Posts by shepherdless

49

Steven Unthank and his work.

by WHATSGOINGON in

hi everyone, .

i have been trying really hard to find the court case transcript where steven unthank was in court in australia and one of the wt lawyers or a wt spokesperson said the faithful and discreet slave does not exist.. i hope that this is correct i remember reading about this a long while back and would love to get evidence of this.. i found steven on facebook and messaged him about 6 months ago and he didn't respond, he probably wants to let all this go, and i don't blame him for that.. any suggestions would be very much appreciated.. thanks wgo..

shepherdless

I didn’t listen to the whole podcast, but I think he says the relevant statements were made at a hearing of the Victorian Human Rights Commission, not the Latrobe Magistrates Court.

I believe such cases are heard in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A quick check, and I notice that there is a case called:

Unthank v Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia ((Human Rights) [2013] VCAT 1810 (23 October 2013)

My guess is that is the one.

Also, I doubt you will get any judgement from the Vic Magistrates Court naming Unthank as a party, as the summons was a criminal complaint, which would be listed as “R v Governing Body of Jehovahs Witnesses”, or something like that. He was only an “informant” not a party in that.

34

Seeking advice

by Mizalisa in

jw
friends

i'm not a jw, nor was i raised jw.

for the past three years i have been involved with a man who was raised jw, who at first told me he no longer believed as they did, but who, it has become clear over time, has not told his family or religious community the truth.

he has strung me along for years, never introduced me to anyone in his life.

shepherdless

Commiserations, Mizalisa, but a very wise move, all the same.

I am a never-JW myself. I married someone who was completely out at the time. After kids came along, she got herself baptised.

You have dodged a bullet.

5

Hurricane in the Bahamas

by zeb in

winds of over 300 k an hour my heart goes out to you..

shepherdless

A bit of light humour:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-01/h-bombs-and-hurricanes/11468384

150

Cause of Mass Shootings Mental Health?

by blondie in

jw
friends

i have been sad to see so many groups and individuals say that the cause of these events are the mental status of the shooters.

i have looked over the backgrounds of these shooters, and few had medically identified mental health issues.

it is too easy to think that people shoot or kill other people because they are mentally ill.. actually, many or most people with real mental illnesses are most likely to be the victims of others.. i have been a volunteer with the organization called nami (national alliance of mental lillness) for 25 years now.

shepherdless

Or is there some other rational way you can define these types of weapons?

In Australia, the solution was to ban private individuals from owning any semi-automatic weapon. Obviously there were many outraged at the time, but people soon realised that pretty much any legal use of a firearm could be done with a bolt action or lever action firearm. Problem solved.

14

Evolution or Creation?

by Doug Mason in

what would the outcome be among people at this site if we were able to conduct a poll on belief in evolution or in creation?.

what would the outcome be if at the same time we asked for religious affiliation (including formal, informal, or none)?

doug.

shepherdless

Evolution (ie theory of natural selection) for me.

No religious affiliation. No superstitious beliefs.

7

Great Australian Kingdom Hall Sell Off

by gerry in

balga kingdom hall western australia sells for au$3.3 million.

https://www.onthehouse.com.au/property/wa/balga-6061/13-wallington-rd-balga-wa-6061-18287256.

shepherdless

“Balga congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses” is still a registered charity. I guess it is hard to keep up with the wheels rolling away off Jehovah’s crumbling chariot.

Last filing with the commission in March this year. It apparently has 128 “volunteers” which (given my past comparisons with other congregations) probably means it has, or had, around 128 publishers now up for redistribution.

13

Tariffs and Taxes ... Which is it ? I want my $214 back !

by RubaDub in

jw
friends

(so as not to hijack the tariff thread, i thought this would be better to keep separate.).

i guess my economics and finance classes in college have not prepared me to understand the latest round of tariffs/taxes that trump is instituting.. i really don't understand who is "paying" these fees and where they are going.

first of all a tariff is a tax and anyone who doesn't believe that needs to invest in a bridge in new york city.. to keep this as simple as i can, i'm thinking of a $1,000 refrigerator that i am buying.

shepherdless

Of course a tariff is a tax.

