i'm trying to come up with ideas for a halloween costume!
the kids have already decided.
my 4 yr old told my wife "don't let daddy be the cow this year, he was so silly..." so my cow costume from last year is out!.
I'm still waiting for Brookie to come up with a costume for me. HEAR THAT BROOKIE???You have a broom, don't you?
Oh SNAP!
I'll be in Orlando this year during Halloween. I need some ideas for a costume seeing this will be the first year of my life mixing it up with a bunch of devil worshippers.
back when i was attending kingdom halls, our circuit had a lot of 'drop dead gorgeous' women, many whom were married to the geekiest looking guys.
i always asked myself, "how did these 'dorks' do it"!.
was this because selection was limited, or was this just a peculiarity in our area?
but every single one was with a short legged barrel chested gut hanging stumpy guy!
In those cases, you would need to look at his bank statement to understand... His car might be a giveaway too.
if you've ever studied authoritarian regimes, you may understand that since access to honest truth is carefully rationed,.
all sorts of "reasons" for doing things may appear, that take the place of hard fact.
even worse, the leadership may .
Something that was written a while ago(prior to Awake cutback announcement):
To get a grasp on where the organization is heading, you first must put on your corporate thinking cap. Afterall, the WTBTS is simply a book and magazine publishing corporation.
If I were the CEO, I would first look at the numbers provided from years past and how it compares to the most recent data released. In industrialized nations, there appears to be negative or no growth, ACROSS THE BOARD. In 3rd world countries and also others known for not having easy informative access such as the internet, positive growth is a little more apparent. Less people coming in and more going out generally means declining revenues. Since the industrialized nations most likely carry other poorer countries in terms of revenue producing income, and without seeing individual country dollar figures, this area could be considered a wash.
So where does the money come in from? The largest portion comes in the form of direct donations from the publishers. The next major portion would probably be from donations to cover the costs of the literature. Wills, trusts, stocks, bonds, and real estate are nearer at the end I'm guessing. If my company's profits are beginning to trend downward, I need to attack that area, or areas, of declining revenue. What is causing it? I think we can all agree that "an informed witness is an ex-witness." The internet is wreaking havoc on the WTBTS. Too much sensitive and damaging information is getting into the hands of the R&F witness in the privacy of their own home. As the CEO, I know that I cannot put an outright ban on witnesses going on the web. The web is ubiquitous these days and is used extensively for business purposes. Many witnesses would rebel against a ban as more and more of them are getting computers and finding them very useful in everyday activities. If I cannot stop witnesses from getting on the web, reading about my corporation's twisted past and then leaving because I misrepresented my company, then I need to find other areas to trim back to stop or slow the lost revenue.
Where would I look to slow this revenue drop? The actual printing itself is one major area. If it takes 1,000 hours to produce one convert(increase that time for children of witness parents being baptized), then how many magazines are handed out without asking for a donation for every convert? Our company has already pounded and pounded the idea of the donation arrangement into every service meeting - at least the publishers are supposed to ask for a donation in their demonstrations. Should we cut back on the magazine distribution timeframe? How about combine the WT and Awake into one magazine? Instead of twice a month, how about just once? This alone would cut expenditures on printed materials by almost 50-75%. And the books? Well, we already did away with hardcover and we also cut the physical size of most books to roughly 50% of the older larger ones. Can we take advantage of electronic distribution? Would some witnesses prefer to print out Adobe PDF files of the magazines? Instead of offering the WT and Awakes at the doors, why not switch to using just tracts? Save the magazines for studies and witnesses themselves. Tracts would cost less to produce and effectively carry the same message as the magazines.
These are just a few ways to cut back on expenditures. Of course, we would need to mask these changes as being for the better good and to also show a progressive proactive stance so that the witnesses do not become disheartened as to the lack of spiritual food that they were once accustomed to getting. We can use words like: compressed, simple, cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and others that show we are trying to fit as much spiritual food as we can into one magazine without wasting the paper it is written on. If we see that donations continue to trend downwards, disfellowshippings must occur. We must always keep the fear of our God-given authority firmly entrenched into their minds. If they feel that they do not want to help towards to worldwide work, then they can leave. A non-donating witness is the same as a worldly person in our eyes. Dead money.
Ok, so the last part may not happen, but the rest very well could.
And another {guess} topic:
I honestly cannot see the WT surviving without incorporating some of the above recommendations. They seem to be trying very hard to operate strictly in a brick & mortar mode. As is the case with many companies today, if you do not have an online presence and your primary revenue generator is sales of goods, you won't last long. The WTS will have to include online "sales" of their literature. Not "sales" in the traditional sense, but getting their money without having to print a page. And this is another area I would be wary of. If your average publisher prints out or downloads his private study literature, will he feel oligated to donate for it since he paid for the paper and internet access?
