James Thomas Rook Jr.

News just in:

Doing the math in reverse shows that the sale price of the Watchtower Properties in Brooklyn, was

ONE BILLION TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.

 

16 minutes ago, Anna said:

That is a good point. Considering what Jehovah has to work with....can only mean it's only because of him we've come this far. I always say that.

As crusty as I am ... that has always been my viewpoint, and still is .... When the philosophical Three Stooges are continuously cringeworthy, yet accomplish what actually gets done done at the bottom, there is a LOT to be said for that.

It does bother me when I find on tax rolls in Colony Park, about 28 miles from the WHQ, multi-million dollar houses in residential areas owned by the WTB&TS, and right outside the gate of the WHQ massive tracts of land are owned by members of the Governing Body, and finances at and above the Convention level are military secrets.

Rats .... I thought I was going to be complimentary of the things we do right ... but memory is putting the kabosh on that.

I need a drink.

But ... I would rather have a bottle in front of me ... than a prefrontal lobotomy.

31 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

Pyroclastic flow in this situation I believe to be about 5 miles long in that area, and such are incredible fast, going about 430 mph+ as it travels down,

That would mean that in 60 seconds. or only one minute ... the entire flow could cover  7.1667 MILES ... or looking at it another way ... the flow could cover 5 miles in 42 SECONDS?

Is that really what you were trying to convey?

I hope my frozen nipples do not punch holes in my under shirt.

I have been thinking about using the empty flat mouthwash bottles ( I save bottles ...) and freezing water inside of them, and putting them inside my suit coat inside pockets.

It will make me look like I have a lot of chest muscles !

I will be SOOooo cool !

Years ago, I went to the funeral of a much beloved elderly Brother,  with several friends.

Steve got the idea that just before the casket was closed, we each could "pay our last respects" (literally) by each of the four of us putting a hundred dollars into the coffin. 

I was embarrassed because I only had six dollars ... so I got in line last.

Steve goes up and puts a hundred dollars in the dead Brother's suit coat pocket.

Sydney goes up and puts a hundred dollars in his suit coat pocket.

Alan goes up and puts a hundred dollars in his suit coat pocket.

Now it was my turn.

Just before they closed the lid,

I went up and removed the three hundred dollars, and replaced it with my $400 personal check.

That's how much I sweated last Saturday out in Field Service ....

I am going to have to take a small towel with me next time.

... and some deodorant!

Years ago, I read in Italy, where there is an active volcano, the townspeople took religious statues from their churches, and put them in the path of oncoming pyroclastic magma flows .... and ran like hell!

If they REALLY had faith, they would have stood behind the statues, and waited.

hMMMMmmmm ...

I thought there was only ONE unforgivable sin .....

Telling a racially offensive joke to white people ... that was NOT outrageously funny !

The problem with all financially Liberal minded groups of people ... is eventually the waterfall of free money shuts off, and when you run out of OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY, you have to start thinking rationally .... or go bankrupt.

BUT HAVE NO FEAR!

WITH THE NEWEST GOVERNING BODY MEMBER ....

HELP IS ON THE WAY !

 

 

 

It's not as if we had on our currency and coins "Don't Eat Yellow Snow" !

Which is actually a VERY good idea.

That is a really cool app .... but I wonder what the measuring tolerances are ?

You can buy a laser distance measurer for about $60, good enough for putting wrapping paper on a box, or some similar iffy thing.

I paid $925 for mine, a Lietz Disto, which is good to plus-or-minus 1/16" at  300 feet.

It depends on what your accuracy needs really are.

Even so .... I would like to see the APPS results taken from 4 different angles and disparate distances, to see if the results are the same.

11 minutes ago, The Librarian said:

ONLY $25 million in contingency funds for a global corporation? That seems staggeringly low for what I would have imagined.

One lawsuit alone in California wiped that all away.

I always wondered why the two lab mice, Pinky and the Brain, in their never ending quest to take over the world, went back to their cages in the Laboratory at night, where they were used for experiments.

