JW Insider

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13, 15, 17, __ , 21, 23, what’s the missing number in the sequence?

Of course, this could be part of a sequence that goes

7, 9, __ 13, 15, 17, __ , 21, 23, 25, __ , 29, __ , 33, etc., in which case no number is missing in that portion of the sequence. (In this case it would have been a series of incrementing odd numbers from 7 where we skip odd numbers that match the prime status of the previous number.)

It's for a similar reasons that pattern recognition in AI should never be considered "set in stone" but should only be given a probability. The probability was very high that the missing number was 19, but this should be subject to change on discovery of further information.

Another example happens all the time to engineers. If you happen to sample the amplitude of a 400 Hz sine wave at time increments of once per second you could get a sequence of 0, 0, 0, 0 ... etc. If you think it's a mistake and sample it 200 times a second you could still get 7, 7, 7, 7, etc., or 0, 0, 0, 0, etc., depending on when the wave starts its peaks and troughs. But you could sample it at some odd number of increments, or accelerate and decelerate the time sampling increments and discover it is a 400 Hz sine wave. 

5 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

 I cannot believe you said / wrote this. Are you drunk ?

John, You should bring it down a few notches. I should say up front that I am not a moderator but was given some admin privileges only to be able to move posts around and keep topics better organized.

So I'm not speaking as any kind of moderator, and I do not have (or condone) the use of those kinds of privileges to discipline or censure people. People can say just about anything they want about another person's beliefs here. But we shouldn't say just anything we want about the individual. We shouldn't presume to impute bad motives or a bad state of mind (as in drunkenness).

I didn't want to respond to a matter before hearing it, so I ended up watching the video. (I use the term "watching" loosely. Because it was YouTube, I was able to turn it up to 2x speed and then repeatedly click forward on the red line so skip about 3 seconds and then watch 3 seconds over and over. This gives the general idea of a 10 minute video in just over 2 minutes.)

I thought the person sounded angry, perhaps understandably, but also very haughty. I thought it interfered with his message, if not his credibility. Seems he and his wife heard a few statements and we have no idea if he is quoting them exactly or really putting them in context. We have to allow that people have different personalities and different views and reactions, but we can't give credit to an idea just because we agree, and then discredit another view (as naive and drunken, for example) just because we disagree.

Instead, we should deal with the subject matter raised, not the specific individual's motives and state of mind.

I also fail at this. Many of us do. But I hope you aren't upset that I point it out.

It's hard to see through them but the rest of the marquee sign includes the jazz musicians that also worked with and behind these "actors" on the film Oceans 11 (1960):

[In the Lounge]

Jonah Jones

Norman Brooks

Ann Brooks

Red Norvo and Ernie Stewart Trio

Amazing. The only one that looks perfectly familiar is the A&W Root Beer can design. I'm assuming it's one of the most recent. The Sprite and Dr Pepper seem vaguely familiar. Also, old gas stations in the midwest still used that exact 7up design on tin signs that I remember well into the 70's, but I don't think I ever saw a can quite like that.

"Pearl Harbor" guava drink sounds like a can designed before the name became infamous.

On 4/25/2019 at 8:18 AM, Indiana said:

 

@The Librarian @JW Insider @Claudia Sanchez could you please make another post since this went from  Hachiko to question the loyaly of an atheist or demons.

Good point. I thought it a bit jarring that a post about a dog turned so quickly to religious questions, so I checked to see what forum it was in. It was not in a general topic forum, but is in the "Jehovah's Witnesses" open forum, and therefore I'm guessing that this is going to be a typical occurrence. By that I mean almost any topic in a JW forum might be expected to turn towards a discussion of how that topic might fit with our beliefs and experiences among JWs.

I don't know how the owners and overall moderators feel, but I'm more concerned when a topic that has nothing to do with JWs and is not in a JW forum gets turned into a discussion of Witness beliefs. I'm guessing that's not what the owner(s) hoped for.

There was a time in 1982 when there were only three ".com" addresses. (symbolics.com, bbn.com, and think.com)

The full article from which that picture above is taken does a much better job overall:

But the NSF actually made predictions in 1982 that came a lot closer to reality for the year 2000, not so much about gaming, but the effects of the Internet in general:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/26/bold-predictions-about-the-internet-from-1982/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d82663905c80

-----------quote from article until the end of the post---------------------

The report suggests that one-way and two-way home information systems, called teletext and videotex, will penetrate deeply into daily life, with an effect on society as profound as those of the automobile and commercial television earlier in this century.

We don't call it "videotex," but this sounds about right. The National Science Foundation report in question also made some surprisingly solid predictions about the Internet's broader societal and economic impact:

-- Individuals may be able to use videotex systems to create their own newspapers, design their own curricula, compile their own consumer guides.

