TrueTomHarley

The one exception is my sweatshirt reserved for special occasions sporting the logo Supplemented with a small image at lower right of a hen

I think you have to stretch it to say the kid is “big business.” This is a kid who hustles, and @James Thomas Rook Jr.is not wrong to give him an attaboy. Still, jw.org itself would not countenance it. They are on record as to how they feel about use of their copywrited images. To be sure, they probably have bigger fish to fry. To me it is distasteful to wear anything like that—I am not a billboard. Still, people are like that everywhere and there is no sense in making a big issue over it. Look at how many people wear logos of commercial products or their favorite team.

“Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell tries to raise up the little guy. But It takes unnecessary shots in the process,” said the Time review. Readers weren’t having any of it. “For some reason the same media that helped try to destroy this guy is pretty lukewarm on the movie about it,” tweeted Dan. “Stephanie Zacharek is one of those writers that's more interested in [dissing] someone who doesn't fawn over the press than getting her facts straight,” added Penny. William darkly warned: “Beware of journalists angry over this movie. Let's hope they do not become violent because of it.” Richard Jewell was a security guard at the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. He spotted an abandoned backpack. It looked suspicious. He reported it and authorities had enough time to start evacuating the area before it exploded. One died and over 100 were injured yet it could have been far worse. His actions saved dozens, if not hundreds, of lives. For a time he was a hero. But then the FBI began to suspect him. When it did, the Atlanta newspaper poured gas on rumors—and his life accordingly went up in flames. For months he faced media frenzy wherever he went. Stephanie describes him as “portly and friendly” a man who is a bit odd, still “a zealously upstanding citizen with dreams of someday working in law enforcement....[with] no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.” He died at 44. Can anyone think his undeserved pariah-ship did not hasten his death? Dmin let out a tentative feeler: “I have often wondered if Richard Jewel was someway under suspicion as a result of "fat shaming"? If he had been more movie star perfect would his actions have brought the same scrutiny and speculation?” One can also read “job shaming” to the list—Jewell is a wannabe cop, not a real one, “shamed” in the same way that mall policemen are “shamed.” One might even add “class shaming”—Jewell was single and lived with his mother. Was it a rush to judgment from someone who was none of these things—a jab from one perceived to had “made it” in life toward one who had not? Probably the ones who commented were people like me—people who saw events unfold in real time and were aghast at the zeal with which the big little man was crucified. The movie is a “well-acted picture about a clear act of injustice against an innocent man. So why does it leave such a sour aftertaste?” asks the reviewer. I will venture that it does not to anyone other than a journalist. It does to reviewer Stephanie because it is one of her own who is skewered, the late reporter Kathy Scruggs. She’s not painted fairly, is the complaint, as though the purpose of the movie—of any movie—is to celebrate fourth estate journalism. The more I read the review, the more fed up I become. The profession that points the finger at everyone else has the thinnest skin of all when even one of the three fingers points back. She writes: “Eastwood shows the utmost compassion for Richard Jewell, the wrongfully accused little guy. But his generosity stops there, and he shows particular vitriol and distaste for Scruggs. She is played as “a brazen smarty, a seasoned pro who zips from here to there, wherever the sirens take her. Her blouse may be unbuttoned a little too low, her skirt is perhaps a bit too short, but it’s all part of the game, and of her personal style. You can certainly make the case that Scruggs ran with the Richard Jewell story too soon, or used poor judgment in revealing his name. But all Eastwood can see is the vixen journo who’ll do anything for a story.” I think that’s all most people can see in the wake of a speculative hit piece that destroys a person—while their sympathy wears thin with regard to the one who does it. “Scruggs—who died in 2001—was a real person” [as though Jewell was not]. Furthermore, “she’s no longer here to defend herself” [as Jewell was, but it did’t do him a bit of good in the face of a journalistic assault]. It’s clear where Ms Zacharek’s sympathy lies. Was the woman reporter truly a “brazen smarty?” Family and friends say no—she wouldn’t go so far as the implied trading of sex for a story—though they all agree on attributes such as “ball-busting,” “profane,” “loud,” “brash,” “liked to party,” “smoked like a chimney,” fond of “Johnie Walker Red,” noteworthy for her “short skirts.” No crime in those things, but one might almost think a director could be cut some slack for confusing a person who so closely resembles a brazen smarty with an actual one that he couldn’t tell the difference. Incredibly, a Scruggs colleague mourns that stress over the article is what killed her—oblivious to the collateral damage that takes out Jewell. “It destroyed her," she says quietly. Then she recalls a pivotal time that Scrugg’s editor “told her she needed to apologize. Instead, she quit." That’s what will infuriate anyone who is not a journalist. ‘Just apologize,’ the editor says. She can’t do it. A real genuine “loud” and “brash” swan dive of a public apology was all that was needed—it always worked for Ralph Kramden. Jewell would have forgiven it all—and if not him, then everyone else—for we all make mistakes and everybody knows it. She couldn’t do it. Look, everyone sticks up for their own. It is to be expected. It is not wrong of Stephanie to do that. It is even commendable, so long as it does not overshadow everything else. Let Eastwood apologize to her if he is inclined—no harm in that, I don’t think. Warner Brothers outright refuses to. The movie states up front that certain historical events have been dramatized, they point out, as they always are in movies—what is it with people who cannot apologize? Would not life be so much more agreeable if they could? To be sure, sometimes the one seeking apology seeks considerably more than apology; sometimes what is sought is acquiescence to every aspect of a point of view, but apologies can be worded to not go that far if that is what is desired. Maybe no one apologizes anymore for fear lawyers will pounce upon one as a sure admission of guilt. From the beginning of cinema, directors have that realized a movie needs a villain—otherwise the audience falls asleep. It can’t be all earnest people doing their level best and yet it all goes to hell anyway—what would that say about the world we are supposed to feel good about? What about Sully, another Eastwood movie, that painted the FAA as the villain? Did that one bother the Time reviewer? In fact, the FAA accepted from the beginning that Sully was a hero and did not hassle him at all, but Eastwood needed a villain and—come on! who makes a better villain than the government? Another Eastwood movie (A Perfect World) even took a shot a my people, and you didn’t hear me complain about it (much), did you? “We have a higher calling,” the Jehovah’s Witness mom says as she disallows her kids to go trick or treating. No Witness in 1000 years is going to say, “We have a higher calling” to her kids—they simply don’t talk that way—so I knew that it was not personal with Eastwood. He just needed a villain. You didn’t catch JWs trying to torpedo A Perfect World on that account, do you, the way the press is waging war against this movie for touching one of its own? John Hafley I can picture snorting out coffee through his nose. “Are you kidding me, Time? unnecessary shots?” he tweets of the review. “It is a fantastic historic review of how power and the press can destroy the innocent for sex and money. The strong will do what they can, the weak will suffer what they must.” He doesn’t even extend the benefit of the doubt to the reporter, so caught up is he with the plight of the victim.

JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid Respectfully yours, Alan JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid JWI is stupid Respectfully yours, Allen

When the cake deteriorates into crumbs, it is no longer a cake, and my wife rolls it into the casserole for dinner the next day. Accepted as such. That’s why the same cry of ‘foul’ is made for JTR’s sigh.

HELP!! HELP!! ABUSE!! WHERE IS THE LIBRARIAN?? (THAT OLD HEN)

HELP!! HELP!! ABUSE!! WHERE IS THE LIBRARIAN?? (THAT OLD HEN)

No, they are banned and prosecuted in Russia on account of their friends. Even that is largely a straw man issue. Child sexual abuse is the premiere export of the planet, No group is unaffected. The lists that you carry on about began as efforts to snuff it out in the congregation and make sure that molesters could not simply slip undetected from one congregation to another, as they could (and still can) anywhere else. Nobody else has faces charges of not reporting it of members because nobody else has ever endeavored to keep track of it.

How about, “And she said unto him, ‘It’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients’”? (1 Bettycrocker 5:9)

We kicked religion around mightily in those days because they would try to run us off the road. Place a tract in a Catholic neighborhood and the priest would follow-up on the householder and demand he relinquish it! Frankly, if Babylon the Great has “fallen,” I think we had a lot to do with it. Yet we continue to do all we can to diss the church. It is not inappropriate, but it works to the exclusion of recognizing that our enemies today come from somewhere else. Why kick the old lady while she is down? We kicked her while she was up, and now she becomes just one of several detractors and I think not the most powerful one. On the anti-JW websites, there are occasionally small areas like that where Witness hails from that are still religious. But by far the pattern is to go and discover a complete lack respect whatsoever of God on these sites, much less a fear of him. Atheism is all the rage today, or an agnosticism that so closely resembles it that not all can tell the difference—belief in God is okay so long as it doesn’t cause any significant deviation from the thinking and goals of today’s secular world. Anything that does cause deviation is a “cult.”

