i could get intelligent replies to this thread, rather than hyperactive fulminations, that would be much preferred.. my question is, how do you feel about the decriminalization of recreational drugs?
whatever you feel about the morality of using drugs, and taking as fact that the abuse of drugs is harmful, we're currently spending billions of dollars a year in a losing war on drugs, and in the process creating a whole criminal substructure that thrives on selling smuggled goods.. so here are my suggestions.. 1. allow the sale of recreational drugs to adults, exclusively at licensed and regulated establishments (along the lines of liquor stores).. 2. require that all drugs be carefully labeled with the exact amounts of all active ingredients, as well as a comprehensive list of all inactive ingredients, just as is required of pharamaceuticals.
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Black Sheep
1. ".....exclusively at licensed and regulated establishments (along the lines of liquor stores)." I could put up with that if it made the do-gooders feel better, but I don't think it is neccessary.
2. Spot on
3."Tax drugs heavily, and use the revenue for education and treatment programs." You would not have to tax heavily to fund education and treatment programs. Heavy taxing just creates black markets which defeats the idea of removing criminal elements from the drug trade and would not alleviate the problem of theft to support habits.
4. "4. Classify nicotine as a drug, and place it under all the above regulations." Why? It pretty much is already.
If you want to tax this stuff for health reasons, just remember...
a) Heroin does no permanent damage to any organ of the body including the brain. It's only danger is overdose.
b) Sugar, refined flour and hydrogenated fats are reputed to be bad for your health and are not yet taxed. If you think, as some do, that they should be taxed, consider this.... The same people who want to tax them also want to tax saturated fats and cholesterol, which have never been proven to be harmful by any long term trials.
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AIDS HIV
by ballistic insome subjects seem to re-appear almost on a daily basis.
noticeable by it's absense has been the subject of aids.
i think possibly this doesn't get discussed here becuase it is one of the few hot topics which goes in favour of the witnesses.
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Black Sheep
Just looked up UNICEF stats for Togo
Crude death rate 1970, 21/1000, 2001, 13/1000
Doesn't sound like a rise to me.
Would anyone please like to explain how TV docos are able to claim impending disaster while the crude death rate is dropping.
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AIDS HIV
by ballistic insome subjects seem to re-appear almost on a daily basis.
noticeable by it's absense has been the subject of aids.
i think possibly this doesn't get discussed here becuase it is one of the few hot topics which goes in favour of the witnesses.
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Black Sheep
Hi Syn,
Nice to meet you, so to speak.
The following exerpt from Rian Malan's article "AIDS IN AFRICA, In Search of the Truth", Rolling Stone Magazine, 22 Nov. 2001 is from SA not Togo and how closely it parallels the situation there I do not know.
Going by the last comment of this excerpt I would be a little reluctant to accept your local rags as being reliable sources of AIDS statistics.
You can theorize at will about the rest of Africa and nobody will ever be the wiser, but my homeland is different - we are a semi-industrialized nation with a respectable statistical service. "South Africa," says Ian Timaeus, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine professor and UNAIDS consultant "is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa where sufficient deaths are routinely registered to attempt to produce national estimates of mortality from this source." He adds that, "coverage is far from complete," but there's enough of it to be useful - around eight of ten deaths are routinely registered in South Africa, according to Timaeus, compared to about 1 in 100 elsewhere below the Sahara.
It therefore seemed to me that checking the number of registered deaths in South Africa was the surest way of assessing the statistics from Geneva, so I dug out the figures. Geneva's computer models suggested that AIDS deaths here had tripled in three years, surging from 80,000-odd in 1996 to 250,000 in 1999. But no such rise was discernable in total registered deaths, which went from 294,703 to 343,535 within roughly the same period. The discrepancy was so large that I wrote to make absolutely sure I had understood these numbers correctly. Both parties confirmed that I had, and at that exact moment, my story was in trouble. Geneva's figures reflected catastrophe. Pretoria's figures did not. Between these extremes lay a gray area populated by local experts such as Stephen Kramer, manager of insurance giant Metropolitan's AIDS Research Unit, whose own computer model shows AIDS deaths at about one-third Geneva's estimates. But so what? South African actuaries don't get a say in this debate. The figures you see in your newspapers come from Geneva. The WHO takes pains to label these numbers estimates only, not rock-solid certainties, but still, these are estimates we all accept as the truth.
But you don't want to hear this, do you? Nor did I. It spoiled the plot, so I tried to ignore it. Since it was indeed true that the very large numbers of South Africans were dying, then the nation's coffin makers had to be laboring hard to keep pace with growing demand. One newspaper account I found told of a company called Affordable Coffins, purveyor of cheap cardboard caskets, which had more orders than it could fill. But the firm was barely two months old when the story ran, and two rival entrepreneurs who launched similar products a few years back had gone under. "People weren't interested." said a dejected Mr. Rob Whyte. "They wanted coffins made of real wood."