The WTS is running out of options, and fast. With the 100 year anniversary of 1914 approaching, things are not looking too good. And that's good for us!
if you've ever studied authoritarian regimes, you may understand that since access to honest truth is carefully rationed,.
all sorts of "reasons" for doing things may appear, that take the place of hard fact.
even worse, the leadership may .
As for the internet and associated apostasy, I repeat , I think it's a minor irritation in relative terms. Why do I saythis? Because of the pitiful lack of response to the challenge it presents!
I think you're a little off here and I'll tell ya why...
Once a jw reads up on the WTS via the internet, one of two things happens - They either go into full defense mode or they begin having serious doubts. There's no way to actually pinpoint what that ratio would be, but I would go out on a limb and say it might be 50-50. The influence of the internet does in fact relate to their cash flow. How? I'll use myself as an example. Prior to finding out the truth about the truth, I was a regular contributor. Once I began my apologist defenses on H2O and read many things that disturbed me greatly regarding the org, my contributions dropped. I still donated occasionally(mainly at the prodding of my jw wife), but once I was mentally out, my donations came to a complete halt. I was still counted as a jw, but I was not donating. As I've said in the past, a non-donating witness is the same as a df'd witness in the eyes of the WTS. They're both dead money. And we all know it's all about the money.
If the internet wasn't such a nuisance, then why would the WTS incorporate "chat rooms" into an assembly part? I'm sorry, but if it wasn't for the internet, none of us would be communicating on the scale that we do now. News on jw's would likely be limited to the local level. How many of us would have heard about Cano? How could we get new light before it was ever shipped out from NY? Bethel has to be pissed that we get the information and leak it on the web before it is properly presented to the congregations. At least we are now able to be somewhat organized with the internet, albeit disfunctional at times. We may not be the most well oiled machine to fight the WTS, but our guerilla tactics seem to be wearing down our enemy.
washington (afp) - for the first time since it began, a majority of americans believe the iraq war is not part of the war on terrorism, as us president george w. bush keeps insisting it is, according to a poll.. fifty-one percent of the 1,206 adults surveyed in the august 17-21 new york times/cbs news poll believed the two wars were separate, while 44 percent saw a link between them.
in june, opinion was split evenly at 41 percent..
rest of the story here.
Here is a great quote by Bush just recently made:
When Bush answered a question about Iraq last week by raising September 11, a reporter asked him, "What did Iraq have to do with that?" The president replied, "Nothing," and added, "Nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack."
There you go. Our great and fearless leader of the Free World admitted that Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9-11. So why was Iraq a target in the first place?? Let's see, first it was the 9-11 terrorist link; then it was because they had WMD's all over the place; then it was because Saddam was a very very bad man; now it is because we have to fight "terrorism" on their land and not on ours. It's just one excuse after another.
It's no wonder that the rest of the world view Americans as complete idiots. This clusterf**k in Iraq is a good example of our "intelligence," both literally and militarily.
washington (afp) - for the first time since it began, a majority of americans believe the iraq war is not part of the war on terrorism, as us president george w. bush keeps insisting it is, according to a poll.. fifty-one percent of the 1,206 adults surveyed in the august 17-21 new york times/cbs news poll believed the two wars were separate, while 44 percent saw a link between them.
in june, opinion was split evenly at 41 percent..
rest of the story here.
I have posted my last on the subject for now
That's ok. I didn't really expect an answer from the pro-bush folks anyway...
that of karr!!!
(in jonbenet ramsey case) now what do they do???
apparently, they just got report out of colorado.... swalker
Can you say, 15 minutes of....
But his 15 minutes is turning into a buttload of hours now, and eventually years.
that of karr!!!
(in jonbenet ramsey case) now what do they do???
apparently, they just got report out of colorado.... swalker
OH NO! The WTS was right!! DNA is full of faults.
her posts for a very long time were overflowing with an obvious scholarship.
i have avidly read her posts and have tucked away as much as my much smaller brain could be forced to take in.
i'm sure others have openly expressed their admiration and appreciation for her, but i would like to do so here.
and I should note that my Ph.D. is not in biblical studies per se but in historical linguistics (which does bisect biblical studies in some ways).
I always wondered about that. I just assumed Leo's path was in religious studies. Nice to know.
i just learned that
in a recent survey,
women were asked what
Ummm, are you referring to telemarketers, aka rude telephone sales people that call you up during the day when you're home in bed dying from the flu, or just sitting down to a wonderful roast dinner? A very odd concept of "sexy profession..."
Brenda, I was trying to pull an "Ian" but it must have been lost in translation.
Jourles, of the happily employed in the telecommunications, not telemarketing, industry class