-- Home-based shopping will permit consumers to control manufacturing directly, ordering exactly what they need for ''production on demand.''

-- There will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.

-- The blurring of lines between home and work, the report stated, will raise difficult issues, such as working hours.

 

Does she have to wear that A around her neck for the rest of her life?

(Not sure if that's a reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge or Nathaniel Hawthorne. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of "A" is.)

19 hours ago, Hankulan-Tunani said:

Does that mean that Srecko Sostar, James Thomas Rook Jr, and yourself are one and the same since you . . . Should I conclude that Witness aka James Thomas Rook Jr is more appropriate, then?

BillyTheKid46 would never say anything like that; he'd say:

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If I thought otherwise, I would say, The Librarian, JWinsider, James, and Tom are one and the same, since your . . .

JWTheologian would say it more like:

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Apr 24, 2017 - Then we must accept that JWinsider, HollyW, Ann O'maly are one and the same person?

Oh, look, the forum still has a few quotes from the original AllenSmith, which is completely different.

On 4/2/2018 at 2:21 PM, AllenSmith said:

I can say that ANNA and JWinsider can be the same person . . .

It was pretty obvious immediately who @Hankulan Tunani was, even a few months ago, well before this persona was just brought back again with a hyphen: @Hankulan-Tunani to continue the same quest.

I'm just letting you know in case you actually believed that all these (and many other) personas are fooling a lot of people. This way you might not feel the need to waste so much of your time trying to differentiate so many different personas. I still vote that we bring back the original Allen Smith with all his past "upvotes," too.

On 4/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Alan Garcia robbed the Peruvian people blind, but then again they knew he was a communist, and they voted for him.

Corruption is at least as rampant among leaders of South American countries as it is in the United States. We can see this from recent examples in Colombia, Brazil, etc., too.

But I just thought I should point out that he was not a communist. There is a communist party in Peru that hasn't gotten very far recently. But Alan Garcia was not a communist. In fact, he was a neo-liberal who ran well to the right of the Socialists. His party is considered center-left or moderate. Not that he wasn't corrupt. Parties in many countries run with promises that appeal to the socialist ideology just to get votes, but then they get in office and make deals to benefit themselves and rich cronies.

Not much of a comparison, but it reminds me of how Hitler ran a "revolutionary" campaign against imperialism, and outside interference, even labeling his party a socialist party to trick people into voting for him. But he quickly ran to the very conservative right, and began his imperialist warmongering.

In Garcia's case, it was probably more similar to a Hillary Clinton (cf. Garcia) running against a Bernie Sanders (cj. Barrantes Lingan, for example). When Garcia's first presidency ended in 1990 he was defeated by Alberto Fujimori, who ran strongly against all Socialists and Marxists and farther to the right than "centrist" Garcia. Fujimori was considered a social conservative and neo-liberal at the same time. He privatized public companies and signed contracts that allowed foreign countries (US allies, etc.) to take advantage.

Fujimori was convicted, during his presidency, for things like murder, kidnapping, embezzling millions, stealing $15,000,000 from the Treasury to give to his head of security. He rewrote the constitution to help his children, and his daughter (Keiko) ran for president in 2011. In 2018, Fujimoro's attempt at getting pardoned was overturned, and his daughter "was detained by police as part of an investigation surrounding the Odebrecht scandal and money laundering allegations that involved her 2011 presidential campaign." (wikipedia). Note that this is the same Odebrecht scandal that has brought down Garcia.

A pattern to watch out for, which we Westerners fall into all the time, is to hear about a third world scandal and immediately think of communism and socialism. Although extreme financial scandals, and hyperinflation have been just as common in right-wing governments, the West tends to play down right-wing scandals and blow up left-wing scandals. This is the way our corporate backed news is filtered through Western sources and the sources of Western allies. (Look at LIMA, for example - the alliance, not the Peruvian capital.)

Countries get a lot more Western support and become Western allies when they show they are willing to shift resources to a few people at the top. Keeping a large populace in a country poor is a proven military strategy. Controlling wealth through a few people at the top who are in bed with Western corporations is a win-win for the West. The World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] are notorious for dangling money to these types of elite and elite-supporting leaders in an effort to gain leverage over their financial system and resources, which allows for many years of financial control through debt, debt relief, and a continual encroachment of Western corporations into a country's resources and future financial infrastructure. (Guiado in Venezuela, for example, began talks with the IMF and promised more US control of oil exports.) And it's not just them. Look how Germany can loot the retirement funds of a country like Greece and then put them on "austerity" (sanctions) to keep them that way -- and control the narrative about how Greek people are just lazy and lying around in the sun. (This was a propaganda push heard for a couple of years in the USA.)