A partial response to your (very good) refrigerator analogy is that (from memory) studies have shown that as a matter of practicality, not all of the $200 gets passed onto the consumer. Manufacturers and those on the supply chain will tend to absorb some of it, to the extent they can. The other thing that happens is that market forces will push down the currency of the country of manufacture to compensate, which is what we are seeing now.

7

Tarriffs

by truthlover123 in

jw
friends

i am not a mathematician, so i have a question -- the dow dropped almost 900 points today due to china devaluing its yuan against the us dollar.

what will the impact be on markets as well as the farmers, steel, etc.?

- this is crazy and as dt is a tariff guy, the country is being devastated by the results.

shepherdless

Initially, I could not work out why Trump was so popular, but I get it now. He is very conservative on all social issues, but on most economic issues he says and does all the things that a populist (usually a left wing one) would say and do. Tariffs and budget deficits are things that conservatives normally fiercely oppose.

I think the above posts demonstrate that Trumps approach resonates with a lot of people; particularly the mentality that if China got rich, it means they must have taken that wealth from someone else (ie they can’t have created it themselves).

Under Trump, USA is spending about $3.4 trillion per annum (making Trump easily the biggest spending President ever), $750 billion p.a. of which has to be paid for by future generations (also a record). Astonishing from a so-called conservative!

In about March last year, Trump tweeted “trade wars are good, and easy to win”. (An astonishing comment, given trade history.) Ever since I heard that, I have taken an interest in how this slow moving train wreck, even though I live in a third country, and it has nothing to do with me.

In answer to the question about whether it is time to put money under the mattress, I think you see the answer in the US yield curve. It has inverted, which is a classic sign of a recession over the horizon. (Almost every recorded inverted yield curve in modern history has been followed by a recession within 2 years.)

34

If we could travel at light speed, would travel be 'instantaneous' for us??

by Bad_Wolf in

this might be confusing to think about.

we know that as you approach the speed of light, time slows down, if you were in a spaceship, time goes by quicker on earth.

we also know that distances between planets and such are measured at 'light years'.

shepherdless

Is that formula based on Earth and gravity or in space? I know it's possible though, big bang, black holes, utilizing other energy, may not be in our lifetime (the way for 'how' let alone the technology and means) but I think it will eventually happen.

It is a standard formula to calculate kinetic energy, that many high school students might remember. Applies anywhere in the universe. I have actually oversimplified, but I don’t want to bore people with the details. The formula is still reasonably accurate at, say 95% of light speed, but becomes less accurate as you get close to the speed of light, and in fact the energy required to actually reach light speed is infinite. In other words, it is even more difficult than my back of envelope calc suggests.

PS: I am no expert; I did a relativistic mechanics unit as part of Physics at Uni a very long time ago. I passed but it was probably my worst unit.

34

If we could travel at light speed, would travel be 'instantaneous' for us??

by Bad_Wolf in

this might be confusing to think about.

we know that as you approach the speed of light, time slows down, if you were in a spaceship, time goes by quicker on earth.

we also know that distances between planets and such are measured at 'light years'.

shepherdless

Bad wolf is right (except that nothing, apart from light can travel at light speed). The friend travelling for 10 earth years at, say, 99% of light speed would hardly age at all, and a trip to the nearest star at that speed would pass quite quickly. The time taken can be calculated using Anders Anderson’s chart a few pages ago.

It is all rather irrelevant though. The energy to accelerate a person to 99% of light speed is enormous. The formula is E(k) = 1/2 m v^2. Basically, to accelerate 1kg to that speed you need 0.5 x 1 x 9 x 10^18 = 4.5 x 10^18 Joules, which is the equivalent energy of about 71,000 Hiroshima bombs. (My calc, based on Wikipedia saying that bomb released 6.3 x 10^13 Joules.) So to accelerate a 100kg human inside (say) a 900kg spaceship to 99% of the speed of light, you need the energy equivalent of around 71 million Hiroshima bombs. That is a heck of a lot of rocket power.