Smile, or, it's more likely a great example of human pareidolia :
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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23
Another Subliminal Image? On the JW Website
by The Searcher inthis image appears on the current main web page - as you scroll the "witnessing" photos.. weird "facial" image at the guy's right shoulder.. .
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Does Mr Trump have his own 'hotline' to Russia's President Putin?
by fulltimestudent inaccording to australian newspaper, the canberra times (for aussies, its a fairfax publication) trump is able to contact putin and the conversations cannot be tapped.
(an interesting claim).. quote 1:.
"a former senior western intelligence operative, a specialist in russian counterintelligence deemed credible in washington, has provided the fbi with evidence that trump 'and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the kremlin, including on clinton, since russian intelligence had compromised trump during his visits to moscow – so that he could be blackmailed'.
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fulltimestudent
smiddy : I think i`ll just watch this space
Yup! but its interesting to see the charges and counter charges as these two candidates rip into each other. But the main reason I posted this was to see what reactions there may be from Americans.
Its' difficult for ordinary people to see what truth is in the claims made in the Canberra Times. But assuming there is some truth, that in heavily protected stations there is a lot of traffic between one owned by Trump and another that seems to belong to a Russian financial institution. Some, (as above) may think that it may be innocent business dealings? But are there not heavy restrictions on Americans dealing with Russian institutions?
So not many reactions to the Canberra Times article. We can only wonder why? Is it our old friend, cognitive dissonance? Or, is perhaps confirmation bias, and no one can imagine a candidate for the American Presidency really having dealings with the enemy (as Russia/Putin is pictured in the USA)?
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Does Mr Trump have his own 'hotline' to Russia's President Putin?
by fulltimestudent inaccording to australian newspaper, the canberra times (for aussies, its a fairfax publication) trump is able to contact putin and the conversations cannot be tapped.
(an interesting claim).. quote 1:.
"a former senior western intelligence operative, a specialist in russian counterintelligence deemed credible in washington, has provided the fbi with evidence that trump 'and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the kremlin, including on clinton, since russian intelligence had compromised trump during his visits to moscow – so that he could be blackmailed'.
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fulltimestudent
According to Australian newspaper, The Canberra Times (for Aussies, its a Fairfax publication) Trump is able to contact Putin and the conversations cannot be tapped. (An interesting claim).
Quote 1:
"A former senior Western intelligence operative, a specialist in Russian counterintelligence deemed credible in Washington, has provided the FBI with evidence that Trump 'and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on Clinton, since Russian intelligence had compromised Trump during his visits to Moscow – so that he could be blackmailed'.
"The intelligence report, which the operative had provided to the FBI, reads: 'Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance'.Quote 2:
"Deeper drilling by six members of the group, some of whom are Republicans and others of whom can't be identified because of the nature of their government and corporate work, uncovered an irregular pattern of server look-ups that actually resembled the pattern of human conversation – conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow.
"It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organisation and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank." -
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Arrival of War in 1914 a Shocking Development
by berrygerry inone comment-giver during the rules study, remarked that ww1 was predicted by wt to arrive in 1914, despite the fact that everyone expected an era of unparalleled peace.. this was something continuously drilled into our heads - how peaceful everything was prior to ww1.. when you look at wt library under 'world war i' - "unexpected" - the results are all offline - there are no recent references ( unexpected: re 106; w92 5/1 4-5; yb87 124; w86 2/15 5; w86 11/1 6 ).
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200276290.
the offline quotes are as follows:.
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fulltimestudent
WARS BETWEEN 1870 AND 1914
Note: Material sourced from http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/willnick/timeline.htm
The JW claim that the period 1870 and 1914 was a time of peace is false. It was an era in which European powers insisted on attempting the colonization of many weaker nations in the world, while competing with each other.
As a study of the above timeline indicates not one decade of this period could be called peaceful.
Just before these decades, one of the most destructive wars in world history was fought in China between the ruling Qing dynasty and a rebellion by the Taiping, a Chinese Christian group, nobody will ever definitively know how many died in this long and hard fought rebellion, but the highest estimate is 50 million.
But lets go on from 1870.
1870-71 – France and Germany at war.
1894-05 – Japan and China at war over Korea.
1897 - Greco-Turkish war
1897 - German occupies part of China
1898 - USA-Spanish war
1899 - USA invades the Philipinnes beginning a very savage war that went on for a long time.