I have yet to look at these  videos except to time them, and it appears that :

Video 1 = 12 minutes and 5 seconds

Video 2 = 2 minutes and 26 seconds

Video 3 = 4 minutes and 8 seconds

Video 4 = 4 minutes and 55 seconds

Video 5 = 13 minutes and 16 seconds

My guess is that this was originally one hour in length and this 36 minutes and 50 seconds is what survived after the hard data was edited out, and two years after the fact, these tapes were deliberately leaked by the GB as a "rabbit trail".

I have not checked anything, and perhaps I will sit down and ponder these things later... hopefully someone else will have done the "heavy lifting" by then.

22 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I haven't figured out why they say that donations have never been higher, and donations are down at the same time. 

It's really quite simple .......

Overlapping Donations.

I suppose "news" from 2016 is better than no news at all .....  I wonder how we are doing since the WTB&TS confiscated all the Kingdom Halls globally, and had several billion dollars Hurricane damage?

Apparently the only one that knows "jack" ... is Jack

...and that's the fact, Jack!

In the August 2018 Watchtower, on page 3, the theme is "Do you have all the Facts?"

and the Scripture in Proverbs 18:13 is specifically cited "When anyone replies to a matter before he hears the facts, it is foolish and humiliating."

... work worthy of an ex-United States Marine, and a top CIA analyst named Jack Ryan, and a credit to his creator ... Tom Clancy.

I do think it is an abominable shame that this important information is actually DELIBERATELY kept secret from the Brothers and Sisters that actually pay the bills.

This should be shown during the mid-week meetings, and on Saturdays and/or Sundays at the weekend meetings. I take two caffeine pills equivalent to four cups of coffee just before I leave for the meetings, and I STILL sleep through about half of each one. 

Saturday I had to poke my wife in the ribs (gently), as she had briefly snarfled a snore.

 

 

Otherwise the deer might have needed a "Bambulance"

 

You know Cos .... I think of myself as a very patient man ... and I like to see people reach conclusions on their own, but after exactly NINE MONTHS to the day of discussing this subject here on this thread (September 3, 2017 to June 3, 2018, which is today), I think the "pregnant pause" is ready to get water all over the floor.

There is NO SUCH THING  AS MAGIC! .. at least not in this Spacetime Universe.

Things don't happen because God thinks of things and they "just happen"

God CAUSES things to happen, and there is a real and valid mechanism by which that happens.

There is no angelic fairy fluttering around, waving a star-on-a-stick, tapping people on their shoulder, and fairy dust sparkles out, and all of a sudden someone can fly (to mix some Disney metaphors ...), or with MAGIC Pharaoh's High Priest of Ra turns his staff into a snake, and not to be outdone, Moses turns HIS staff into a bigger snake, which eats Pharaoh's snake.

There are Universal Laws of how this Universe operates, and they are NEVER violated. The difference between a candle and a hydrogen bomb is merely a difference in how well you UNDERSTAND these things, and are able to manipulate the things IN this Universe.

Already the Chinese are able to create entangled particles in orbit and teleport photons to stations separated by hundreds of miles on Earth, and those particles are able to communicate with each other INSTANTANEOUSLY across not only that distance, but if they were 29 billion light years apart, the communication would STILL be instantaneous ... which for those in Rio Linda, is faster than the Universal speed limit of approximately 186,000 miles per second.

When Jehovah, with his Infinite (compared to us...) understanding of "how things tick", wants to effect any remote change ... in this Universe ... there is is an exchange of energy and forces that makes that change possible .... whether it is healing a lame man's legs, resurrecting the dead, or creating a dry path across the seas for Moses and 5 million people to cross.  Sometimes the menu choices on the other side get a bit bland after 40 years, ... but that is another subject.

The point is, that there has to be an exchange of particles, waves and other energies to erect a double wall of water on both sides of escaping escaping Israelites ... and that is the function of the Holy Spirit.  

It is the "breath" of God that blows the water, and breathes life back into the dead ... but it is NOT a miracle .....

A "miracle" is NOT something that Jehovah God or his remote agents do.  Miracles are miracles BECAUSE they are so very, very IMPROBABLE when we see them occur, and it is because God has CAUSED something to happen outside of our normal range of experience.

There was absolutely NO magic involved. 

Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo.

There are MANY Youtube videos on "Feynman Diagrams", that illustrate how we KNOW this is the way the Universe really works.

