Going to a Witness District Convention and giving the Public talk. I'm afraid I would say something they wouldn't like.
Whew, I'm glad I don't need therapy for this one. lol
Skipper
Mindchild
JoinedPosts by Mindchild
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48
What's your biggest phobia?
by luna inspiders!!!
i can handle any other bug, snakes, mice, etc....but get me near a spider, and i nearly have a breakdown.. this morning, i went to grab some clothes from the bathroom to wash, felt something crawling on my arm, looked down, giant, hairy, brown spider.
i still have the heebie-jeebies, and i probably woke up the neighbors.. *shudder*.
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44
I Hate a Theif..!!
by CC Ryder intwo weeks ago on a monday afternoon our house was broken into and we were robbed.
the theives took all of tink's jewelry she owned and some of mine as well.
she was wearing her wedding ring at the time but everything else is gone.
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Mindchild
Sorry to read about your break in and loss. I've noticed in reading the replies, you have gotten a lot of varied responses to what you should do, perhaps I can offer some more information to think about.
To start with, my previous career was in security. I had owned 2 different alarm companies, and have had maybe 8 years experience in the field. I also taught crime prevention for two years in public lectures and worked as a security consultant for the Air Force, movie stars, and several commercial firms. Finally, I have invented alarm equipment. I'm not telling you this to try to impress you, I just felt it was worthwhile to note my experience because my advice will be somewhat unconventional.
The first thing you need to be aware of is that you need to be aware that your troubles are not over. If you were hit once by someone and they were not caught, chances are they will try it again. Why? Because they realize most people have insurance and after a few months get the check from the insurance company and buy new goodies which the crooks promptly want to get their hands on. You also need to look at where you live, do you have a general crime problem in the area? If you are in a metro area, it almost goes with the territory.
Having said this, you need to look at how you appear from the eyes of the bad guys. You need to ask yourself, from their perspective...are you worth hitting again? A lot of that depends upon the type of crook you are dealing with. In your case, it does not sound like professional thieves. A real pro knows he can buy a $65 electronic lockpick that can open most deadbolt locks in 3 seconds or less. You wouldn't have had door damage if this was the case. You can also tell by what was taken if it was a pro or not coming after you. Did you know that pro's will sometimes make their hit completly invisible? They won't steal your TV, jewelry, and will even pass by loose change laying on your dresser...do you know what they are after? All they want is your tax return. Yes, they have discovered a way to make big bucks off of those. Make sure your tax returns were not taken in the hit or you will be very sorry later, believe me. If they were taken, notify the IRS immediately. A pro can get anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 in cash from your tax return. It all depends upon what income level you are in.
Now lets look at protecting your home. Again, you have to design your strategy to match a realistic threat. If you don't have the house and money of Bill Gates, you sure the hell don't want to pay up the ass for a top of the line security system. On the other hand, a $99 alarm system from Radio Shack might deter elementry school kids who just want to smash and grab but do little more. I think you need to put a figure in your mind of what you are willing to spend and stick with it. If you want to invest less than $500, don't even bother with an alarm system, instead get yourself solid core doors and high security locks (no key in the knob locks or simple deadbolts please). There are a lot of locks that are damn near pick proof for all but experts and they are not that much more than a top of the line deadbolt. If you have sliding glass patio type doors in your house, don't count on the broomstick in the tract to keep someone out. Start by putting in screws above the sliding doors that extend far enough to keep the doors from being lifted in their tracks. Get a good interior sliding glass door lock on top of this. If you have sliding windows in the house, the same thing holds true for anything big enough to crawl through. I would really beef up the entry way into the garage and make sure you have a digitally switching garage door opener that changes frequency. Otherwise it is a simple matter of recording your signal when you open your garage door and replaying it later to open it while you are not there.
As you have animals living in your house, it complicates the type of system you would need for an alarm and increases the costs. You will need both something that protects all the entry points into the house and motion detection in the interior. Expect to pay somewhere around $1500 for a basic alarm system from a reputable company and then monitoring fees of $20-$40 a month. If you want to save money, buy the equipment yourself from a well known online vendor but use a wireless system that is easier to configure and install.