1899 - Boer war begins in South Africa, between England and Dutch settlers
1900 - Boxer rebellion starts in China to expel Europeans. Western alliance invades China.
1904 - Russian-Japanese war. (Important because an Asian power defeats a European war)
1911 - France invades Morocco.
1911 - Mexican Revolution.
1912 - First Chinese Revolution.
1912 - First Balkan war.
1913 - Second Balkan war.
If the above was a long era of world peace, then I’m Jesus Christ.
The claim that Jehovah’s witnesses make is a bullsh*t view of history and would only be made by uneducated people.
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Oldest Hebrew mention of Jerusalem from 7th century BCE
by Earnest inthe oldest hebrew mention of jerusalem has been found on a rare papyrus from the 7th century bce, as reported in the times of israel of october 26, 2016.. a reference to a consignment of wineskins 'to jerusalem' appears on a 2,700-year-old first temple-era scrap believed to have been plundered from a judean desert cave..
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fulltimestudent
If authentic, its an interesting find, however there is some dispute regarding its authenticity. Apparently, ancient papyrus is available and the possibility exists that this document has been forged.
See this report on the document: http://www.livescience.com/56653-hebrew-papyrus-seized-from-looters.html
In part it says:
"There are some palaeographic anomalies and inconsistencies in this papyrus inscription that suggest it may be modern, not ancient," Rollston said.
He added that "the fact that the papyrus itself has been carbon-dated to the seventh century BCE certainly does not mean that the writing on the papyrus is ancient. After all, ancient papyrus is readily available for purchase online, thus, no modern forger worth his salt would forge an inscription on modern papyrus. Rather, he would purchase some ancient papyrus online and then write a text on it. It happens fairly often."
Sometimes even the most authentic-looking scroll can be a forgery. For instance, Live Science recently reported on 70 new "Dead Sea Scroll" fragmentsthat had appeared on the antiquities market over the last 15 years. Scholars have expressed concern that some of the new scrolls could be forgeries, while others could be from looting in the Judean Desert. [See Photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments] -
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Manufactured conflict and the media
by Coded Logic inmanufactured outrage.
false equivalence.
every issues has "two sides".
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fulltimestudent
Quote: News networks should seek to inform us - the viewer - with the most accurate information they have at their disposal.
Smile - nice in theory, but in practise, they function to enable the sale of advertising opportunities, so they are finely tune to attract the largest possible audience
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5
Just a little bit depressed .... so I went for a walk - a walk into the beginning of my JW life
by fulltimestudent ini seldom feel depressed, but i did yesterday.
possibly, its because i'm likely going to graduate next year and i feel somewhat lost.
the goal i've had for the last 8 years to improve my understanding of the china-asia nexus, will have been accomplished.
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fulltimestudent
I seldom feel depressed, but I did yesterday. Not sure why?
Possibly, its because I'm likely going to graduate next year and I feel somewhat lost. The goal I've had for the last 8 years to improve my understanding of the China-Asia nexus, will have been accomplished. It's not, of course, as learning never ends, but it will continue in different circumstances.
But this story is not about my studies, but about my first experiences as a JW.
Anyway, with that feeling of sadness hanging over me, I decided to go for a long walk. And, I wanted a different venue to all my local walks which are usually along Cooks River (for any other Sydneysiders). I finally decided to start at the northern end of Leichhardt and walk along the shores of Iron cove, simply because it was along a waterfront.
A big mistake!
I got off the tram, walked toward Leichhardt Park Oval and crossed Lilyfield Rd, looked back and saw the house Lil Thompson had lived in. Lil was a elderly stalwart sister in the congregation, who'd changed her calling from being one of the anointed to being an O.S. She often encouraged the young newbie that was me, with stories about how wonderful the paradise would be. Long dead now of course, and still no paradise earth. (grimace), and the realisation that there will never be a paradise.
50 metres further and two houses became visible. On belonged to Sis Vi Webster, a sister with a sharp tongue. Her husband, Harry had been the accountant for 2HD, the Newcastle radio station that the WTS owned. Plenty of stories about 2HD in Newcastle, where I later pioneered. The WTS (or, was it the IBSA, I forget) sold advertising to pay for the costs. So some brothers became salesmen. And like a lot of sales people, they entertained their clients on the weekend. The local brother's told stories of everyone being drunk at these parties. Whatever else Harry saw, I never heard, but he no longer wanted much to do with the JWs.
