St Peter's Basilica was built between 1506 and 1626. Construction began on the Ulm Minster (tallest church spire in the world) in 1377, when it halted 1543 the spire was 330 feet high. The most famous portion of the Great Wall of China was built around 200 BC. The technology available for these projects (human and animal power, wedges, levers, pulley's etc) was not a lot different from what was available to the Egyptians.
Posts by JeffT
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41Question for people more intelligent than me
by Monsieur indo we have concrete evidence of how the pyramids at giza were built?.
or is this still an unexplained 'mystery'?.
i've read that the stones used to build these things are monolithic?.
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30
Tea
by Hortensia ini was raised on lipton tea.
my mother saw tea as the solution for everything.
no matter what the problem, she'd suggest a cup of tea.
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JeffT
About forty years ago I tried (and failed) to explain varietal black tea to people who had no idea what I was talking about. Most of the time I drink loose English Breakfast (as an English friend said, "tea should not be wrapped in toilet paper). But there are a number of others I like, Keemun comes to mind immediately. I use sugar but not milk.
Lipton is bland, rather like American beer after you've learned to like German beer.
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40
Scratch a Christian and see the Intolerance under the Skin
by fulltimestudent ina bishop of the apostolic church (grandiose title, isn't it?
) in the cook islands, wants to ban local indians who are hindu's from celebrating their diwali festival.. he claims its blasphemy against the christian god, and that because the cooks islands is a christian country, no other form of worship should be permitted.. gotta love your average christian, don't you?
if they are banned or persecuted, they scream their heads off, but as soon as they control things they want to ban any alternative worship.. cooks bishop condemns diwali celebration as blasphemyupdated 15 november 2013, 14:52 aest.
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JeffT
A Bishop of the Apostolic church (grandiose title, isn't it?) in the Cook Islands,
Damn, you're on to us! We all got together and elected this guy supreme leader of all Christians everywhere. You weren't supposed to figure it out. A guess we'll have to go with the runner up, I think he's the Grand Vizier of Transnistria.
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58
Home schooled witness kids
by stillin insorry if i'm stepping on any toes here, but i haven't seen anything positive about home-schooling...at all.
the notion is that parents are taking advantage of the formative years to inculcate more worthwhile values while protecting their kids from worldly influences.
they end up with lazy, socially inept, illiterate duds who haven't a clue.
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JeffT
Technically, we are homeschooling our granddaughter. Three days a week she goes to a home shcool support program, the other two days she is enrolled in other programs. The "school" has about 75 students and 15 or twenty teachers, a number of them are specialists (math, science etc) that come in part time. I think all of them have Master's degrees. It uses some really innovative teaching methods and requires a high degree of commitment from the parents. It has proven to be a terrific program for her.
That's great, but where do you find a Kingdom Hall with twenty Master's degree grads? For that matter I've never been in a KH more than one or two random members had college degrees. I do not see how these people can possibly educate their children, and their social growth will be completely stunted.
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2
19 November 1863 - 150 Years Ago Today - A Different Point of View
by kepler infrom the standpoint of funeral orations, my school's literature department had to wait nearly 2500 years for the next great oration after that of pericles.
it's a short speech that has generated many more words of philosophical interpretation, even re-molded a country that was being torn apart.
never mind that it is about someone's particular country.
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JeffT
Lincoln's dedication speech was a minor event in the planned schedual. The big draw of the day was Edward Everett, generally regarded as the greatest speaker of the time. He gave a two hour oration - which is now all but forgotten. The President's remarks took about two minutes. Lincoln himself thought his speech a failure at the time.
We can only wish that today's politicians could say that much in that amount of time.
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178
Honest survey question on effectiveness of 'apostacy'
by Simon init seems like lots of people have big dreams of 'destroying the watchtower'.
it's usually linked to a story of how they were wronged and want some revenge.
do these 'in your face' attempts to convince people that the truth isn't the truth really have an effect?.
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JeffT
I agree Simon, people don't start really looking into it until the questions start in their own minds. Until then, the wild talk only feeds the persecution complex. But making information available to the public can help them understand what's going on. I'm trying to expand my investigation into other cults, because they all share so many common traits.
As far as those who want to "bring down the Watchtower" I have an inner fear that if the WTBS collapsed tomorrow, most of its adherents would simply go find somebody else to tell them how to live.
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17
WOW-crazy day at work. Congrats to me???
by TweetieBird insharing my wild day at work today because it is 1am and i can't sleep.. i am an assistant manager at an apartment community.
the manager has been a complete nightmare (bipolar and incompetent) so the last 10 months have been challenging to say the least.
got to work this morning and our regional was already there which was a little strange but half expected due to something that happened last week.
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JeffT
How big is the project you're managing? Bigger complexes are always easier to run, because you can afford more people to do the work.
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24
Do you think Born Agains are tired of waiting for the "Rapture"?
by booker-t inmy heart goes out to born agains that are still waiting for the rapture and jesus taking them to heaven.
they are no different then jws waiting for armaggeddon.
how much time must goes by before both groups say "enough is enough"?
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JeffT
I used to go to an evengelical church where most members believed in the rapture. The difference between most JW's and most believers in the rapture is that the mainstream Christians continue to live there lives on the assumption that they will be here a while. I've never known an evangelical to sell their house or cash in their life insurance because the rapture was going to be so soon. Our church made (happy) announcements when children were accepted into college. Yet almost all of these people would tell you that the rapture could occur at any time.
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25
What have Jehovah's Witnesses copied from the Mormons
by konceptual99 inhave jws pinched anything other than family worship from the mormons?.
could we see jws implement a type of meeting structure similar to the mormons to try and engage different ages in different ways?.
could we ever see a jw feel free to do anything like...?.
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JeffT
I think it is very useful to find common problems associated with various cults.
One thing the Mormons do very well is encourage their members to be educated and engaged members of their community. This is something the WTBS will never do.
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82
Have you ever had a hallucination? What was it like?
by Nathan Natas ini have almost never had a visual hallucination and i was wondering what they're like.
how "real" do they seem?
is there any kind of a hint you get that tells you they are not real?
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JeffT
Are asking with or without chemical involvement? I saw all sorts of things while on LSD, I think I knew I was seeing things, but there was so much going on mentally it's hard to know. Not an experience I want to repeat, but I'm a lot older now.