They have said that they were not behind the ban, and I tend to take them at their word. That is not to say that they did not jump up and down like kids on Christmas morning. They did. But with a certain amount of reserve, because in an irreligious world, the target will eventually be them. I believe it is an anti-cult movement, primarily irreligious, that spearheads the persecution of us, and then the ROC jumps onboard with a MeToo endorsement. I wrote about it a lot in Dear Mr. Putin, and stories such as these were a prime source: https://www.scientologyreligion.no/blog/daily-caller-exposes-french-campaign-behind-russias-ban-of-jehovahs-witnesses.html https://www.standleague.org/news/french-government-confronted-on-its-funding-of-religious-hate.html I also think that we don’t see it primarily because we put blinders on ourselves by fleeing from whatever is “apostate.” Apostates embrace much of this. They don’t go back to the Church. They go in for “anti-cultism.” The present stand may be scriptural—and as scriptural, it will carry the day—but a downside is that it deprives us of seeing just who the enemy is. This departs from JWI’s thread and I don’t want to derail it. He’s “earned” his right to float the ideas that he does, and I sometimes wonder what I would be doing if I had the Bethel background that he does. Everyone brings a different gift. Chronology is not my gig, and I have written that all those dates circa 1900 are like that time you missed the nail with the hammer, and in frustration, swung several times more, again missing each time. That’s flippant, of course, but it just represents my tip of the hat to let others haggle it out. I’ve no problem with him doing it. He’s put the work into it and is not like 95% of those who carry on about 607–who wouldn’t know a Babylonian conquest from a pin cushion were it not for an opportunity they sense to make it hot for JWs and who get their heads around it only enough to satisfy that purpose. Maybe he can branch this thread off into a separate topic. He has the power and the spirit to do it, granted him by the Great Antitypical Librarian. The excerpt I quoted do not include Abrams most telling words—that (this is not an exact quote, but hopefully close) ‘when news of the verdict was announced, the clergy rejoiced. I have been unable to find any words of sympathy in any newsletters of the churches expressing any sympathy,’ and an observation that the Witnesses had made themselves “prophets of Baal” to them. And to think that I once just checked the book out of the library, avoiding the $50 cost. It was the 2009 edition, which Abrams expanded to include the Vietnam War, and possibly not all the quotes regarding the Atlanta doings are there. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/enemies.html Rats. This post has quotes from PPA but not the ones regarding the trial. It is back there somewhere in the archives.

Do someone a favor on eBay. (not me)—buy the book Preachers Present Arms: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Preachers-Present-Arms-Watchtower-Research-Jehovahs-Witnesses-Bible-Students-/392264778720 “Years later, in the book Preachers Present Arms, Dr. Ray Abrams observed: “It is significant that so many clergymen took an aggressive part in trying to get rid of the Russellites [as the Bible Students were derogatorily labeled]. Long-lived religious quarrels and hatreds, which did not receive any consideration in the courts in time of peace, now found their way into the courtroom under the spell of war-time hysteria.” He also stated: “An analysis of the whole case leads to the conclusion that the churches and the clergy were originally behind the movement to stamp out the Russellites.”—Pp. 183-5. “And the Revelation book states : In his book Preachers Present Arms, published in 1933, Ray H. Abrams refers to the clergy’s bitter opposition to the Bible Students’ book The Finished Mystery. He reviews the clergy’s endeavors to rid themselves of the Bible Students and their “pestilential persuasion.” This led to the court case that resulted in sentencing of J. F. Rutherford and seven companions to long years of imprisonment. Dr. Abrams adds: “An analysis of the whole case leads to the conclusion that the churches and the clergy were originally behind the movement to stamp out the Russellites. In Canada, in February, 1918, the ministers began a systematic campaign against them and their publications, particularly The Finished Mystery. According to the Winnipeg Tribune, . . . the suppression of their book was believed to have been directly brought about by the ‘representations of the clergy.’” One thing I find frustrating is that, while church leaders were instigators of trouble against us back then, this is not true today, and yet we carry on as though it were. Enemies are mostly irreligious now, yet we carry on as if it can only be religion behind our opposition. It is a living in the past and can be seen even in the sample silhouette presentation in which the householder says that he prefers his Bible—the King James Version. Nobody uses the KJV today but the reddist of the rednecks.

It made me so mad that I told him to return it to me. Grandpa was turning over in his grave and I got tired of wearing a sundial. Write it, but whatever you do, don’t hawk it here on the Librarian’s website. It is so shameless when people do that!

I gather that the left would not be comparing Trump to Hitler, then, would they? Or will there even be a left in this new work of yours?