10 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I think that JWI’s intentions are obvious - to demonstrate how modern printing methods improve upon typewritten lists.

True. And such lists were plentiful . . .

Well, I still have about a dozen more such letters, 2 compete sets of Gilead class notes, talk assignments, photos, some research write-ups, some original Watchtower and Awake! artwork in various stages of completion, and a variety of notices from the Bethel Home office.

It's true don't believe that anything that went on behind the scenes at Bethel needs to remain hidden, but neither does it all need to be publicized. Revealing certain things could be unloving as it might hurt or embarrass specific living persons. But, even more it is not necessarily beneficial or loving to share all good things either. For example, I will not share entire sets of Gilead notes, even though I believe that everything taught to Gilead Students should also be available to every other Witness. But I know of Gilead Students who might feel that their privilege is somehow devalued if those who were not invited were allowed to get all the same information. Personally, I think this is an unchristian and unscriptural attitude. But, then again, most of what was taught in these particular Gilead notes is considered no longer valid doctrine anymore (a lot of Elijah class, Elisha class, Prodigal Son class, Samaritan class, Jezebel class, Ahab class, etc.). So it's really only useful for historical purposes.

For now, I'll just share a few of the more innocuous items. The next item posted will show some of the names of non-Gilead personnel involved in addressing Gilead classes. A lot of persons might have been surprised listening to a Gilead Graduation by Brother Fred Franz, and hearing him say that the graduation event was the first time he had ever met with them or addressed them.

See next post:

When I heard that the motorcycle was "sick" I remembered that I had an uncle who drove a Puch (pronounced "PUKE").

Puch 250 SGS

Circuit Overseer told a joke about how Eve would count Adam's ribs while he was sleeping to see if he had another woman.

Why get a dog or a cat? Well, big snakes gotta eat too, right?

1 hour ago, Chloe Newman said:

Nice reply ... however remember "love is not easily provoked"! (1 Cor 13:5).

A good reminder, especially in view of the assembly theme.

Afraid it gives the idea that it would have been OK to just let go even if we felt we could not hang on another minute, because we would have survived the fall anyway. After all we were never more than two feet off the ground.

The better idea is there, too, of course: that if we hang on to some anchor for our faith, in spite of the dark, raging storm of this world, that there will come a time when we see how easily and gently it will all works out, as if we were never in danger.

All in all, however, it would be good to balance this tense and confusing illustration with one that is a little more in line with Jesus' words of comfort:

(Revelation 2:2, 3) . . .. 3 You are also showing endurance, and you have persevered for the sake of my name and have not grown weary.

(Galatians 6:9, 10) 9 So let us not give up in doing what is fine, for in due time we will reap if we do not tire out. 10 So, then, as long as we have the opportunity, let us work what is good toward all, but especially toward those related to us in the faith.

(Matthew 11:28-30) 28 Come to me, all you who are toiling and loaded down, and I will refresh you. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am mild-tempered and lowly in heart, and you will find refreshment for yourselves. 30 For my yoke is kindly, and my load is light.”

Yes, we fight a fine fight of the faith against the dark forces of this system, but we have been given all the tools necessary to find joy in our daily victories. We are NOT trying to hang in there until Armageddon proves so close that it becomes the solution to our problems. That's the same as living with a date or time period in mind. Instead, we are trying to live a Christian life of joy, finding happiness in successfully conquering the weaknesses and sins of the flesh with the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, etc. It's about being the person we ought to be -- not surviving to the advent of Armageddon.

13 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

To me, this is exactly as it looks. A Bethel Member stealing unauthorized material from Bethel. Perhaps in the hope of someday using it against the Watchtower, somehow.

LOL. I'm always happy to address a challenge. In this case you have claimed that I stole unauthorized material, perhaps hoping to use it against the Watchtower, somehow.

I did not steal anything. And I'm not sure what would make certain material "unauthorized." I suppose you could argue that only material that was published in our publications was authorized. But does that mean that everything else that any Bethelite saved or collected must be destroyed? Really?

Also, this first letter I shared actually went out to a sister and was therefore "published" (with only minor alterations) and the material was reused for future letters on the topic. I have three letters from Governing Body members that were written to me personally. Should I destroy them? One was a letter of recommendation to help me get a secular job after I left Bethel. Do you really think we should be ashamed of or hide anything that goes on behind the scenes at Bethel? You think that we shouldn't talk about any of these things, or that we shouldn't share anything that was written?

