mariu

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Posts by mariu

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  35

  2013 Publisher Statistics now available from 2014 Yearbook.

  by jwfacts in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the 2014 yearbook is out, and i have scanned the publisher figures into a more readable format at 2013 service year report.

  i have updated some of the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php and will do the rest tonight.

  there are no real surprises, with very similar results as during the last couple of years.

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  mariu

  Thanks for the graphs. Indeed, in Europe the situation is pretty much the same as the year before. It's still most interesting to me that those countries that were hit worst by the crisis (e.g. Spain, Greece) are seeing stagnation or even decrease, while some of the most affluent (Switzerland, Norway) are seeing at least a little bit of growth. My guess is that part of the reason is migration, but I'm not really sure. After all, Germany is slightly decreasing.

  And of course the ongoing stagnation in almost all of Eastern Europe, even some decrease in Poland and Bosnia (again, another country where you'd expect people to seek refuge in religion...). Given the high ratio of population to publishers, they would need considerable growth to catch up to the rest of Europe - but it's just not happening.
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  55

  Do You Own A Firearm? Would You??

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  2013 was a record breaking year for firearm purchases.

  2014 is supposed to be a record breaker for ammunition.. do you own a firearm?

  but i support that right for others---if they are qualified..

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  mariu

  I had an uncle-in-law who had a 45 pistol that he had gotten from a German when fightimg in ww2. He was a drunk that got mean with his wife and once tried to shoot her with it. For some reason it didn't fire that time.

  He probably tried to fire .45 ACP from a 9 mm pistol.
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  18

  No 2014 JW Yearbook (Yet as of 1-6-14)

  by pixel in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for me is very strange that the yearbook for 2014 is not out yet on the internet and/or gongregations.

  is strange to me because it is a book that comes annually, and no word yet from the borg of it.

  you don't expect something like that from the wt/fds/gb to be dlayed that much.. it makes me wonder, what's going on???

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  mariu

  I'm all for fantasizing about spectacular reasons for the yearbook delay (wild shouting matches in the secret GB meeting room over the partaker numbers, Downfall-style!), but Occam's Razor tells me to agree with jwfacts and Oubliette.

  If you think the sheeple care about partakers or other statistics so much that they'd become nervous about it, you've forgotten your JW self. They can just stop printing them. They can apply a spirit-directed correction factor to make them look better. They can publish them as is and nobody will care, but everybody will just LOVE those great, uplifting experiences from the oppressed brothers in Tazabadamuthingistan.
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  14

  Leaving a church in Germany?

  by Nika Bee in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have a technical/bureaucratical question for anyone in germany who has experience with this.. the background is, i got baptised as a jw as a teenager in germany, then moved to the us, where i daed.. from my research on the internet, i seem to understand, that when you get baptised in germany, they inform the appropriate authority depending on the state you live in, in bavaria this would be the "standesamt".

  is that correct?

  or does one have to do this by oneself?

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  mariu

  Jeffro, the so-called "church tax" in Germany is effectively a membership fee that goes to the religion, not a tax that goes to the state.

  Basically, religions with the status of "Körperschaft öffentlichen Rechts" can use the state's tax system to collect these fees from everyone who's registered as a member. The state transfers the collected money to the religious organisation, it just charges a small percentage for the administrative effort.

  The JWs have repeatedly stated they won't use this service. Because they're different from Christendom and don't do tithing and yada yada.
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  7

  Driver license abroad, question.

  by jam in

  1. social
  2. current

  today a bill was pass to issue driving license for illegals here.

  in california.

  wouldn't issue him a driver license.

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  mariu

  For tourists, most countries accept the licences issued by other countries without problems.

  For residents, the usual rule is that you need to get a local licence after a few months. In some cases it's a simple formal procedure, in other cases you need to take a course and/or test.

  The so-called International Driving Permit (IDP) is not a scam per se, it's simply a translation to a standardised format defined in an international treaty. It doesn't have any magical powers, it's just to make sure that everyone understands your licence (which could be difficult otherwise if it's written in Arabic or Chinese, for instance).

