Mephis

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Posts by Mephis

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  6

  Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes

  by Mephis in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i loved these.

  not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.

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  Mephis

  Bless. He's actually quite nice about God in those you know? He says we can safely ignore him. Just as he ignores us. I think that's sweet.
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  8

  do we have issues with the site or is it my mac or firefox?

  by sowhatnow in

  1. forum
  2. tech-support

  im on a mac-book, and when im at the site, often my mac runs real slow, im typing and the letters are not there, and pop up a few seconds later.

  weird stuff.

  it sometimes freezes up on me.

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  Mephis

  If you haven't already, I'd run a scan for viruses and malware on your mac-book as it sounds like something funky is going on there.

  If you've not got a program to do that, I did a quick look and Avast seem to have a free version for Macs which should work. (Avast is a resource hog of an anti-virus, so uninstalling after is a good option.)

  Been a while since I touched Mac for a work though, so can't help much beyond that I'm afraid.
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  6

  Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes

  by Mephis in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i loved these.

  not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.

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  Mephis

  I loved these. Not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.

  Do black holes have no hair?

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j

  Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03h9y3b
  
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  25

  Is a piano inevitable?

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i was at a concert last night and the presence and stature of the piano struck me.

  and i thought: if the piano wasn't invented when it was, would it have been invented by someone else instead?

  or if there was a world the same as our, except with a different history, would it have pianos now too or would it be modern world, similar in many respects, only without pianos?

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  Mephis

  Ullysses by James Joyce on the other hand... If Joyce hadn't been born and lived the life he did this book would never have existed.

  I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Beckett's Molloy trilogy (and a few other things). No Joyce means no Beckett, or at least not as he became.That curious butterfly effect of alternate histories. But it's arguable that there would have been equivalent movements with other expressions or even the same forms even if not in the same words. You have to tear out the influences by the roots to stop that. The beginning is Homer I suppose.
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  54

  Things JW's and Atheists have in common

  by juandefiero in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was just thinking about something someone said on another thread.

  to paraphrase, 'jw beliefs like there being no hellfire, immortal soul, the condition at death...have the ring of truth.'.

  i realized, atheists believe these things too!.

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  Mephis

  Do you honestly belief that all theist and Christian scientists really want to prove God doesn't exist? Scientists couldn't care less about that, because it's not a subject they investigate.

  Stephen Hawking made that point in one of his recent Reith Lectures. God is only relevant to science if someone insists that their god interferes with scientific laws. And then they have to prove it.
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  37

  How the Internet is Destroying Mormonism

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  interesting video, shame it wasn't about jws.

  http://youtu.be/-1bdbkjbzzy.

  what a would be your top 5 shocking things you found out about jws on the internet?.

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  Mephis

  1, The scale of the child abuse. Not just the odd 'bad apple' I'd been told. Still makes my blood boil.

  2. The nature of judicial committees for sexual 'sins'. Compounded when it is a survivor of a serious crime being asked those questions. Deeply disgusting and shameful they do that to anyone.

  3. The number of people who trod the 607 path without knowing they weren't alone.

  4. The extent of the deceit required to write a sourced WBTS article. (eg the quotations in the Creation book).

  5. I'd not checked on JWs for a long time, so the difference between the religion I walked away from and the overtly culty 'listen, obey, be blessed' really shocked me.
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  23

  Your Favorite Poetry

  by compound complex in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thank you, dear friends, for expressing your thoughts today on the importance of the arts in your lives.

  many years ago, a number of threads were devoted to poetry, literature, even english grammar.

  rather than resurrect an old thread -- usually with zero results -- i would like to introduce a new post, asking you to add some of your favorite verse.

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  Mephis

  Couple of snippets I love.

  From Bukowski's How Is Your Heart?

  to awaken in a cheap room
  in a strange city and
  pull up the shade-
  this was the craziest kind of
  contentment
  
  and to walk across the floor
  to an old dresser with a
  cracked mirror-
  see myself, ugly,
  grinning at it all.
  what matters most is
  how well you
  walk through the
  fire.

