never was a jw, but been here long enough to have made some friends and respect opinions.. retired in 2004, lived in cyprus 2005-2010. back here in wales since then.. just back from a holiday in france (most recent of many).
love the country, the lifestyle, can get by in the language.. just seen an advert for a country estate (british-owned) they want someone to live on site, do a bit of handyman stuff, etc., look after (mainly brit) holiday visitors in return for zero rent (only utitlties).
family would be abe to come and stay for free.
Joe Grundy - Life in the French countryside or small towns can be painfully boring. Also if you're contemplating driving back and forth, the motorways can be quite expensive and the free roads very long. PM me if want more information.
Flying High Now - your Dr makes me laugh! I'm guessing he never lived there! Don't you know that a favorite pasttime in France is to complain. And if there is nothing to complain about (as usually is the case) then something will be invented to complain about!
i sent my dad the fred franz talk "my story" when he somewhat candidly discusses the failed prophecies, 1925 etc.
i was hoping it would plant a seed of doubt in his heart.
however my parents eat sleep and breathe wt.
BU2B I'm sorry you have to go through this. I tried similar tactics on my parents. I never told them or implied to them I had left, distance making this possible. I too wanted them to see I was not crazy, could still be successful, etc. And I definitely didn't want to give them any reason to shun me.
Result: They still fully shun me. They never even once came to me to check anything before they started the shunning stuff. Not once. Not even once. Nada.
mine is:.
their god is a petulant, pschopathic, genocidal sociopath.
he requires them to teach lies as a sign of loyalty (see nov 15 study wt on knorr, and 20 pages later).
I was reading a fiction book recently and came across this sentence which fits very well here.
"What could be more evil than molesting a child's mind?"
Of course there are many things far more evil, but it doesn't shy away from the fact that for many of us, this is exactly what the borg did to us born-ins. And it doesn't change the fact that it is evil.
i've been working on a side project for a while.
the goal of the project is to create a comprehensive database of all publications throughout history.
with this database i will be able to instantly find trends in text,sentiment of writing, methods used, and scriptures emphasized.. essentially i will be able to put a word like "apostate" into my tool, and instantly receive a report showing every time the word (or similar words) has been used in all publications since 1870.. i will also be able to create reports showing word density used in publications over time.. so i'll be able to see that the word "governing body" has increased in usage 25% year over year since 1975.. or i will be able to analyze the november 2014 wt and run an algorithm that helps to determine, what the tone and motive of the writing is.. the thing that i am most excited about is the ability to instantly find every occurence of a scripture in every publication.. this will be a great tool to find flip flops in doctrine as well as inaccuracies in biblical interpretation.. i will for sure publish all interesting findings here.. .
Hi objective truth!
Great project!
You probably already know this, but I'll ask anyway ;-) Did you see the work already done to analyse texts online. I came across this site a few months ago while doing some research on text analysis : http://www.wordandphrase.info/analyzeText.asp
The guy behind it also specialises in corpus linguistics.
figures don't lie...but liars figure!.
the message for those babies who are now in their 30's and 40's is that "we warned your parents about a date that meant nothing!".
how does that wash credibility-wise?.
Adding in the new babies born only makes it more interesting.
I did some math like this a while back. Based on the annual hours preached I substracted the number of those hours that would be counted for bible studies. I then generously decided that out of every hour counted as preaching for the remaining hours, only five minutes time is actually spent speaking to a person. So I then calculated how long it would take to preach to every person on the planet, if each person was spoken to for five minutes only.
Even with an annual report of over a billion hours spent 'preaching' and not counting population growth, it would take them over 40 years to reach every person with a five minute message.
things ex-jw's need to know in order to heal and move on.. ***.
1.you cannot change what you refuse to confront.. look at how you are feeling most of the time.
that sense of going nowhere and feeling down is not because you aren't spritual enough.
Very true.
If I listed all the points I already go by, then I would have a pretty long list!
Nice to see them all written out.
never was a jw, but been here long enough to have made some friends and respect opinions.. retired in 2004, lived in cyprus 2005-2010. back here in wales since then.. just back from a holiday in france (most recent of many).
love the country, the lifestyle, can get by in the language.. just seen an advert for a country estate (british-owned) they want someone to live on site, do a bit of handyman stuff, etc., look after (mainly brit) holiday visitors in return for zero rent (only utitlties).
family would be abe to come and stay for free.
When I came back for visits home, people could not understand why a life of sun, sea, cold beer, etc., could pall - but it does. It turns into 'nothing else to do but to walk on the beach, then go to a bar, drink beer I really don't want and speak to fellow ex-pats I'd rather avoid.'
Forgive me if I'm raining on the party and probably missing the point at the same time, but living abroad is not always as glamourous as we imagine. (As you already know from Cyprus) Holidays and everyday life in a country are two totally different things. And in a country where we don't speak the language, ex-pats may be our only company for at least the first 6-12 months. Administration and paperwork may also be an ongoing and incomprehensible nightmare - only made worse by the language and cultural barrier.
My apologies if my comment is out of place.
Do you have a brain in your bottom?
i just took the first page of the 2013 report and added two new columns to look at alternative ways of calculating the 'increase'.
first column: 2013 av.
pubs minus 2012 av.
88JM, I'm not a perfectionist, but I do like to do a job properly and can spend hours just chasing down details. This is important, like you say, if a document is to be used as a resource, in which case mistakes can and do get repeated.
i just took the first page of the 2013 report and added two new columns to look at alternative ways of calculating the 'increase'.
first column: 2013 av.
pubs minus 2012 av.
88JM - you're right, I didn't think about that case scenario. You're suggestion sounds good though
Besty - that's interesting and probably true. Do you have a link to that list?