  Note that many countries have dedicated ID cards, so the driving licence isn't considered "the" ID as it is in the US.
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  16

  "Worlds Apart" A danish movie about a young coming of age Jehovahs Witness , screening on SBS2 tonight in Victoria

  by smiddy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i know their have been screenings of this movie before , but this notice is for any newbies here that may not have seen it previously.

  it is scheduled to screen at 10:25 pm on ch.32 sbs2 sun.25/8/13 .

  maybe other states in australia can view it on-line , or request it be shown by sbs in their state.. it is an interesting movie , and apart from minor flaws , pretty accurate despite the beard,though i am told the danes are a bit more liberal than the west.. the real / actual jehovahs witness this story is based on has a cameo appearance near the end of this movie in the train sequence.. please let me know if you watch it and your thoughts about it .. smiddy.

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  mariu

  Funny how some people got all hung up on the beard thing - yes, in Scandinavia it's quite possible to see elders with beards.
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  42

  Why do all the COs have food intolerances/allergies/special dietary requirments?

  by Julia Orwell in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it's a well known phenomenon i've observed from jwn, my own cos. a new co we had once who was fresh from being a normal elder and after a couple of visits he said, "well i've finally become a true co...i now have food intolerances.".

  i mean, only once did my husband and i ever have a co around for dinner and they couldn't eat this, he couldn't eat that, she couldn't eat this...it was so hard to cook something with none of the zillions of things they were 'allergic' to.. and then after all that the wife couldn't come anyway because she had a naturopath appointment or something.. why do all co's seem to have weird dietary problems?.

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  mariu

  Is it just the COs? I was under the impression that JWs (especially the women) have a stunning incidence of all kinds of digestive tract problems. Allergies, intolerances, irritable bowel syndrome and whatnot.

  My guess is that some of it is psychosomatic, and some of it is because the same people tend to be into alternative medicine where these things are a popular "diagnosis" for everything. (And some of it of course because it's a good enough excuse to skip meetings or field service )
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  56

  Another non-JW reacts to Sparlock video

  by cedars in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-ssv2nh0rc.

  and two weeks ago i highlighted another video where sparlock helped an ex-mormon.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmesmlhydru.

  though it still depresses me to think of all the young ones (including my own relatives) falling under the influence of this dangerous piece of propaganda, it's at least some small comfort that the sparlock video is backfiring so dramatically among thinking non-jws.. .

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  mariu

  The Sparlock video was recently brought up (again) on Reddit's front page:

  http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ibzjb/jehovahs_witness_childrens_cartoon_about/
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  8

  Relative technical sophistication of religious websites

  by besty in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a quick summary of website trackers used by:.

  jw.org - 0 trackers (not even google analytics - wow - they really are in broadcast mode) pagerank 5. mormon.org - 5 trackers - incl.

  2 kinds of visitor analytics - they are spending $$ on this as a pro-active campaign with measurable results - pagerank 6. churchofgod.org - similar to jw.org - pagerank 4. adventist.org - google analytics only - pagerank 6. catholic.org - 26 trackers incl.

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  mariu

  catholic.org is very obviously not an official church website, while all the others are. Actually, it looks like a content farm.
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  52

  Great refutation of Watchtower's "Origin of Life" and "Was Life Created?" brochures

  by Third Eye Open in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  link: http://www.mediafire.com/?fzjmfambyro0fof.

  the essay linked above was written specifically to address the new creationist brochures that were put out by the watchtower at this year's district convention.

  the goals of the essay are the following:.

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  mariu

  Oh wow, thanks for bumping this. Very well written.

  Reminds me of Jan Hauglands thorough dissection of one of those WTS evolution tracts/books - it wasn't done from the biology perspective, but rather showing all the misrepresentations and out-of-context quotes they used systematically throughout the entire thing. Must have been more than 10 years ago, I can't seem to find the full text now. This, to me, was the thing that shattered the whole myth of JWs being "honest bible researchers".