Outside of locks and alarms, I've seen quite a few strategies to protect homes and businesses from thieves. I even knew one guy who would put live rattlesnakes in his store at night, a dozen of them. Never got hit once. Of course, that isn't practical for most of us and there is a huge liability problem for anything you do that harms someone breaking in your house. Sucks doesn't it? Don't get any ideas though about pulling a fast one and setting a trap for a crook, you will be sued up the ass and if you kill them, figure you will lose everything in court costs. It is a lose lose scenario. Stick only with proven non-leathal defense strategies. For instance, you can buy tear gas grenades that are activated by either a trip wire or electroniclly by means of a passive infra red sensor. These are fairly good for remote locations, but most people set off their own damn alarm systems or they go off by accident, so it gets expensive to play this game. Still, depending upon how much you want to spend, talk to your security consulant and see what options are legal for your area. I've used everything from smoke bombs that completely fill the whole house instantly with a nontoxic smoke (this scares the crap out of the bad guys) to military round blanks that when they explode, sound like a cannon going off. They can be heard miles away. Thieves don't like attention.
While you are at it, make sure you have effective non-leathal weaponry for you and your significant other to use. Guns, are not the best option IMHO. You can use some of the sophisticated and effective new non-leathal weaponry now without worrying that you will either kill someone in your own home or the bullet going into someone else's home to kill them. Play it smart.
Hopefully something here was of value.
Skipper
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Human Natural Selection in Jehovah's Witnesses
by Mindchild init is no secret that many people feel that human evolution has been stopped in it's tracks by our civilization.
however, i and others, argue that natural selection is still ongoing and has social implications.
the article i copied below relates how natural selection of humans is taking palce right now in taiwan.
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Mindchild
It is no secret that many people feel that human evolution has been stopped in it's tracks by our civilization. However, I and others, argue that natural selection is still ongoing and has social implications. The article I copied below relates how natural selection of humans is taking palce right now in Taiwan. If you accept the conclusions of this article, it is not a great leap of faith to speculate how natural selection is taking place in the social structure of Jehovah's Witnesses. Consider these facts: 1. JW's rank lowest of all Western religions in educational achievement (implications of lower wage jobs) 2. Nearly two thirds of all JW's in the USA are women. 3. JW singles marry younger and have children more quickly 4. Single female parents live closer to the poverty level than the rest of the population 5. JW's near retirement age have little savings and supplemental income to live on Does this imply in your mind that the conditions are ideal for an accelerated decrease in the living standards of JW's and that this will select for even more people near or below the poverty level in future generations? In short, the selection process will push Witnesses even lower on the economic ladder? Here is the article on natural human selection: http://www.futurepundit.com/ 2003 October 16 Thursday By Randall Parker Human Natural Selection In Taiwan
The competition for females in Taiwan is going to get very fierce.
On Taiwan, abortions have skewed the island's demographics to the point that only two girls are born for every three boys.
An obvious consequence is that when the little king passes puberty, he discovers that the girl he liked in high school has gone to USC, probably never to return, while those who remain are being snapped up by other men.
To ease the gender gap, Taiwanese men import brides from the mainland. Unfortunately, these women are outnumbered by those smuggled into the country illegally, who, in exchange for $10,000, can legalize their status with marriages of convenience, then head for the brothels to earn real money. These bogus nuptials are difficult to detect since many Taiwanese men hop between marriages until they find a woman who can bear them a son.
The effect this will have is to select against the reproduction of economically less successful and physically less attractive males. Women prefer wealthier and higher status males and the approximately one third of Taiwanese males who are going to be left unable to reproduce will be, on average, lower status and less affluent. Any genetic variations that reduce economic success or physical attractiveness will therefore be selected against. This will probably tend to raise the average IQ of Taiwanese babies and probably will make them more driven and motivated. For more information on the practice of selective abortion of female fetuses in China and India see the post Girl Shortage Causes Wife Buying In India. While Nobelist Sydney Brenner sees natural selection as obsolete (see Sydney Brenner: Biological Evolution Is An Obsolete Technology) it seems obvious that natural selection is still happening to humans. The only thing that has changed is that different genes are being selected for or against than was previously the case before modern medicine and cheap foods became available.
