Posts by JeffT

10

Internet Search Engines And Some Of The First Things I Typed

by Brokeback Watchtower in

it was back in mid nineties 93,94 or 95 before it became what it is today.

anyway they had a bunch of search engines and the first thing i typed in it was jehovah witness, then jesus christ, next came lsd, magic mushrooms, nude pictures.

i think in that relative order.. i remember reading a different story about jws in germany during the nazi era, not anything like the 74 yearbook's depiction.

JeffT

Call me a curmudgeonly old git if you like but it does seem like so many folk want to be 'spoon fed' their apostasy these days.
I'm liable to call you a lot worse than that. When my wife and I left in 1988, would had to do all our research at the public library. Talk about the opposite of spoon fed. We had to read entire books to get the information we needed. And that was after walking barefoot through the snow to get there. It was up hill both ways.
How's that for being an old curmudgeon? Now get off my lawn.
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21

A crisis of scientific reproducability

by Outahere in

https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970.

more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.

i didn't know it was so widespread...but it's a big problem in biology/medicine..

I grew up around scientific research. My father was an award winning cancer researcher, I did some low-level lab work for him, and later worked for the college of Pharmacy at Washington State University. The fact that something can't be reproduced doesn't mean the work was done wrong, or that the results are incorrect. New information is frequently discovered because different researchers get different results.

Here's a good example (I worked for a professor involved with this when I was at WSU). In the 1970's the big alternate medicine for cancer was laetrile, also called Vitamin B-17. It was made by a processing fruit pits, usually peaches. It was not approved in the US, there were a lot of clinics selling it in Mexico. (I knew some JW's that went there for treatments, they died.) The FDA was never able to reproduce the results some researchers claimed. What they eventually found was the the biochemistry of fruits from different places varied. Make laetrile from a peach grown in Walla Walla and you got a different chemical compound than you would from one grown in Yakima.

There wasn't any problem with that the scientists did, they working working with different materials. And since there was no established chemical definition of "laetrile" the results were never reproducible.

43

Falcon Heavy

by Coded Logic in

the falcon heavy is set to launch today.

if successful, it will become the most powerful rocket in use (twice as powerful as the delta heavy).. as it's the very first attempt, elon musk has said he thinks there's a 50/50 chance of it not blowing up.

so should be interesting.

JeffT

Simon, most of what we now know about the Earth came to us via the space program. Without the ability to collect data from all over the world at once, and then analyze it, we would not even know climate change was taking place. If you want to take better care of the planet, invest in the space program. Right now we only have one data point for our understanding of how planets work. We need to get other places to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

16

New Loophole Created: You can cheat on your spouse without him/her being able to divorce you

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

the new "pillowgate" video exposed a loophole in the witnesses´s thinking, showing how dangerous and stupid legalism is.. this loophole is sure to destroy many people´s lives.. 1) they said that two men masturbating at the same time in front of each other does not constitute "porneia".. 2) "porneia" is the only biblical reason for divorce.. 3) from 1) we can also get two women masturbating in front of each other, or a man and a woman masturbating in front of each other, does not constitute "porneia".4) most people would consider masturbating at the same time with another person to be cheating, and a logical reason for divorce.. so this will lead to many witnesses going to the elders and being told that they cannot divorce this person who clearly cheated on them.

then, if this person (the "innocent mate") divorces and marries someone else, then that person would be the one possibly disfellowshipped!the implications of the loophole are so stupid and so damaging!i predict another flip-flop.

"considering things more closely, this is "porneia"... or doubling down on it ("sorry but that is what the biblical limits are") or just fading away into those things that only 1% of jw´s know it´s a rule....

JeffT

In Crisis of Conscience, Ray Franz relates the case of a woman who couldn't divorce her husband even though he'd had sex with an animal. That also was not "pornea."

3

Writing a story

by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

i was listening to the audiobook of the silmarillion at work awhile ago and noted that the 'creation story' basically included, god, the devil, angels and even a special people (elves).

(btw gandalf is obviously a jesus-like figure).

i got to thinking that much of the prose of the bible could easily be reworded.. after all bibles like the world english bible are copyright free.

JeffT

Thomas Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the Gospels and cut out all references to God. He ended up with a (slim) book of what he considered advice for living a good life.

53

Which is better minimum wage or minimum income?

by hoser in

jw
friends

we were having this discussion in the office the other day and we came to the conclusion minimum wage is better because it still adds to the economy vs minimum income which someone could potentially stay at home and do nothing and still get paid without producing a thing for the greater economy.. thoughts?.

JeffT

The big burger chains are exploring and/or making trial runs with automating a lot of their jobs. The cooking will be done by robots and cashiers will be replaced by machines where you punch in your order and pay for it without human intervention. Essentially they just turn the cash registers around. The only humans left will be one person to hand you you order, and another to mop the floor.

These used to be the jobs where high school students started out, learning basics skills like showing up for work on time and not pissing off the customers (or the boss). I don't know what all these kids will do in the future.

This is one reason why I don't like raising the minimum wage. Part of your pay is learning those basic skills. Nobody wants to pay somebody who doesn't know what they're doing $20/hr to do it. After you've proven yourself, you move on to a better job.

53

Which is better minimum wage or minimum income?

by hoser in

jw
friends

we were having this discussion in the office the other day and we came to the conclusion minimum wage is better because it still adds to the economy vs minimum income which someone could potentially stay at home and do nothing and still get paid without producing a thing for the greater economy.. thoughts?.

JeffT

It's interesting to watch people support higher wages on one thread, and argue for importing cheap labor on another thread. You apparently don't notice (or don't want to notice) that people who employ illegal labor don't pay much attention to labor laws.

24

Come on, Mainstream Media!

by Wild_Thing in

jw
friends

it has been sickening to read the most recently leaked documents by faithleaks.

it makes me so angry because so many of us have experienced first hand the horrible policies of the watchtower on abuse.

i feel like these documents are finally the smoking gun we have all been hoping to expose the watchtower, and so far, the only mainstream news that i have seen pick it up is newsweek.. what will it take for the mainstream media pick this up and give it the attention it deserves?

JeffT

You have to keep in mind what drives the media, like everyone else, it's money. The question reporters ask is not "is this an important story?" It's "will this story attract viewers/readers?" In the case of JW's the answers to those questions are "maybe" and "not many." So we get a story here or there because it will interest a few people, I don't think the media will ever go into full blown coverage of JW issues for a simple reason: if you ask a large number of people if they care about Jehovah's Witnesses and what they do, the answer will be "no."

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