You appear to be afraid that this material I saved could be used against the Watchtower, somehow. Anything that I kept, I saved out of a spirit of appreciation for the experience I had at Bethel, which was a wonderful experience. I wanted to remember it and I kept things that would help me remember it. If I had wanted to find a way to use them against the Watchtower, I don't think I would have waited about 40 years to share them.

I admit that I have also shared experiences from Bethel that we could (and should) learn from. Even a negative experience could be profitable to others. I find that most people hold back on this count because they think that certain types of negative experiences cannot be profitable to anyone. This flies in face of scripture. Did Paul hold back from telling the Galatians and Corinthians about negative experiences? Did Jesus hold back? Did not Paul say we should be imitators of Paul himself?

(Acts 20:20) while I did not hold back from telling you any of the things that were profitable . . .

(1 Corinthians 10:6-12) . . .Now these things became examples for us, in order for us not to desire injurious things, as they desired them. 7 Neither become idolaters, as some of them did; just as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink. Then they got up to have a good time.” 8 Neither let us practice sexual immorality, as some of them committed sexual immorality, . . .  11 Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for a warning to us upon whom the ends of the systems of things have come. 12 So let the one who thinks he is standing beware that he does not fall.

(1 Corinthians 4:14-5:6) 14 I am writing these things, not to put you to shame, but to admonish you as my beloved children. . . .  16 I urge you, therefore, become imitators of me. . . . 18 Some are puffed up with pride,. . . 5 Actually sexual immorality is reported among you, and such immorality as is not even found among the nations. . . 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven ferments the whole batch of dough?

Neither Jesus nor Paul held back from sharing things that were profitable, both old and new.

(Matthew 13:51, 52) . . .” 52 Then he said to them: “That being the case, every public instructor who is taught about the Kingdom of the heavens is like a man, the master of the house, who brings out of his treasure store things both new and old.”

(Mark 4:22) . . .For there is nothing hidden that will not be exposed; nothing is carefully concealed that will not come out in the open.

The experience file he mentioned contained approximately the following headings at the time:

Here's one that Brother Swingle wrote to the whole department:

I was looking for some tax papers today, and found a stack of about 500 pages in my own filing cabinets. These were items from Brooklyn Bethel that I hadn't looked at in nearly 40 years. Thought someone else might get a kick out of them before I toss most of them out. One includes a first draft example of an actual assignment given to someone who worked alongside the Writing Department but who was not actually in that Department. I thought it might give some insight to the types of assignments that a "junior researcher" might get back in those days. It's also seems so odd now that we had filing cabinets filled with clippings, photos, and unused articles and experiences back before the days of scanners and pdfs.

One two-page bit of correspondence was for someone asking about alternative medicines, quartz, Native American herbs, etc. I'll include that one first.

I'd say more, but I just heard that Notre Dame in Paris is burning, and must get back to my taxes.

14 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

they will give a child a new $ which will replace the one who ended up in the donation box.

Uhmmm. Guilty as charged!

18 hours ago, Witness said:

has any JW wondered what the world of “Christendom” thinks of what Anthony Morris did that Sunday? 

I didn't listen to Lloyd Evans / Cedars yet to see what the evidence is for Sunday, but I attended the Warwick KH on a Sunday morning (they only have one meeting there on Sunday) and Brother Morris attended the Sunday meeting there, too. He was there from the beginning to the end and was even there a bit early and stayed a bit later to talk to some of the other publishers at the meeting. As far as I could tell, it seemed this was his assigned congregation. But I wouldn't know for sure. Several of the Bethelites in Warwick travel as much as 50 miles for their Kingdom Halls. But there was another GB member, and several GB Helpers at the local KH/congregation meeting in the Warwick auditorium, and they were clearly a regular part of the congregation there.

When I was at Bethel in Brooklyn I attended the local Brooklyn Heights congregation that also met on the Bethel premises. About half the GB members attended there at one point, although Sunday attendance by them was sparse due to speaking assignments, either elsewhere around NYC congregations, or even other parts of the world. Brother Morris could easily have had a speaking assignment that day in a congregation in the town where he bought the liquor.  It seems that some are trying to make this out to be a problem that he didn't buy liquor closer to Warwick. I never saw hardly any stores of any kind near Warwick as it was mostly rural. Most Witnesses who come to visit Bethel actually stay at hotels in Mahwah, NJ and other local townships, so I don't think that it is reasonable to conclude that he was going out of his way just to hide his purchases. Witnesses in these other locales have meeting times all throughout the day. He was obviously not trying to disguise himself.

10 minutes ago, Melinda Mills said:

Who is living in May 12, 2019 already? Snopes?  

Thanks for the catch. The date would not format with the rest of the Twitter pictures and text so I retyped it myself with the now-obvious typo. It should have been Mar 12, 2019.