I can still hear our terminal manager, furious at the cost he was going to incur in equipping each bus with the new arm that jutted out from the side with flashing lights each time the bus stopped. ”Some idiot in Albany!!! And what does he stuff down everyone else’s throat? “If it saves one life, it's worth it” And now he is the hero of the year!!!! “If it saves one life, its worth it!” What won’t save at least one life? The idiot!!!”

No, you can. At least you could when I drove many years ago and I cannot imagine it being more lax today. On each run, we installed a round paper “wheel” in a recording device connected to the odometer and it would produce a record of how fast you had been driving. Quite a few brothers drive school buses today. It makes for a good retirement job. For me, it was my part time job that supported my pioneering for a few years. I would drive in the AM, work service for four hours, return to drive in the PM. Sometimes I would shoot out for another hour or so field service and that was often the most productive time of the day. I am more cognizant of my Mom’s feelings as I get older. When you put a son through college, you want some bragging rights afterwards. You want to say: “Yes, my son graduated from Such-and-Such U, and he is now doing very well for himself, thank you very much.” What she got, however, was a son that moved back in the house for a time (for I returned home, thinking surely it would be a slam-dunk interesting my parents in what I picked up spiritually), drove a school bus, and knocked on her neighbor’s doors to tell them about an oddball religion. Within the last 24 hours, I have learned of two unbelieving husbands who outright forbade their Witness spouses going door to door on account of the humiliation it would reflect back upon them, so I guess I should be grateful that I never got the same decree—not that I would have paid any attention to it. If it helps, when I was in school near the Adirondacks, a friend and I spent much time exploring the back logging roads. Once he was driving his VW bug, pulling out from such a “road” if it could even be called that, onto a deserted dirt road that was only slightly better. “Anything coming your way?” he asked me. “Only a school bus,” I said. He laughed, pulled out, and a school bus took off his front bumper. This is not bad, JTR. I get your point. Don’t agree with it, but I do get it.

Why don’t you ask him if he believes in God before you hail him as your council?

What you expect is Santa Claus This is infuriating to me. Such whiners think only of themselves. They “admitted” it long ago and if you didn’t think you were Perry Mason angling confession from the courtroom spectator you would see that. From the Revelation Climax book, published in 1988: “It is not claimed that the explanations in this publication are infallible. Like Joseph of old, we say: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Genesis 40:8)” Call those the words of people who think they cannot be wrong? For the life of me, I don’t know why this is so hard. It is as though grown adults are determined to make themselves children. Since the writers plainly state up front that they could be wrong, I take everything in that spirit. I strive to get my head around whatever they are saying & and discern how they came to think as they do because I do not want to be like Diotrophes, who “receives nothing from us with respect.” But it is all tentative—it represents to me the best thinking out there. It doesn’t mean that nobody else can think. However, since detractors here have NOTHING to show for themselves other than grumbling over how they would like to see things different, I take whatever they offer with that in mind. The GB is vigilant and they take their shepherding role seriously. They do not want to find themselves in the shoes of Lot, whose sons-in-law thought he was joking. That is why they do not say: “Here is our latest thinking. It’s probably no good, but see what you think.” No. They state what they state in recognition that “interpretations belong to God” and that they are doing their best to figure those things out.

All you really must remember is that if you got ot wrong back then you would be dismembered and your house turned into a public privy. (Daniel 2:5, 3:29) It is Holy Spirit by the truckload. Anyone else takes a wrong understanding to his grave, either through natural death or walking off a precipice with it and leading others with him. Holy Spirit makes people honest, humble, and hungry enough to continually look at Scriptures anew in light of ongoing developments. Go read @b4ucuhear‘s comment again, not just the single sentence you quoted. Read all of them. Notice how they tie together and modify each other. That is what sentences do.

Anna says 10 years and she’s just being speculative, just putzing around, with the existing arrangements. You say 10 years, I think in earnest, with a brand spanking new anointed from somewhere or other—everything new from the ground up. You are both wrong. It is ten days. Be ready.

How would that note sound if played on a piano?

