soontobe

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Posts by soontobe

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  165

  '1600 years of Ice melting in 25 years is a bad omen'

  by designs in

  1. social
  2. current

  glaciologists from ohio state university have been studying the ice fields in peru.

  tropical peru is home to ice formations 18,000 feet up in the quelccaya region, the largest of these tropical region ice sheets.. the glacier is melting so quickly that plant samples are having to be frozen artifically so that scientists 30 years from now can have something to study, lonnie thompson from the university said in the interview.

  the ice field is the smallest it has been since the last ice age.. peruvians rely on the water from the glaciers, which will be reduced by 50% in their lifetime.

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  soontobe

  *SMH*

  From Frick to Frack and back to Frick again.
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  447

  Problems with the "Bogus AWAA Fan Page"..

  by OUTLAW in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  good afternoon jwn... .

  i`ve spent the morning and part of my afternoon... getting to the bottom of... why names were added to the awaa fan page... it`s a dangerous thing to happen in our world... faders can be outed,we can lose,family,friends... the results can be an absolute disaster... .

  aawa "did not" create the facebook awaa fan page.

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  soontobe

  Jgnat, I'm sorry for not being more clear for non-Americans. I always enjoy your contribution here.
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  9

  Neo-Nazi Buddhists persecute Muslims in Myanmar.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. social
  2. current

  in myanmar and thailand, islam is a minority religion and the buddhists are supreme.. both nations are the scene of atrocities committed by buddhists against muslims, (the difference is that in thailand, muslims have been fighting back).. this asia times report tries to analyse the myanmar problems.

  myanmar's neo-nazi buddhists get free rein: .

  (which is another way of saying that neither the government or aung san suu kyi's opposition party speaks agains the persecution).

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  soontobe

  I never got why buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation

  Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, and it has been practiced for many centuries, especially in India, for various reasons, including Sati, political protest, devotion, and renouncement. Certain warrior cultures, such as in the Charans andRajputs, also practiced self-immolation.

  Two well-known Jataka tales, Buddhist myths about previous incarnations of the Buddha, concern self-immolation. In the "Hungry Tigress" Jataka, Prince Sattva looked down from a cliff and saw a starving tigress that was going to eat her newborn cubs, and compassionately sacrificed his body in order to feed the tigers and spare their lives. In the "Sibi Jataka", King Sibi or Shibi was renowned for unselfishness, and the Hindu gods Sakra and Vishvakarman tested him by transforming into a hawk and a dove. The dove fell on the king's lap while trying to escape the hawk, and sought refuge. Rather than surrender the dove, Sibi offered his own flesh equivalent in weight to the dove, and the hawk agreed. They had rigged the balance scale, and King Sibi continued cutting off his flesh until half his body was gone, when the gods revealed themselves, restored his body, and blessed him.

  The Buddhist god of healing, the "Medicine King" or "Medicine Buddha" (Bhaisajyaguru) was associated with auto-cremation. The Lotus Sutra describes the Medicine King drinking scented oils, wrapping his body in an oil-soaked cloth, and burning himself as an offering to the Buddha. His body flamed for 1,200 years, he was reincarnated, burned off his forearms for 72,000 years, which enabled many to achieve enlightenment, and his arms were miraculously restored.

  Zarmanochegas was a monk of the Sramana tradition (possibly, but not necessarily a Buddhist) who, according to ancient historians such as Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD and burnt himself to death in Athens shortly thereafter. [7] [8]

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  40

  Your own mortality, how do you cope with it?

  by CookieMonster in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been a lurker here and an inactive jw for a number of years.

  i've always had some annoying doubts but brushed it aside but over the last few years i've had time to "think" away from the wt.

  perhaps there is no paradise, maybe no god and this life is all there is.

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  soontobe

  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14636/14636.txt

  The visible universe, the universe that is created by the instinct of self-preservation, becomes all too narrow for me. It is like a cramped cell, against the bars of which my soul beats its wings in vain. Its lack of air stifles me. More, more, and always more! I want to be myself, and yet without ceasing to be myself to be others as well, to merge myself into the totality of things visible and invisible, to extend myself into the illimitable of space and to prolong myself into the infinite of time. Not to be all and for ever is as if not to be--at least, let me be my whole self, and be so for ever and ever. And to be the whole of myself is to be everybody else. Either all or nothing!
• 
  40

  Your own mortality, how do you cope with it?

  by CookieMonster in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been a lurker here and an inactive jw for a number of years.

  i've always had some annoying doubts but brushed it aside but over the last few years i've had time to "think" away from the wt.

  perhaps there is no paradise, maybe no god and this life is all there is.

