TrueTomHarley

Gasp!!!!
A conspiratorially-minded person could take this confession for an admission that MM IS The Librarian!!!! Now, that would be a puzzle piece to crow about!
Just like I have progressed from being rebuked years ago for shamelessly promoting my first book, Tom Irregardless and Me, to participating here to such a degree that some think I actually own the site.
When the number of my comments surpassed those of the formerly dominating @Pudgy (under a different name) I said, ‘What’s wrong—cat got your tongue? I never thought they would surpass those of @JW Insider, but that too eventually happened.
A few dark and paranoid persons began insisting I was the owner. I denied it, but there is a certain type of person who once they get something into their heads, you can forget about ever getting it out. So I began to play along with the notion, and will continue to do so until this site shuts down, which you never know if that will happen or not. @admin was sweating it a while back about some proposed legislation that would make it hot for webmasters. Apparently, the storm blew over. Meantime, I put most of my writing on my own platform, so if this ever does go up in smoke, I go up to a lesser degree.
I dedicated In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction to @The Librarian. A writer needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain—and she has provided a playground where villains roam freely, as well as others falling in diverse places on the spiritual spectrum. It’s not always clear where they fall, but it sure is engrossing to put together the puzzle—just know, if you find you have stepped into it, you have to back out for a time. Not every one on a mission is actually on one. Sometimes, they just so closely resemble a person on one that you can’t tell the difference.
Avant-garde to carry on in this way? The entire system is avant-garde, from the slippery one who chuckles hehehe))))) as he is cast down from the heavens, to the brother who rebadges the WaPo byline as ‘Theocracy Dies in Darkness,’ to the brother who cries ‘There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is no one who has any insight; there is no one who searches for God—except me.’

I understand what you mean now.
Newspapers, for the most part, write to sell rather than write to educate. I don't really pay much attention to them, except to get a general idea of what's going on in the world. That's probably why I didn't pick up on the nuance you pointed out to me. Thanks.

Gasp!!!!
A conspiratorially-minded person could take this confession for an admission that MM IS The Librarian!!!! Now, that would be a puzzle piece to crow about!
Just like I have progressed from being rebuked years ago for shamelessly promoting my first book, Tom Irregardless and Me, to participating here to such a degree that some think I actually own the site.
When the number of my comments surpassed those of the formerly dominating @Pudgy (under a different name) I said, ‘What’s wrong—cat got your tongue? I never thought they would surpass those of @JW Insider, but that too eventually happened.
A few dark and paranoid persons began insisting I was the owner. I denied it, but there is a certain type of person who once they get something into their heads, you can forget about ever getting it out. So I began to play along with the notion, and will continue to do so until this site shuts down, which you never know if that will happen or not. @admin was sweating it a while back about some proposed legislation that would make it hot for webmasters. Apparently, the storm blew over. Meantime, I put most of my writing on my own platform, so if this ever does go up in smoke, I go up to a lesser degree.
I dedicated In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction to @The Librarian. A writer needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain—and she has provided a playground where villains roam freely, as well as others falling in diverse places on the spiritual spectrum. It’s not always clear where they fall, but it sure is engrossing to put together the puzzle—just know, if you find you have stepped into it, you have to back out for a time. Not every one on a mission is actually on one. Sometimes, they just so closely resemble a person on one that you can’t tell the difference.
Avant-garde to carry on in this way? The entire system is avant-garde, from the slippery one who chuckles hehehe))))) as he is cast down from the heavens, to the brother who rebadges the WaPo byline as ‘Theocracy Dies in Darkness,’ to the brother who cries ‘There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is no one who has any insight; there is no one who searches for God—except me.’

Loosely speaking, Srecko is my template for the character Vic Vomodog, sort of a Wily E. Coyote figure who lurks in wait of any comment about anything and converts it into yet another attempt to catch the Road Runner. Thus far, Road Runner thwarts him every time, but we do not know what tomorrow will hold. If we did, the gag would have lost its enduring appeal long ago. Vic’s perpetual attacks on the faith are not logically consistent, but I don’t worry about it because neither are Srecko’s. Anything that comes up—how can it be used against the faith? Nevermind if it is consistent with prior criticisms.
It probably never would have occurred to me but for reflection upon the inane, ‘hehehe )))))))’ he used to append to comments, ceasing the practice only after Nana Fofana (who does not appear to be here any more) began imitating the style so mercilessly, even meanly overacting a chopped style that stems from English being a second language, that he could endure it no more.
Oh, yeah: hehehe ))))))). How can one not think of Wily E. Coyote cooking up another scheme with some Acme products?