They had a daughter, Narelle, who I found attracted and went out with her a few times. But Narelle had more exciting guys than a boring young JW, and was disfellowshipped a little later for committing adultery with her art teacher.
My mood was not improving.
In the next door house, Arthur once lived. Disfellowshipped eventually for being an SP bookies (illegal then) clerk, he married Hilda, niece of previously mentioned Lil T. They took a young Chinese student as a boarder. Arthur was a bit violent toward Hilda, and eventually she was disfellowshipped for committing adultery with the student.
Not good memories of YHWH's spiritual paradise.
Around the corner I passed the house where one of my bible studies had lived. He was about my own age. His mother had became insane and he gradually slipped into erratic ways also.
A 30 minute walk brought me to Rozelle, and the street and house where a group study I conducted was held. The house was owned by a German migrant brother, who also become morose and paranoid and turned very violent ending his life in a confrontation with the police.
So I caught a bus home, my mood worse than when I started.
Why had I been so stupid as to waste 40 years of my life.
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Life is more than ritual ...
by fulltimestudent injw's are lost in the meaningless ritual of meeting formats (varied occasionally when even the f&ds finally recognises that it has become meaningless) and field service.
the ritual of the field service component has become even more meaningless with the advent of the trolleydollies, just like the old-time practise of carrying an old-fashioned gramophone and some of judge joey's records from house-to-house became meaningless.. can anything shake the witnesses out of their apathetic meaningless rituals?
i'm not sure that can ever happen.. but perhaps there is a lesson for some thinking jws in this story of an old monk lost in his ritual, until something woke him from his self-absorbed view of his world.. https://vimeo.com/61481633.
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fulltimestudent
JW's are lost in the meaningless ritual of meeting formats (varied occasionally when even the F&DS finally recognises that it has become meaningless) and field service. The ritual of the field service component has become even more meaningless with the advent of the trolleydollies, just like the old-time practise of carrying an old-fashioned gramophone and some of Judge Joey's records from house-to-house became meaningless.
Can anything shake the witnesses out of their apathetic meaningless rituals? I'm not sure that can ever happen.
But perhaps there is a lesson for some thinking JWs in this story of an old monk lost in his ritual, until something woke him from his self-absorbed view of his world.
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Genital Warts Because our Ancestors were Banging Neanderthals
by cofty inresearchers have found evidence that modern genital warts – otherwise known as the human papillomavirus (hpv) – were sexually transmitted to homo sapiens after our ancestors slept with neanderthals and denisovans roughly around 100,000 years ago.....
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fulltimestudent
Village Idiot: ... in the ever changing border between our two populations.
Two separate populations interfacing at a border, is a very modern concept. More likely people whom we tag with different nation/state descriptions, can have the same ethnic origins.
In the case of the Neanderthals and our ancestors, perhaps the two populations lived adjacent to each other. For example, in a long river valley, there may have been a village of Neanderthals, and not too far away, there may have been a village of a more modern type of human.
Difficult to say, isn't it?
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The Earliest Printed Book Still in Existence - the Buddhist Diamond Sutra
by fulltimestudent inthe british library has a copy of this important historical work (dated to may 868 ce), and has been working to conserve its copy.
this film made by the international dunhuang project (formed to conserve relics from the silk road (the east-west trading network) backgrounds the sutra's story:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgn5hqxtlmc.
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fulltimestudent
Nathan's comment sidetracked me earlier today, so this post is what I intended to post earlier.
It's an audio recording of Dr Susan Whitfield, Director of the Dunhuang Project, speaking at the University of Minnesota. Her topic is the Diamond Sutra.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/podsusanwhitfield.html
One point she makes is that,
Quote: "The Diamond Sutra is a fantastic artefact. It's a Chinese Buddhist document dating from 868 AD; it was when China was the centre of the world."
Buddhism, like early Christianity, was adapted by believers (who came from various other cultures) to conform to some of their local ideas.
So in reading that particular document, we can remember two things, 1. The document could be printed, because the Chinese had already developed a technology to print documents, and 2. Some of the thoughts expressed may be different to the original "Indian" (as in the ancient world) thoughts of the philosophy's founder.