JW Insider

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

and yet the people who directly voted AGAINST  her—I wonder if she sacks all of them.

Last night, I was just reading some old US newspapers on newspapers.com, for 1872, 1876, 1880, etc. This was one of the most common complaints for all the state jobs every time a new party came into power. He would reappoint all the state jobs for the new party no matter how efficient or experienced the previous person had become. This worked out to be pretty much the equivalent of sacking all the persons who voted against you.

@Emma Rose,

I copied this straight from the jw-org website and the Hebrew letters appear to be fine:

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101971647

“The use of letters of the alphabet to represent numbers has led to some interesting consequences. Letters used in a compound numeral may accidentally spell out a word. Then the use of the numeral may be affected by the meaning of the word. For example, in the Hebrew system of numerals, the number fifteen should have been written as יה, which means ten plus five. (Hebrew is read from right to left.) However these are the first two letters of the word יהוה which spells out Jehovah. Since it was forbidden by Jewish law to use the name of God in vain, the Jews wrote the number fifteen as טו, nine plus six, instead.”

15 hours ago, LNN said:

 looks like there's more water than we expected on the moon

OH!

Some of what looks like water is actually "OH" not H₂O, and this hydroxyl can be a real "OH-OH."

The link you gave mentioned:

But it was unclear whether that hydrogen was in the form of hydroxyl – the chemical that makes up drain cleaners – or in the form of H2O, or water.

The NIH.gov site cites a biochemical journal about hydrogen peroxide (HOOH), which adds this:

. . . to generate hydroxyl radicals (OH.) from H2O2 has been investigated . . .

And all this, of course, was presented, just as a setup for the old H₂O₂ joke:

Player 2 leaves nothing but four I's and an E in the pool. So the rest will be fairly boring.

So, I'll play it out to the final HI (5).

Final score 933 to 585, a blowout.

19 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

There ought to be a law against only scoring 50 on an X played triple letter tile both ways—ex and ax.

True. That's one of the most exquizit moves in Scrabble.

I should have played what's below on that turn instead.

•      F R U M P I N G
•  S L E E P E R S
•              O

It would have been 89 points.

Player 2 is reduced to low scoring letters only for 77 points with anteater 22+50. And Player one comes back with probably the last 7 tile bonus play

4 minutes ago, Anna said:

@JW Insiderwhat is banjaxeds? 😂

That's what was supposed to attract the cheaters...

I'll fix it...😊

For all those on the edge of their seat wondering who will win . . .  Player2 played LYMPHOMA for only 29 points, which is answered with VIRULENT for 99+50=149.

6 minutes ago, Anna said:

I suppose you got bored with the topics being discussed right now. I know...same old same old...

Not bored. But I might be giving myself a diversion just to avoid responding. I tend to muddy the waters sometimes. Of course, I know there are probably a lot of people who want to discuss 1914 and China, maybe both under the same topic heading. 😁

I'll wait for the upcoming Neutrality talk before I say anything more on politics, though.

Just now, Anna said:

Ahhh....ok. But is he even on this forum?

j/k. Just a reference to that last book title TTH showed.

1 minute ago, Anna said:

Where is @TrueTomHarley??

It's his (Tom's) brother I'm trying to draw out.

Followed by DISAVOWS to catch the right center Triple Word score and the 7 tile bonus for 107 points.

Then PROCEED for 100 points. Then, the chance for a 9x word score if someone could find an 8 letter word --FRUMPING works-- with the remaining letters that could hit both Triple Word scores (3x3=9x). or 16x9=144 + 50=194.

As I play it, I realize that it is too easy these days to look up 7 and 8 letter words. This was not so easy the last time I played this, many decades ago, through snail mail. There should be a rule against too many 50 point bonus words, or each player will have to become better at defensive plays. In the example above, only one more Triple Word score can be played with a 50 point bonus, and this leaves player 2 in a much worse position to ever try to catch up, even though more 50 point bonuses can be played in lower scoring areas. (This is why a 'handicap' scoring system should probably be worked out to keep player one from getting too much advantage.) A

Which calls for ZODIACAL. Hey this is so fun, I might just play this one out myself.

21x3=63, plus OX (9), plus DE (3), plus ID (3) = 78 plus 50 point bonus.

Just had to add FRESHLY to the above because it catches TWO Double-Word scores, so that you get 4 times the word score (4 x 16), plus QUETZALS, plus the 50 point bonus, for a total of 64+26+50=140, and most of the high scoring letters are already used up.

Anyone else can start their own games below.

2 hours ago, Anna said:

Ok. Just testing here. But I can't find the strikethrough button.....