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  soontobe

  Your own mortality, how do you cope with it?

  I don't. Well, at least I don't think about it too much.

  Once I get to a point where my life isn't productive or enjoyable, I'll put an end to it. I won't be a burden. I don't intend to die in bed. I didn't get to choose being born, and who I was born to. I didn't choose the color of my skin, or eyes, height, or many other things. There's precious little to choose when it comes to these things. But I will choose when I will die (unless it's something sudden like an accident). It's my life. I will decide.

  Death isn't the big deal. It's the getting there that's bad. I've still got a few decades before I get to that point at today's life expectancies.

  At the same time, I hold the belief that my spirit is eternal.
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  23

  Are YOU More Of A "Liberal", "Conservative" or Something More In Between?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i consider myself more a "moderate" in my thinking, whether it be politically or otherwise..

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  soontobe

  I hate to see a govermenment that is so stupid as to spend about 1 million dollars studying snail reproduction when the country is broke, stuff like this needs to stop.

  That's called basic research. That's what the NSF does. Where do you think Universities get much of their research funding from? Researching snail sex sounds trivial, but it could actually help answer important questions over why higher organisms reproduce sexually versus asexually. The NSF gets only a few billion out of the budget. Not even .2 percent of the total. The budget problem isn't NSF funding.
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  70

  Unemployment is down, but why did America set a record 47.8 million on food stamps?

  by moshe in

  1. social
  2. current

  in the usa a new record was set on food stamp enrollments, which seems ironic.

  you would think as unemployment drops , food stamp usage would be dropping, too.

  maybe those government unemployment numbers are fake numbers.

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  soontobe

  Increasingly, it appears that the drop in the headline unemployment number is a mirage.

  Why do the red and blue lines move so closely together?

  

  That is from Casey Mulligan. What is actually the binding constraint in this labor market? Mulligan himself offers one hypothesis:

  A significant part of the recent reductions in the unemployment rate may reflect movements of people between safety net programs rather than any significant change in their job-finding prospects.
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  9

  Neo-Nazi Buddhists persecute Muslims in Myanmar.

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. social
  2. current

  in myanmar and thailand, islam is a minority religion and the buddhists are supreme.. both nations are the scene of atrocities committed by buddhists against muslims, (the difference is that in thailand, muslims have been fighting back).. this asia times report tries to analyse the myanmar problems.

  myanmar's neo-nazi buddhists get free rein: .

  (which is another way of saying that neither the government or aung san suu kyi's opposition party speaks agains the persecution).

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  soontobe

  The dark side of human nature is a constant, no matter what label people take for themselves.
• 
  447

  Problems with the "Bogus AWAA Fan Page"..

  by OUTLAW in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  good afternoon jwn... .

  i`ve spent the morning and part of my afternoon... getting to the bottom of... why names were added to the awaa fan page... it`s a dangerous thing to happen in our world... faders can be outed,we can lose,family,friends... the results can be an absolute disaster... .

  aawa "did not" create the facebook awaa fan page.

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  soontobe

  EP, I can't imagine what the AAWA leadership team could have done to prepare other than "all hands on deck" on launch day.

  If you are going to launch something like this new org, that means you prepare before the launch. This includes securing your identity, which these days means at least creating a placeholder on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The President's PAC, for example, didn't even bother to purchase their domain name when they announced a major relaunch. Someone bought them up on the announcement.

  http://organizingforaction.org/

  http://organizingforaction.com/

  http://organizingforaction.net

  Embarassing and amateurish. I'm sure AAWA has learned from the experience.
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  5

  A Plea for Atheists to 'Stop being Jerks' by a Republican political consultant

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  faith.

  dear fellow atheists: stop being jerksapr.

  10, 2013 12:00pmdon rasmussendon rasmussen is a texas-based republican political consultant.

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  soontobe

  Interesting billboard.

  Keep Santa Claus but dump Jesus... Jesus being the myth between the two?

  These folks don't make much sense.