For a brief time, Mike Tussin was a roommate of mine. He drove me nuts in taking literally the admonition to read God’s Word “in an undertone day and night.” In time, he learned that he had better not do it in my presence. I logged some of his exploits in No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash. He was one of the most squirrelly characters that you will ever hope to meet, and yet—people are a mix—he had the most telling common sense, knack for nailing aspects of human nature (though mixed with an odd naïveté), no fear whatsoever of man, and the ability to simplify the complex. I can hear him now explaining to someone or other just how it worked with the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, composed of anointed Christians. This would have been in the early 1970s. “They study and study their Bibles and one of them notices a point and discusses it with the others. They continue to turn it over and over. If their discussion reaches the point of agreement, that idea finds its way into the Watchtower—that’s how God’s people are fed spiritually today. “Now, in your own personal study, you may have noticed that point, too, maybe even before they did. And if this was Christendom, you’d go out and start your own religion over it.” He captured it. I like the idea of ‘they’re not the only people who can think’ as well as the notion of waiting on headship and not running ahead. Present your idea, but if it doesn’t get adopted, don’t lose your cookies over it. The ship cannot sail in every direction at once. Rumor has it that Sputnik came up for discussion at the Bethel table after 1957, but it was aborted before takeoff. Might that date not be a milestone in the last days stream of time commencing with the outbreak of World War I in 1914–a year marking the first time in history that the entire world went to war at once? Throw in the greatest plague of history, the Spanish flu of 1917, the colossal food shortages that always accompany colossal war, and viola!—one is powerfully reminded of Luke 21:10: Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.” Might 1957 Sputnik mark a mighty exclamation mark in “fearful sights and great signs from heaven?” It certainly scared the bejeebers out of the Americans, and within 3 years President Kennedy declared that the US would not play second fiddle to the Russians. They would join—and so make it—a “space race” by sending a man to the moon. It is worth a simulated launch, I guess—presenting the idea at Bethel—three GB members batted about the idea, I’m told, but I’m glad that it blew up on the pad. The “fearfulness” would have been lost on most people. Did the race have military implications? Relatively few catch the implications of anything. They take it at face value, as it was popularly repackaged just a few years later: Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before! On a flight to Damascus, Bill had a vision of such. Some strange fellow that he probably took for an angel presented the idea to him right there as he was riding in the Shatner seat. Like Saul, it disoriented him completely for a time, and the other passengers heard of the disturbance, sure enough, but witnessed nothing themselves. As a boy, I never once trembled when they launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral. I always took it in the spirit of advancing technology, advancing exploration, and so forth. It’s one of the few major accomplishments of men that has NOT been quickly put to military use—though that could ever change—the way that airplanes were. No sooner had they been invented then they were strafing the towns of Europe and dogfighting each other in the skies. In contrast to 1957, World War I was not only perceived by just about everyone, but it was instantly perceived as a negative. Probably that’s what the other GB members pointed out, sending the three Bethel “astronauts” pitching the notion hurtling off like Darth Vader in his crippled craft, careening off to the pantry for a donut or two. Hmm. Maybe an update could incorporate robocalls from the cloud. What year did they begin? Truly, they cause men to raise their faces and curse the heavens. Truly, they too, are instantly perceived as a great evil, as any time-share owner in the Everglades knows. You know, as I read the 1960 speech, I can see how the idea might come up for discussion at Bethel. Despite my innocuous take expressed about it—a take that has mostly played out (but may someday not)—there certainly were military overtones—overtones that just might make some tremble—in JFKs speech rallying Americans to support a moon launch. Everything must be considered in its own historical context. I’ve added italics to his words that play this way: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. “There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? “We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.” ..... Yes, you could read a measure of terror into that speech if you were of a mind to, though I did not as a boy. The President says: “Space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.” What are the chances of that happening?

You know, I can see how the idea might come up for discussion at Bethel. Despite my innocuous take expressed about it—a take that has mostly played out (but may someday not)—there certainly were military overtones in JFKs speech rallying Americans to support a moon launch. We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is worth a simulated launch, I guess—presenting the idea—but I’m glad that it blew up on the pad. It would have been lost on most people. Relatively few catch the implications of anything. They take it at face value—“Space: The final frontier: these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise—it’s continuing mission: to seek out new world’s, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” On a flight to Damascus, Bill had a vision of such. Some odd fellow that he took for an angel presented the idea to him right there on the Shatner wing. Like Paul, it disoriented him completely for a time, and the other passengers heard of the disturbance, sure enough, but witnessed nothing themselves. As a boy, I never once trembled when they launched a rocket from Cape Canaveral. I always took it in the spirit of advancing technology, advancing exploration. It’s one of the few accomplishments of men that has NOT been quickly put to military use, as airplanes were. In contrast, WWI was not only perceived by just about everyone, but it was instantly perceived as a negative. Probably that’s what the other—how many were there then—GB members pointed out, sending Bert and his co-astronauts scuttling off to the pantry for a donut. Robocalls from the cloud, on the other hand, ARE perceived as an instant evil, as any time-share owner in the Everglades knows.

What year did robocalls from the cloud begin besieging every man woman and child on earth, causing them to look to the heavens and curse, day and night?