Posts by myauntfanny

56

Any science fiction freaks?

by myauntfanny in

jw
friends

does anyone on here like science fiction?

i've read everything by all my favourite writers and am looking for some new ones.

any recommendations?

myauntfanny

Countrywoman

I hate Ballard too. Could I get a first name on Schmitt? Thanks.

44

Why JW Enemies Will Fail? - A Consultant's Analysis

by reason in

as an it business consultant, i always use michael porter's competetive forces model to assess whether a firm's e-business strategy will give them a competitive advantage against competitor's.. the competitive forces model identifies five forces in the industry that a firm needs to contend with to become successful.

these forces are the:.

1) bargaining power of customers.

myauntfanny

Bargaining power of customers (the members)The 'switching cost' is to high. If a member leaves the WTS, he/she will suffer from being disfellowshiped and loose friends and family.

Not a very clever marketing strategy really. "Buy our brand or we'll make your life miserable". Bound to alienate a lot of customers.

Bargaining power of suppliers (the apostates and other denominations)
The apostates don't really have a tangible product to substitute the WTS product. All they can do is try to prove the WTS is wrong, that's about it.

This assumes that people have to have some organised religion, like they have to have some brand of toilet paper. But they don't. You don't need to offer a better brand of cigarette when you're trying to convince someone to quit smoking.

New entrants into the market
There are no new religions around to match the WTS product.

See above.

Substitute products and services
Substitutes products (hellfire, immortality of the soul, trinity). JWs have learned to reject these doctrines. It is hard to deprogram them to embrace it again.

It doesn't automatically follow that leaving JWs means embracing these beliefs.

Existing competitors
Roman Catholic Church, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Salvation Army. JWs are programmed to view them as false religions. It is hard to deprogram them to embrace it again.

There are many, many other competitors besides these. Along with the dozens of brands of Christianity, there's all the Eastern religions, the revived earth-based religions, and of course, there's the start-your-own option. It's like the cookie section at the grocery store, you're bound to find something you like. And if you don't, you can go home and make your own.

OTHER FACTORS

Marketing
Zealous evangelizing of the JWs will only enable them to recuit more members as time goes by.

This is optimistic. 8000 cold calls leads to 1 bible study. In all my childhood as a JW, 15 years, my mother who went out in service every saturday achieved one bible study, and that was with a woman who was mentally disabled, abused by her husband and so desperately lonely that she'd have agreed to anything in return for a little kindness. She was never baptised, and when we moved, she stopped studying, since nobody else in the congregation wanted anything to do with her. My mother, by the way, is an extremely charming and persuasive woman, and if she had only taken up selling real estate or cars she'd probably have done quite well. But it's hard to sell a product people have little use for.

Medicine on their side
For the blood issue, alternatives are coming up and the field of medicine is now buying the idea of bloodless surgery.

Catchy slogan: "Buy our product and you won't have to watch your children die after an accident."

Past mistakes of interpretation
The JW GB are now vocal in their admission of the past mistakes they did. After all, they are only humans.

I don't know how vocal they are. Plenty of people still think the UN involvement is a lie, don't know who Bill Bowen and Barb Anderson are or what they were disfellowshipped for, don't know that blood transfusions have been allowed in Bulgaria for some time, don't know that there is a grave injustice in the treatment of party cards in Malawi compared to Mexico, don't know about the compromising letter that the German JW leadership wrote to the Nazi party during Hitler's rise to power. Have there been any apologies to those who's loved ones died before there was new light on transplants? To those who had to go to jail before there was new light on community service during the draft? To those who were disfellowshipped for being raped? To those sexually abused children whose elders told them to keep quiet about it? I haven't heard about it if there were such apologies.

Management styleAs the management is changing and getting younger in terms of age, old 'beaucratic traditional culture' is slowly changing to a more relax management style.

That's got to help. But when you come down to it the JW product is the promise of protection when Armageddon comes, which includes a sense of superiority because god loves them and nobody else, the conviction that everyone who disagrees with them will die soon, and lots and lots of rules to follow. That's just exactly what suits some people, but I don't think there will ever be a mass market for it.