  
  From Eliot's Little Gidding

  With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

  We shall not cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive where we started
  And know the place for the first time.
  Through the unknown, unremembered gate
  When the last of earth left to discover
  Is that which was the beginning;

  At the source of the longest river
  The voice of the hidden waterfall
  And the children in the apple-tree

  Not known, because not looked for
  But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
  Between two waves of the sea.
  Quick now, here, now, always--
  A condition of complete simplicity
  (Costing not less than everything)
  And all shall be well and
  All manner of thing shall be well
  When the tongues of flames are in-folded
  Into the crowned knot of fire
  And the fire and the rose are one.
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  28

  2016-1-12-BOE--Mentioning Donation Arrangement to Householder!

  by Atlantis in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2016-1-12-boe.

  "apply yourself to the field ministry," the "initial call" assignmentdirects the student to mention the donation arrangement..http://postimg.org/image/tayz8pawn/..atlantis!

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  Mephis

  I seem to remember it starting with not being able to charge for the mags any more too Freddo. Can anyone remember the phrase we were told to use? Something about 'without charge but not without cost', is that right?
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  28

  2016-1-12-BOE--Mentioning Donation Arrangement to Householder!

  by Atlantis in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2016-1-12-boe.

  "apply yourself to the field ministry," the "initial call" assignmentdirects the student to mention the donation arrangement..http://postimg.org/image/tayz8pawn/..atlantis!

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  Mephis

  They can't do door to door begging for money in Britain. That would be doubleplus bad mojo from all sorts of things. Like needing to sign up to a code of conduct, being held accountable as an organisation for when it goes wrong, all those little things which would make Brooklyn sad.
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  161

  Court denies summary judgement for Laurel Jehovah's Witnesses congregation

  by OrphanCrow in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  court denies summary judgement for laurel jehovah's witnesses congregation.

  a motion for summary judgement is denied in a case against the laurel congregation of jehovah's witnesses and some individuals over child abuse reporting issues.a lawyer for the congregation maintained that elders were exempted from reporting requirements under a state law because of clergy privilege and confidentiality.the case resulted from allegations that elders did not report an unlawful sexual relationship between a woman and a 14-year-old boy, both of whom were members of the jehovah's witnesses congregation.. download the court opinion here.

  http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?id=235880.

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  Mephis

  Well, yes and and no. Of course, judges can and should rule 'in the public interest'. I am not aware of any case in which a catholic priest (or a CofE priest) has ever been subpoenaed to give evidence of what occurred in a confession, and I would be interested to learn of the procedure which occassioned that. It would seem to me to be covered by PACE (excluded material).
  I note your comments that 'Judges don't tend to press that hard'. I'm not sure what you mean by 'the discretion under PACE'. I can tell you that the judges with which I dealt pressed hard, demanded evidenced and reasoned legal arguments, and issued orders/warrants that were never - never -overturned by higher courts.
  (This is a UK (E&W) perspective.) Judges don't try to 'persuade' people. They explain the options. You don't f@@k with the judge, ever.
  And here is a true story. I had a case (related to my post above about judges ordering bank information). The judge had ordered that material held by the bank (a national) must be produced to us (the police) in 7 days. It wasn't. The local, area, regional managers appeared before the judge to explain the failure. The judge ordered the CEO to appear - and advised that he bring a toothbrush. The material was provided.

  Well, it's a simple 'yes'. The case law for this is very well established. To put it exceptionally bluntly, "Communications made to a priest in the confessional on matters perhaps considered by the penitent to be more important even than his life or his fortune, are not protected" (Wheeler v Le Marchant (1881)). There's a load more, but that's where the case law is. Old. But not 1603 old like the Church of England legislation. We don't recognise the seal of the confessional as being sacrosanct in English law. When push comes to shove, we have had Catholic priests sent down for contempt, although I can't recall anything recent getting quite that far.

  By "press hard", we obviously don't see clergy being asked to reveal confessional secrets very often in Britain. You were under the impression that it couldn't happen, so it's clearly not a regular feature of British courts. And under PACE ( ss 76,78 & 82(3)) judges have discretion to exclude evidence if they so choose - hence discretion under PACE as I said. As the JWs found out in Newcastle, there's steel under the silk and discretion to exclude isn't always used.

  Hope that's clear enough of an explanation.