My edit buttons include B I U S, and the S is the strikethrough. But you don't need it. I think it's better to just erase the used tiles. Seems easier. For example, let's say I responded to QUETZAL with BANJAXED (I never knew that word before today; cheating is encouraged!). I merely erased the used letters. The problem is that it is harder to see if a mistake was made in the erasing.

0 Points - Blank tile.
1 Point - A, E, I, L, N, O, R, S, T and U.
2 Points - D and G.
3 Points - B, C, M and P.
4 Points - F, H, V, W and Y.
5 Points - K.
8 Points - J and X.
10 Points - Q and Z.

The color-codes here are

• Triple Word
• Triple Letter
• Double Word
• Double Letter

Sorry, I added the O's on the last line (after the two [blanks] instead of after the N's.

Better yet, just copy this to the next post and anyone who wants to play can just edit the first play and I will be the second player, or the first player can request another player who is on the forum. Part of scoring is to mark which letters are left and to put the scores in the appropriate columns on the right.

The only difference between this and regular Scrabble is that you choose which letters you would like, rather than picking them randomly without looking.

This was made from a Google Spreadsheet which will be shared between players so that a person with the link can edit it. (Will be sent by PM to whomever wants to play, and each updated screen can be displayed here after every valid play is made.) After any play, the player can tally up their points and will need to cross out the letters they used from the letter "pool."

The first two items are just an example. Let's say the first player plays QUETZAL in such a way that they get 120 points. (Double letter score on the Q and double word, and a 50 point bonus for using all their tiles.) Let's say the next player plays XI in such a way that the X counts for 16 (double letter) for the word AX, and 16 again for the word XI, and also makes LI, for a total of 34 points. And every letter used gets a strikethrough, or gets greyed out in the pool it was chosen from. After that play the game board would look like this:

Obviously, the first player has a great advantage in taking out the best letters. A final score will probably reflect this, and perhaps should be accounted for with a "handicap." Perhaps the handicap could be that the first play is split evenly among the two players, or a percentage of that first score is given to the player who goes second.

It's also possible in most browsers to actually just edit the game right here for each new play and then copy the final board now and then to the next post. You might need to check the scoring against an actual board, or look up the letter values on Google.

7 & 8 ... obviously!

4 hours ago, Anna said:

As it is a syncretic religion, the figure of the Virgin Mary was associated with that of the Pachamama for many of the indigenous people.

So true in many countries. That's part of what I meant when I said that ...

8 hours ago, JW Insider said:

the Catholic church had already found ways to compromise by allowing "folk" religion to continue to live alongside Catholicism, even among Catholic converts.

It seems they've found weasel-words to show that something might look like idolatry but it technically does not fall under their definition of idolatry. This is so different from the words the Bible uses such as "abstain" from idolatry, or "flee" from idolatry, or "guard yourselves" from idols. There's no room left for staying that close to idolatry but using technical definitions to claim it's not.

On 10/13/2020 at 1:49 AM, Arauna said:

Bizarre compromise from the catholic church ....... but what does one expect from one of the "man of lawlessness?"  Recently the Pope had sharmins (spiritistic native Amazonian Indians) dancing around their idols at the Vatican

https://apnews.com/article/c7a9a84f0d24444492eb0922b5349b6f

This was big scandalous news, especially among Catholic conservatives, but barely had time to get noticed before the pandemic drowned out the discussion. To touch on the original topic, native religions in Brazil have historically been persecuted with adherents being killed, massacred, and tortured.  That war between Western religion and Brazil's religions was won long ago, although the Catholic church had already found ways to compromise by allowing "folk" religion to continue to live alongside Catholicism, even among Catholic converts. Today the issue is more about civil rights for Brazil's indigenous people as they are driven from their homelands and "persecuted" for the sake of taking the timber and other resources.

The Vatican synod with the Brazilian bishops (which included presentations of native dances and even the presentation of "fertility objects") was held in October 2019. Immediately after that (also October 2019) was an interesting OCHR (Oxford Consortium on Human Rights) https://www.oxfordconsortium.org/workshop-descriptions/brazil-2019 discussing the way in which indigenous people, especially, were treated by police and national forces.

For indigenous "Amazonians" it was once Western-style religion at the point of a gun. Now it's Western-style economic [unsustainable] development at the point of a gun.

-----------------

I'm highlighting some interesting points from the Vatican article linked above:

9 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

?????? and JW's accepts his "concerns" about their future in Russia :))

Even the Devil can be right once in a while. Massimo Introvigne is already on jw.org in half a dozen places.