Update: To clarify a point: It can be debated just what is natural versus artificial selection. What is artificial must somehow involve sentience modifying and creating elements of an environment. Should we limit the use of the term artificial selection to refer only to changes in offspring genes caused by conscious engineering of offspring? Or if we change our environments for other reasons and, as a side effect, cause those environments to exert different selective pressures on us that change the frequency of alleles in successive generations should we call that artificial selection too? Heck if I know. I care less about semantic debates than about understanding the actual processes that are at work.
One can (and some people do) even carve out something called sexual selection as distinct from natural selection (that strikes me as more of a subcategory of natural selection - not that I care all that much whether it is treated as a subcategory). But the important point here is that just because we have modified our own environment in substantial ways does not mean that the environment is not still exerting selective pressures on us.
Selection that causes different frequencies of alleles from one generation to the next is still happening. While there are some exceptions of rather limited scope (e.g. preimplantation testing of IVF embryos) we aren't yet using genetic engineering to customize our offspring. Yet for other reasons we have made many changes to our environments which, as a side effect, are causing changes in the frequency of many alleles in successive generations of humans. Scientists who claim that human evolution by natural selection has stopped are trying to imply that there are no selective pressures at work. But it is incredibly obvious that this is an erroneous conclusion. Skipper
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Women look nicer in other towns
by JH in.
when you travel to other cities, do you find that women or men look nicer or more sexy than in your home town?
maybe it's because we see new butts faces, that give this illusion.. so, is the grass greener elsewhere?
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Mindchild
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence until you get there only to discover it is astroturf.....from a poster I once had.
Skipper
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20
Did you get a headache today?
by Mindchild inthe earth is undergoing a major geomagnetic storm today (october 15th).
has anyone here noticed anything different about how they feel today?
i have monitored my own responses to geomagnetic storms and find i almost always get a headache out of the blue and ringing of the ears.
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Mindchild
I thought I would add a bit more information about what is actually happening. First, here is an illustration to help visualize things in terms of a geomagnetic storm:
What this storm is being caused by is a huge influx of energetic particles coming from the sun and smashing into the magnetic field of the earth. When this happens, we see both the physical effects and biological effects.
Not only do headaches happen, and other strange biological effects, but nearly 1/3 of all heart attacks come from these geomagnetic storms. Here is a link for a complete scientific paper about how the storms effect headaches and the heart:
Abstract from the article:
Effect of geomagnetic activity on cardiovascular parameters
E. Stoupel
Multidirectional changes in the natural history of many cardiovascular syndromes have been linked to different levels of
daily and monthly geomagnetic activity (GMA). Previous studies have found that in periods of high GMA there were more
admissions for acute myocardial infarction and more cases of anterior wall myocardial infarction. Results also indicated: higher
outpatient mortality and a trend towards higher hospital mortality from acute myocardial infarction; higher diastolic arterial
pressure in healthy subjects and in treated hypertensive patients; higher prolactin and 17-corticosteroid levels in the peripheral
blood; more severe migraine attacks and more admissions for CVA and cerebrovascular insufficiency in male patients; changes
in many blood coagulation cellular gradients (platelet count, basophils in the peripheral blood), a rise in platelet aggregation,
fibrinogen level and a drop in leukocyte adhesiveness.
Periods of low GMA showed a related increase (negative correlation) in in-hospital non-myocardial infarction-related car-
diovascular deaths. Only in times of lowest GMA did inferior wall myocardial infarction exceed anterior wall myocardial
infarction. Low GMA was also associated with higher levels of growth hormone and 11-ketosteroids in the peripheral blood,
more sudden deaths, some increase in electrical heart instability/hourly number of ventricular and supraventricular extrasystoles
and higher rate of ventricular tachycardia.