So I called the real-wood firms, three industrialists who manufactured coffins on an assembly line for the national market. "It's quiet," said Kurt Lammerding of GNG Pine Products. His competitors concurred - business was dead, so to speak.
"It's a fact," said Mr. A. B. Schwegman of B&A Coffins. "If you go on what you read in the papers, we should be overwhelmed, but there's nothing. So what's going on? You tell me."
You can tell me too, if you know the answer, but dont bother looking in the WTBTS literature for it as they only ever publish opinions that back up their claim that the end is nigh.
...and they don't seem too fussy who they get those opinions from.
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AIDS HIV
by ballistic insome subjects seem to re-appear almost on a daily basis.
noticeable by it's absense has been the subject of aids.
i think possibly this doesn't get discussed here becuase it is one of the few hot topics which goes in favour of the witnesses.
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Black Sheep
Thanks for your welcome Joy.
I'll consider myself severly reprimanded and won't quote any hearsay in future.
So what qualifies something as a fact for you lot? Do you want the sources for all data/research? or is consensus of opinion good enough for you?
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AIDS HIV
by ballistic insome subjects seem to re-appear almost on a daily basis.
noticeable by it's absense has been the subject of aids.
i think possibly this doesn't get discussed here becuase it is one of the few hot topics which goes in favour of the witnesses.
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Black Sheep
Can anyone here enlighten me? I have had some doubts about the HIV/AIDS thing for quite a while.
Let's get one myth out of the road for a start. JWinSF said "Also, keep in mind that HIV first exploded on the scene among African black straight people, not gays."
AIDS was first identified as GRID. It only appeared in promiscous, receptive, male homosexuals (bottoms) and fisties. It did not appear in gay men who were exclusively Tops. This would make HIV the first virus that was only communicable in one direction. It is worthy of note that these first cases of GRID occured a few months after the new benzene based lubricants and hot lubricants were advertised in gay magazines. Benzenes have been identified as the cause of other immune deficiency syndromes, SMON in Japan, TOS in Madrid, American Pellagra. Benzenes used in sexual lubricants would be absorbed through the anal wall, bypassing the liver, straight into the bloodstream several times faster that if you ate the stuff. To the best of my knowledge, the possibility of a GRID/benzene link has never been researched.
WHO suggests that it takes about 1000 sexual acts, on average, for male to female transmission to occur in the West. Why 1000? That's a helluva lot of sex. Just how dangerous is this virus?
Here is another little ripper I found. Annual death rates in Masaka, Uganda.
1948, "a minimum of twenty-five to thirty per thousand." 1959, 21/1000. 1991, 16/1000. 1994, 14.1/1000 and that was in the middle of an AIDS epidemic. What is going on here? Why is it that, as AIDS increases, death rates fall? I read an article by a UK doctor who expressed surprise that two groups of around ten HIV+ South Africans who went to him in the UK for treatment all tested negative in the UK. He treated them for their diseases and they all went home quite happy.
And then there is the problem of Long Term Non Progressors, people who tested HIV+ many years ago and have not developed AIDS. OK, it can be argued that they have some type of natural resistance (BTW. most of these LTNPs have avoided using anti-retrovirals.), but why are others getting an AIDS like syndrome while still testing negative?
The most common sense bit I have ever seen in an Awake on the subject was a comment by an HIV+ woman's young son. It went something like this. "It's not the virus that's making you sick, Mum. It's all those pills you are taking." She was taking about 20 pills a day.
Can anyone name an anti-retroviral drug that does not affect health and/or the immune system?
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Marriage Problem
by voxel ini am a "worldly" person, not of any religion and am soon to be marrying a long-term disfellowshipped jehovahs witness.
she has not been of the religion for over a decades time and seemingly her immediate family has accepted this through the years.
we've traveled across country together so she could introduce her family to me and have not had any problems.
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Black Sheep
Congratulations Voxel
All of my grandparents were JWs and I would guess that over 60% of their descendants are JWs.
When we have a family get together is is exactly that, FAMILY.
None of the JWs would have been to a wedding in an outside church, but none of my rellies avoid each other on religious grounds.
I hope it all goes well for you two and that her parents come to their senses quickly.
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Hi! I just got here...
by Frannie Banannie in.
yup...just got here and already jumped in for a few posts....hope yall're all okay...my life's been a little sucky lately, but things are perkin' up....getting the detritus out of my life and takin' a new path where work is concerned....is everyone here an active jw or what?.
frannie b
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Black Sheep
Hi Frannie
Welcome to the forum
I have been posting here since 8 Aug 2003
Brought up with it. All my grandparents were in it and nearly all of their kids, and their kids, are/were in it.
I opted out without getting dunked, but my wife joined and my kids both got dunked as well.