It would be worth ANYONE'S TIME to see perhaps a dozen of them to get a feel for how the Universe REALLY works.

Instead of wasting your time "arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin", as they used to do in the Middle Ages, FOR NINE MONTHS (!) ... find out what is REALLY going on .

We have enough understanding of Quantum Physics to make tunneling diodes in our color TV sets, where energies go outside the Universe to do a "quantum leap" from one side of an electronic diode to another ... without ...WITHOUT ... traveling the distance between the two spaces, and we know how to slow down the speed of light to about 38 miles per hour through a Bose-Einstein Condensate .... and Jehovah knows a LOT more about Quantum Physics that we will ever know (presumably).

Perhaps one day we will understand it like it used to be understood in ancient civilizations, such as Egypt ... but one of the KEY ingredients of Holy Spirit is the ability to CHANGE even memories and thought processes ... to teach and to instruct.

This is the famous "minus8pialpha" Feynman Diagram that was shown on TBBT years ago and it shows two sub-atomic particles coming together in time, and how each interacts with the other ... with an explanation.

EVERYTHING that happens in this Universe is the direct result of cause, and effect ... and there are NEVER any exceptions ... ever !!

Holy Spirit is the active FORCE from God that CAUSES the effect.

Perhaps one day, if we ever get smart enough, we can make a Feynman Diagram to study the details of HOW that happens.

 

As Carl Childers said in the movie "Sling Blade" ....

"Get it?"

 

 

Amazing how they used the uniform background as a "green screen" .... I did have to disable tracking protection in Mozilla, to even see the video link and the video ... then I went to Youtube and downloaded it with Freemake Video Downloader.

Seeing Judge Rutherford in composite in the the background monitor was hilarious.

5 hours ago, Space Merchant said:

At the end of the day, it should be in us to know there are people who not only want to know who God is, but what the gospel as well, nothing misleading or some outlandish doctrine that is nowhere in scripture, such ones should not be ignored, let alone those who clearly do not know who God is, who is Son is, or what of the Kingdom. Jesus was very clear and concise in what he said in John 17, in order to gain eternal life, we must come to know God and who the Son is.

I firmly believe that if we as Jehovah's Witnesses stuck to just the Gospel, as written, and not all the outlandish and "problematic" theological theories whose sole purpose is to generate slavish obedience to self appointed men, artificial panic, and a sense of urgency to keep the "troops" marching ... that we would not have to spend endless hours knocking on doors of people that could not care less, or are not at home ...

They would be knocking on ours.

We have the TRUTH ... but like in any delicious, wholesome salad ... it is offensive for rational people to have to eat around the crap.

17 hours ago, Bible Speaks said:

Last hour
Strasbourg court request a order for Russia to return ownership of Jehovah's Witnesses

May 29, 2018
The judgments of the European court of human rights on the liquidation of the Jehovah's witness management centre and their communities in the regions are predictable: The Strasbourg Court will support the believers. This view was expressed by a member of the human rights council under the president of the Russian Federation, Attorney Vladimir Ryakhovsky.

In 2015 the Russian Federation passed a law that said if the ECHR made any judgements that the Russian Federation did not like ... they could legally be ignored.

We are not talking about red dot Indians laying down in front of British Tanks, and the tanks stop.

If the India Indians had laid down in front of Nazi Tanks, they would have been ground into bloody meat scraps.

" ... Last hour
Strasbourg court request a order for Russia to return ownership of Jehovah's Witnesses ...".

The Strasbourg court has its nicey-nicey request ... and the Russkies have bayonets and machine guns !

... and millions and millions of dollars of valuable former WTB&TS Real Estate.

The WTB&TS confiscated all the Kingdom Halls on Earth from the local congregations who built and paid for them several years ago.

...... everything that goes around .... comes around.

Philosophical "Karma" is quite real.

...... everything that goes around .... comes around.

Where was this, specifically?

"Positive Criticism"

Hmmmmmmm .....

Is that like "Giant Shrimp"?

or "Military Intelligence"?

or "Skinny Broad"?

or "ice water"?

or "acting natural"?

or "horror comics"?

Could be worse .... could be a Crawley Dung Beetle .....