The monthly occurrence of pregnancy-induced hypertension was negatively correlated with GMA level. Gender differences
were noted in some of the parameters. Other studied parameters did not show changes related to GMA. These included
haemoglobin level, electrolyte level, heart beat and pulse rate. Moreover, some observed cardiovascular fluctuations that were
related to the level of GMA also showed differences in the rising and dropping parts of the 11-year cycle of solar activity. It has
been suggested that some of the changes observed in many clinical syndromes may be related to the concomitant activation of
the serotoninergic system. J Clin Basic Cardiol 1999; 2: 34?40. <end snip>How bad is this storm and when did it start? Take a look at the top chart of this graph to see the solar wind speed and the second chart is the density.
When the particle stream reaches speeds of half a million Km a second, as they did in the last 10 hours, you have the earth being hit pretty hard by a cosmic sludgehammer, and we are feeling the effects of it.
Skipper
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Did you get a headache today?
by Mindchild inthe earth is undergoing a major geomagnetic storm today (october 15th).
has anyone here noticed anything different about how they feel today?
i have monitored my own responses to geomagnetic storms and find i almost always get a headache out of the blue and ringing of the ears.
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Mindchild
The Earth is undergoing a major geomagnetic storm today (October 15th). Has anyone here noticed anything different about how they feel today? I have monitored my own responses to geomagnetic storms and find I almost always get a headache out of the blue and ringing of the ears. This isn't the placebo effect either, as I seldom get headaches and check afterwards as to what is happening to the Magnetosphere (the magnetic field of the earth). Researchers have linked all kinds of weird behavior on days like this, like people going off the deep end, whales and other marine animals beaching themselves.
Uh, I would stay away from the water if I were you.
Skipper
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87
Who are the A/As on the board?
by starfish422 innot alcoholics anonymous, mind you.
:) atheists/agnostics.
i know there are some of us here; who's with me?
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Mindchild
Postmodern radical constructivist here. I try not to have belief in belief systems, as tempting as they are. I prefer my reality served with a good amount of mathematical probabilities mixed with a reasonable seasoning of skepticism. In terms of the God Memeplex, I believe there is enough evidence to discredit the Jehovah God of the Watchtower ideological myth but not enough evidence to rule out other forms of advanced super beings that would qualify in most people's minds as God. So, that puts me in the exploratory category.
Skipper
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Who's going to Joy's Halloween weekend?
by noidea in.
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i was excited to see on a thread that littletoe will also be in fl as well ..ok so sign in..who's going to be there?i'll start the count...i'm planning on going with myself aka karla my sister, also possibly her hubby & her daughter.. .
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Mindchild
Sloan and Mindchild.
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When is it time to put down a pet?
by Mindchild ini'm rather sad today.
i've been putting off taking my old dog (14 years old) to the vet because i knew the news wasn't going to be good.
it was even worse than i thought though.
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Mindchild
Thank you all so much for your support and feedback. You have given me a lot to think about, but right now I'm way too emotional to think clearly.
Skipper
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When is it time to put down a pet?
by Mindchild ini'm rather sad today.
i've been putting off taking my old dog (14 years old) to the vet because i knew the news wasn't going to be good.
it was even worse than i thought though.
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Mindchild
I'm rather sad today. I've been putting off taking my old dog (14 years old) to the vet because I knew the news wasn't going to be good. It was even worse than I thought though. She has lot most of her sight due to cateracts and will be blind within a year and on top of this she has a hip problem that will get worse and she won't be able to walk in a few months. There isn't much the vet can do except give her some meds to ease the pain and inflamation, but the end result is that she will be blind and unable to walk in the next year.
Maybe it seems obvious to someone not so emotionally attached to their pet as I am, as to when to put an old friend down. I don't know if I should just let nature take its course and let her go to the point where she can't see and walk (she already has a difficult time walking more than a few minutes, and often falls down) or if I should put her down before she has to get to the point where she can't be pain free. The vet says the drugs will keep her relatively pain free until she can't walk at all. Nothing can be done for keeping her from going blind.
Well, I have to decide what to do by next week as I'm to meet with the Vet again and work out a treatment program for her. I can choose between a minimal approach and just give her pain meds or go the maximum route to try to keep her walking as long as possible with more drugs. I'm too upset now to make a decision about this and was hoping someone could give me some insight of how they made their tough choices with pets before.
Love sucks sometimes.
Skipper
