Posts by MegaDude

Thanks for the comments. I actually located the guy's picture on the dive shop website but he may not appreciate if I gave him publicity. Just the nicest fellow.

Heya, Chris. I'm doing well. Will tell Jade you said hi. I did snorkeling, wall diving and night diving. Since you and Purps asked for pics, I will post my favorites.

42

I ran into an ex-JW on vacation. We're everywhere.

by MegaDude in

jw
friends

i took my summer vacation to grand cayman this year, a small island south of cuba.

i love the scuba diving there.

the island is small.

I took my summer vacation to Grand Cayman this year, a small island south of Cuba. I love the scuba diving there. The island is small. You could drive around the whole thing in probaby a couple of hours.

So my brother and I had finished a dive on the Cayman wall. I was returning my gear to Dive Tech, the dive shop at Lighthouse Point. As I settle up my bill I notice a copy of the "The Celestine Prophecy" sitting face down and open. A British man who was working the cash register, all smiles, asked me how I was enjoying the diving and I said I was. Then I made a comment about that I had read "The Celestine Prophecy" after I had gotten out of the cult I was raised in and found it interesting. He said, "If you don't mind, which cult was that?" "Jehovah's Witnesses," I replied.

He grinned broadly and stuck his hand out across the counter: "Put 'er there, mate. Me too!"

We briefly swapped stories. I had people waiting for me in the car; otherwise I would have chatted longer.

We're everywhere, man.

35

I have a conundrum....armchair psychologist needed!

by journey-on in

jw
friends

you have to make a life changing choice.

you approach the choice one way and your spouse advocates a different approach.

the nature of the situation removes any possibility of a compromised arrangement.

MegaDude

Oh, in line with the specifics of your question, I would do one or the other.

31

Edward Dunlap: Testimony on Bethel In 1979

by sacolton in

jw
friends

i would like for dorothy "betty" dunlap to listen to this, but i need them to be .mp3 or .wav files.

.

i can't convert realaudio files to a audio cd.. could someone help me?.

MegaDude

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/convert-real-audio-rmra-to-mp3wav.html

I haven't done it but the above link should help.

51

What Are Underrated Movies That Should've Been Bigger Hits?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i've recently got a comcast movie package that gives all encore, hbo, cinemax, stars, showtime and ifc and other indie movies.

there are so many good movies that have been made that just didn't garner enough attention.. what movies do you think are good that weren't huge successes?.

MegaDude

Deep Water - documentary on Donald Crowhurst who disappeared during an around the world sailboat race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYA3YIollWw

Bonhoeffer - documentary on a Lutheran minister in Germany who went from being a pacifist to joining the assassination conspiracy to kill Hitler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-hS_90axHg

Touching the Void - best survival documentary I've seen. A man breaks his leg on a mountain climbing expedition and gets left behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Y6MNyWp6s

The 9th Day - the story of a priest released from a concentration camp in order to help the Nazi's with their propaganda campaign. If he complies he will have freedom. If not, they will return him to the camps on the ninth day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQyjX3yDK6k

The Last Temptation of Christ - a non-gospel version of Jesus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rtCxmNEttQ&feature=related

Cube -Offbeat science fiction film about a group of people who wake up in a cube room that leads to other cube rooms. They don't know how they got there and some of the rooms are boobytrapped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_XjV4Qu5g&feature=fvwe1

The Grey Zone - Based on the true story of the Jews that worked for the Nazis in the crematoriums and one group that fought back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iTrkuUJu-s

Sorcerer - Four men try to drive two trucks through the South American jungle carrying unstable dynamite to an oil well fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMof5PuQF7w

Democrats' cap and tax fiction

by MegaDude in

jw
friends

interesting article on part of the obama tax tsunami soon to hit your wallets.. .

http://online.wsj.com/article/sb124588837560750781.html#articletabs%3darticle.

house speaker nancy pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the house, and the bill may get a full vote as early as friday.

MegaDude

Interesting article on part of the Obama tax tsunami soon to hit your wallets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124588837560750781.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.

Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.

Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman's co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

[Review & Outlook] Associated Press

Henry Waxman

For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn't take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others -- manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.