56

Any science fiction freaks?

by myauntfanny in

jw
friends

does anyone on here like science fiction?

i've read everything by all my favourite writers and am looking for some new ones.

any recommendations?

myauntfanny

City Fan

Read 'em all! Really sad when I finished the last one.

31

Whats happening in America's colleges?

by Brummie in

jw
friends

i'm no way anti usa as some here have the custom ;) but can anyone explain the reason for this new book?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?article_id=38512.

if you have been to university would you agree with this author?.

myauntfanny

I should add that I've never heard any professional academic, no matter how radically feminist, claim that "studies have proven" that marriage is a form of oppression.

I have, we had a radfem lesbian separatist philosophy TA and she was mad as a box of frogs, kept insisting that we all ought to be gay whether we felt like or not. But who cares, really? We all laughed at her. We had a mathematics teacher, super nice guy, who told us all that if we wanted to join the student strike it wouldn't affect our grades. He really wanted us to strike, but mathematics students are generally far too obssessive to miss a class, and we all came in that day. He was very disappointed in us, but nobody cared. College students are adults, after all, and don't take any more notice of their teachers than they want to. I notice that this "author" is 20 years old. Basically he wants to go to college and hear only what he hears at home. Why doesn't the guy just buy a degree off the Internet, and avoid all differences of opinion? And he could hardly sound any more JW if he was an elder. Okay, the topic is liberals and not Satan, but otherwise, the resemblance is eerie.

18

I Threw Out My NWT Today.... I am officially a cult free household.

by shamus in

jw
friends

did you throw your trash out?

how long did you keep it?

stupidly, i felt awful about fading, and went through my huge collection of bound crap, making sure that my name was nowhere on the cult material, and dropped off three large boxes at the kingdumb hall one night.

myauntfanny

If you are prepared to pay for the shipping to us, let us know what you have by email.

The unbelievable nerve of those people! "You've drained your lifeblood buying and peddling these things for us, now please pay to give it back to us. "

56

Any science fiction freaks?

by myauntfanny in

jw
friends

does anyone on here like science fiction?

i've read everything by all my favourite writers and am looking for some new ones.

any recommendations?

myauntfanny

Gentlyferal

I do love some of Sherri Tepper's books and hate others. There are some other authors on your list I haven't heard of, so thank you. I don't subscribe to Fantasy and Science Fiction because I really dislike short stories. Just when I start to get involved, it's all over, that drives me crazy.

56

Any science fiction freaks?

by myauntfanny in

jw
friends

does anyone on here like science fiction?

i've read everything by all my favourite writers and am looking for some new ones.

any recommendations?

myauntfanny

You guys are fantastic, thank you! There are no English bookstores for me to browse in now, the English sections in most Berlin bookstores are miniscule and mostly full of tourist rubbish. And browsing on Amazon doesn't work that well, really. I'm going to make up a big list out of all these suggestions and get started.

Valis

I read Valis! Philip Dick is a genius, no doubt about it. I really liked the one they just made into the movie with Tom Cruise, can't remember the name. But his books do tend to give me a headache. It's like there's one crucial thing you need to know to understand what's really going on, and he never tells you what it is.

94

MEN ONLY- Freezing up at the Urinal!

by Funchback in

jw
friends

women are invited to read this but they most certainly won't be able to relate.

i know there have to be a lot of men out there who can't pee while in a crowded public restroom (bathroom).

personally, the more people who surround me while i'm standing at the urinal, the more difficult it is for me to pee.

myauntfanny

frankie

My aunts uses to rub their faces with urine from their babies diapers for it supposed complextion benifits.

Did they have good complexions? I'm really curious. gotmyforty

Is it OK to drink pee? Even if its your own?

There's a book on the health benefits of drinking urine, I saw it in a health food shop. I have an acquaintance who says he has done it for years. If he's telling the truth (and I'm not sure why someone would lie about that), it obviously hasn't killed him, anyway. But...bleccchhh.

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