Posts by doofdaddy

Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel--they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

Blake

40

is it wrong to pray to die

by needhelp101 in

doofdaddy

In my long personal and professional life, I have experienced numerous people suiciding. I have no fear in confronting the issue. You don't want professional help but will post on a nonrelated site? You "believe" you may have depression? Get a grip. Cutting yourself is a massive gap to killing yourself.

You want change rather than death.

Guess who can make the change? You may call this judgement but I will call it responsibility.

44

Wow, this bit of info surprised even me!!!

by LeKook in

i just spoke to a witness friend (has been a witness 25+ years), who said that the elders in her congregation told her that witnesses had better be prepared to begin going door to door, not to announce "good news", but to denounce people who refuse to accept "the trvth".

has anyone else heard about this?

i thought it was a joke at first, but she said no, that's where the elders told her things were headed.

doofdaddy

If they come to my door and declare this, I will happily tell them to GROW UP!! Despite all the media angst, life has never been longer or better...

56

Urinary Tract Infection=proof of premarital sex

by rebel8 in

jw
friends

in the twisted jw world, that is..... http://cultprevention.blogspot.com/2011/08/ah-memories.html.

doofdaddy

god works in mysterious ways....

It's almost a Monty Python skit if wasn't so dangerous

31

WHY IT'S TIME TO LEAVE THE UK !

by Hairyhegoat in

jw
friends

these comments are the reason why my family are leaving the uk, the comments are not mine but give a insight to what a dump the uk has become... i'm a 22 year old male and left the uk at 21 to live in australia and again like many people have said on here.

it is one of the best things i could have done.

the pay in the uk is disgusting.. the average pay here for a very average job is $20 an hour that is 12 an hour, thats just for stacking shelves at supermarkets.

doofdaddy

My friends sister lives in Western Australia and she runs a gardening company. She is offering $50 an hr to cut grass and she can't get workers as the iron ore mines are paying three times that amount. It is like the gold rush era of the eighteen fifties, why work for poor wages when you can earn unlimited amounts elsewhere...?

102

How do you make a living?

by paulnotsaul in

jw
friends

since most of us believed it was right around the corner, how many of you went to any secondary schools or training?

what do you do now to survive?

are you working or unemployed?

doofdaddy

I've made surfboards, been a stonemason (13yrs), concreter, brickie but did my back, so off to college for a diploma in Social Science (as I was leaving jws). That was 15yrs ago and I am currently case managing homeless teenagers...

23

WT says oldest portion of Bible predates all other religious writings.

by InterestedOne in

in the book mankind's search for god, the wt says the following:.

the oldest portion of the bible predates all of the world's other religious writings.

- chapter 1, paragraph 27.. .

doofdaddy

How Old is Australia's Rock Art?

Australian rock art shows some of the oldest-known artistic images by modern humans. However, there are considerable technical difficulties and uncertainties in dating rock art which make it difficult to determine the age of Australia's earliest rock art.

Australian rock art, while extensive and in places of great age, is nevertheless not the oldest in the world. Both rock art and portable palaeoart were made long before Australia was apparently first settled. The oldest currently known rock art is in India, at such sites as Auditorium Cave and Daraki-Chattan, but similar Acheulian rock art is believed to exist in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.

Arrival of humans in Australia

Archaeological evidence suggests that humans first arrived in Australia between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago. Northern Australia is the most likely place for people to have travelled from south east Asia across the land bridges then sailed across the ocean gaps to northern Australia. Archaeologists have now discovered early occupation sites at the three most probable entry areas - the Kimberley, Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula.

In northern Australia there are numerous sandstone rock-shelters. Many of these have been used for camping and their floors are layered with charcoal and ash from camp fires, the remains of food such as shells and animal bones, stone tools and, very often, pieces of ochre. Ochre comes from soft varieties of iron oxide minerals (such as haematite - a fine-grained iron oxide which produces a strong red colour with a purple tint) and from rocks containing ferric oxide.

Nauwalabila rock shelter
Nauwalabila shelter in Kakadu National park, Arnhem Land

Stone tools and ochre are the toughest of this camping debris. Their appearance in the layers of material on the floor of the shelter is usually interpreted as the beginning of occupation at the shelter. Charcoal may or may not have survived in the lower layers of a site, depending on local preservation conditions, and other organic material tends to survive in only the youngest part of the deposit, spanning at the most a few thousand years.

How do we estimate the age of Australian rock art?

The best way to establish the age of rock art is to date the art directly (such as by dating a sample of the paint or pigment used) or indirectly (for example to obtain a minimum age for the art work by dating something that lies on top of the art - say a mud wasp's nest or a natural chemical coating - or lies in a layer of material with objects or matter that can be dated). In the case of rock painting in Australia, dates have been obtained for pigment directly on the walls and for painted fragments buried in deposits of campsite material. For an interesting discussion of issues to do with dating Arnhem Land rock art, see the article by Chippindale and Tacon.

Techniques for dating have usually involved radio-carbon dating of material associated with the art, but there are also newer techniques now available including optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). These are described in the page on Dating Rock Art by Robert Bednarik. Radiocarbon dating is limited to a maximum age of around 40 000 years, and the newer techniques are required for dating of older materials. AMS is a new radiocarbon dating method enabling the dating of much smaller samples of carbon than the traditional radiocarbon (C-14) method.

What are the Earliest Dates for Australian Rock Art?

Ochre is the main pigment used in rock art and is plentiful across most of Australia. Pieces of ochre, including some showing signs of wear through use, have been found in almost all of Australia's ice-age sites. Most have been radiocarbon dated and the dates range from 10 000 to 40 000 years.

Does the use of ochre necessarily imply painting? As well as rock art, ochre has many other uses in modern Aboriginal ceremony, and is repeatedly found in association with burial not only in Australia but also in other parts of the world. In Arnhem Land, there is no certainty either that ochre was used for painting from the beginning; or that painting with ochre was on rock surfaces (rather than on perishable subjects); or that the first paintings on rock are amongst the ones that survive. However, the hardness of much of the ochre found in deposits strongly suggests that it was used on rock or other hard surfaces and the pattern of wear is totally consistent with use of the ochre in art.

The oldest dates so far found by direct dating of art were obtained by geologist Alan Watchman for layers of pigment in two rock-shelters on Cape York in north Queensland, one of 25 000 years and one of almost 30000 years.

There is, however, indirect evidence going back a lot further, leading some archaeologists to argue that the rock art galleries in northern Australia are some of the oldest in the world by modern humans. This is, of course, a contentious area, with recent claims for dates in southern France and northern Italy going back as far as 35 000 years.

15

What's the first thing you did when you got out?

by fallen_princess in

i was thinking about all the things i missed out on growing up as a jw.

many of those things i will never be able to do anyway, like join in any extracurriular activities or go to senior prom.

but one of the first things i did when i got out if the borg was join a ballroom dance class and go to a nightclub with some of the students in the class.

doofdaddy

I did a rush "catch up" for 20 lost years. New designer drugs? Yup, I'll give it a go. Hanging out with twenty something women? That sounds good. Travelling? OK. Clubbing? Spent many a night under the lasers, going deaf fast. Took about five years to get back to myself. All great experiences, even if some seemed negative at the time.