on a recent essay i posted here re: gilead, i made reference to the fact that a "mature" person from the jw/gb point of view is one who accepts without question the teachings of the governing body of jehovah's witnesses, whereas "immature" ones question the teachings of the gb.
i used this as a reference point concerning the gb's cynical use of the bible.
but it seems to have struck a chord.
In the days leading up to my departure, I gradually began arguing more strongly that the spiritually mature are more difficult to offend, while the immature take offense easily... in direct contrast to popular JW opinion, of course, since the pioneers, elder's wives, etc. are always the snootiest.
Suppose that was an early warning sign of the independent thinking that would eventually stumble me...
i can't view videos at work.. the radio is playing something by them called this night, i believe.. it is simply beautiful.. sylvia.
Sorry to be Grinchy, but I absolutely loathe TSO. Which is interesting because I enjoy both orchestral and rock music.
I'm willing to concede that my hatred for TSO is probably disproportional to their actual suckitude, due to overexposure.
the idea here is to say what movies you saw this year that sucked, were stupid or lame and also any scenes in a movie that also did this (like if it is a movie you liked, but you hated this scene).. movies i saw that sucked!.
ruins - killer ancient plant, with people killing each other and plant talking to them.
i was laughing, not scared.. the happening - this director seemed to want to just have an excuse to make a movie with some lame gore.
Worst movies I haven't seen:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button- Idiotic premise. Brad Pitt, you are no longer cool. Just go away and leave us alone, and take your brood of future rehab patients with you.
The Love Guru- Holy Crap. I saw a preview and immediately had to light some Tupperware on fire and huff the fumes until I forgot the previous two minutes. So I obviously can't pinpoint details but trust me, it's bad.
Don't Mess with the Zohan- What's with these pieces of marginally talented one-trick SNL detritus continuing to assault us? What have we done to deserve this? Oh yeah... we paid to see their last crappy movie... only got ourselves to blame.
X-Files 2- This is coming from someone who was actually a fan of the series and didn't think the first movie sucked as bad as most people thought: It's over.
Marley and Me- Oh, the dog is in the swimming pool. Look, the dog is running away. Ha, what a priceless comedic moment. You know what's funny about that is it's true. Dogs are so often unintentionally humorous simply being themselves. And just imagining the noses on the children that Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston will produce is worth the price of admission... if we're talking about a two-bit freakshow.
i have updated the information at http://www.jwfacts.com/index_files/statistics.htm to include the 2008 figures.
here are a couple of the more interesting charts.. the following shows the increase in memorial partakers, which has been discussed at length in other threads.. .
the following two are my favourites.
When considering the number baptized as opposed to the net gain in publishers, be sure to factor in a death rate... this will have a significant impact on your "number missing" graph.
According to statements made by the Society in the past, I estimate a 1% Disfellowshipping rate per year. Of course, not all DFed ones were counted as publishers, some were inactive. But after subtracting deaths and DFs from the "number missing" I get a column I call "Estimated new inactive," a guess at how many people who were counted as pubs last year are no longer counted, not due to death or DFing.
Here is another interesting thing to chart if you want to see graphically how ineffective the preaching work has become: Plot a time series of baptisms, Hours (in thousands for a better scale), Bible Studies, and Pioneers. You'll see that while Hours, pioneers, and Studies increase, baptisms remain unaffected. Plot at least the last 40 years for best effect.
i have to admit that i love being allowed to swear .
damn!.
/bad newborn.
The best swears implicate holy forces... they're more offensive and sound more serious. Like "Jesus t***yf**king Christ" or "God f**k your soul," stuff like that.
All swears, though, have to be used judiciously or they lose all impact and just become annoying mannerisms.
these are photos of the felixstowe kingdom hall in suffolk , england , after it received some free decorations from an anonymous group calling themselves the johoho project.
it is thought that the group limit their activities to felixstowe at the moment although other cells throughout the country are thought to be lying dormant.
the police are recording it as a religious hate crime (which tells you more about our crazy government than it does about jws)..
Looking for the hatred... not finding it...
Is the term "prank" considered outdated?
or was i dreamin it?.
heard a bit about this on npr... seems the uaw wont play ball with the congress on this bailout plan and now the whole deal is dead in the water (again).. is there an echo or did i mention 'entitlement" and something about a "poor excuse for a labor union" about the uaw before?.
hill.
It's simply mind-boggling that a company can sell a couple million cars in a year and lose so much money.
How crappy does management have to be for the company to thrive if it sells 3 million, but go bankrupt if it's only 2 million?
i think there is no god or satan or ghosts or ufo's....but....my sub-consciuos mind is so messed up by witnesses if i hear a bump in the night i need to investigate....in the back of my mind i fear demons more then a burgular!
it so weird, it was drummed into me all my life, it still freaks me even though logically i know it's not at all real.
i have a bad dream and jump up to check the house....how's that for a 37 year old 6 foot 4 man?
Demons primarily haunt JWs, to drive them away from Jehoover.
As an apostate, your supernatural problems are likely being caused by faithful angels.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution. Read Crisis of Conscience aloud and they will leave you alone.
Also, hang up some wind chimes. Angels hate wind chimes due to their pagan origins.
someone just sent me a link to the 2008 annual report.. haven't read it yet.
randy .
http://www.4shared.com/file/75568905/6c852737/2008_annual_report.html.
Can someone work out how long, on average, it took to make one convert in 2008?
I've got it all set up in Excel... all I have to do is plug in the numbers every year. 5,139 preaching hours per baptism, up from 4,800 last year. To put it in perspective, the most effective preaching was done in 1951 when only 995 hours would garner one baptism. In the near-hysteria of 1974 it took just 1,246 hours. In the disappointment that followed, nonresponsiveness was at an all-time high... 1978 required 3,233 hours per baptism. While this year's figures underscore the ineffectiveness of the JW's preaching, we did not beat out the record set in 2006 of 5,372 hours per baptism. Another interesting ratio to observe is the Bible Studies per baptism. Back in 1949 the Witnesses had one baptism per 3.9 studies-- an excellent closing ratio. Now it's one per 24.6. Interestingly, we see the continuation of a four-year uptrend in the mean number of hours per publisher-- 218 hours per year, up from 200 per year in 2005. The all-time high was 238.9 in 1992, and the low was 147.3 in 1978 (a dismal year for the WT by any standard). 2008 marks the third consecutive year the memorial partakers have increased at a greater rate than the non-partakers. Apostates worldwide snicker. Worldwide, there were 8,626 fewer baptisms than last year. This despite spending over 50 million more hours in preaching than last year. While the numbers show a net gain of 2.1% in publishers, that's down from 3.1% last year... a difference of over 62,000 people. Conclusions? Growth continues at roughly the same pace, but a number of indicators imply that growth is getting harder to come by and may slow severely very soon. The most strikingly obvious fact is the shocking inefficiency of the preaching work which amazingly gets even less effective each year. I just got a new more advanced statistical program... I'll have to play around with that and see if any revelations jump out.
someone just sent me a link to the 2008 annual report.. haven't read it yet.
randy .
http://www.4shared.com/file/75568905/6c852737/2008_annual_report.html.
9,986 partakers after 9,105 last year? That's the biggest single-year increase since... well, ever.
I bet they didn't even report all of them, trying to keep in under 10,000.