Oh, stuff it. You got your licks in. Let that be enough for you. Time to move on.  
It’s a little like @The Librarian, aptly named, whining on about the defilement of her card catalog that exists to keep order! Then someone like Pudgy comes along, and says, ‘Hey, forget order; let ‘er rip. You can be organized to such a degree that it starts to come out of your pores, like the brothers whose gestures are so similar that they begin to resemble synchronized swimming.

Hey. I was just confessing!

Loosely speaking, Srecko is my template for the character Vic Vomodog, sort of a Wily E. Coyote figure who lurks in wait of any comment about anything and converts it into yet another attempt to catch the Road Runner. Thus far, Road Runner thwarts him every time, but we do not know what tomorrow will hold. If we did, the gag would have lost its enduring appeal long ago. Vic’s perpetual attacks on the faith are not logically consistent, but I don’t worry about it because neither are Srecko’s. Anything that comes up—how can it be used against the faith? Nevermind if it is consistent with prior criticisms.
It probably never would have occurred to me but for reflection upon the inane, ‘hehehe )))))))’ he used to append to comments, ceasing the practice only after Nana Fofana (who does not appear to be here any more) began imitating the style so mercilessly, even meanly overacting a chopped style that stems from English being a second language, that he could endure it no more.
Oh, yeah: hehehe ))))))). How can one not think of Wily E. Coyote cooking up another scheme with some Acme products?

That being the case, it saves swaths of time if we can discover what are the glasses another is using.
It has been mentioned before that if one is atheist, it will so heavily influence anything they utter that you simply waste your time addressing them—unless you are speaking specifically of atheism or if you are speaking to those beyond them.  Atheism is for them the force that refreshes, and if you could demonstrate that each and every accusation against human organized worship is false, they still would say, ‘Well, there’s no god anyway.’ So why should you go there with them? What you as a Christian view as commendable delayed gratification they view as a woeful and willful flushing of one’s life down the toilet. When you say, ‘Well, every project needs headship, so I’ll cooperate with these people,’ they say, ‘They’re even more deluded than you! Cult leaders, through and through! The farther you can get from them, the better.’
Within the realm of religion, find out if the other believes we’re in the last days, for it will so heavily influence anything they say as to make any other criticism of theirs irrelevant. There is no sense swatting the water downstream, for it is immediately replaced. Unless you go to the source—are we in the last days or not?—any subsequent conversation, unless it is directed at those lying beyond, is fruitless. The entire ‘life boat’ scenario that so much Witness action and thinking depends upon is absurdity to them. Addressing some controversy about ‘Tight Pants Tony’ as though that was something that really troubled them, is just spitting into the wind. Even if you win, you haven’t gotten anywhere. I’ll wear pants the size of parachutes if it fits in with lifeboat protocol. 
Find out, as soon as possible, how they feel about ‘the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.’ Many people, even those religious, are repelled by the thought—how could God be so mean! they say. Find this out as soon as you can, because it will determine much of what they subsequently say and, again, you can find yourself quibbling with a point so far downstream—critiques over how Witnesses do this or that—as to quibble all day over a comparative nothing.
And, Lord knows, find out whenever you can if the person is ‘Proud to have come out of the closet’ gay, because if he or she is, you don’t stand a chance in discussing anything involving traditional morals as found in the Bible. Whatever you are debating, with you thinking that if you can make the point it may stick will not. Their ‘sexuality’ trumps all else.
All the above are largely matters of the heart, not the head. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This leads the unobservant to think the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. This is why one might buck at ‘rationality’ as the be-all and end-all. Rationality offers good insight into the head, but poor insight into the heart.
The best talks and writings are those that, while not ignoring the head, appeal primarily to the heart. Jesus did things that would infuriate any strict devotee of reason. He routinely spun parables that he declined to explain—let the heart figure it out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. He answered questions with counter-questions. Try doing that with a modern ‘critical thinker.’ He launched ad hominem attacks. People may say that the ad hominem attacks of Matthew 23 are not really ad hominem attacks because the scribes and Pharisees actually were that way, but this wlll be said by anyone launching such an attack.
Allen Guelzo the historian lectures about how subjective history is, not at all how most of us suppose it. We get a hint he may be right when we recall the expression, ‘History is written by the victors,’ but he greatly expands on the idea by including new trends and waves of thinking among the ‘victors.’ That’s why (he does not make this point, but likely would if his lectures were given today) Americans pull down statues of Columbus and the forefathers that they once put up. History has (once again) flipped. The good guys have become the bad guys.
But doesn’t our modern day critical thinking solve the problem of subjectivity? he asks. No, it only makes the situation worse, he says, because it repackages our dubious biases as laudable critical thinking. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity,” Dale Carnegie said. The trouble with critical thinking is that those who most heavily advocate it too often assume they have a lock on the stuff.
Accordingly, while your remarks must make sense so as not to explode the head, to go exclusively there is to miss where the action is. It is the heart that is the seat of motivation. One may be dubious of a discussion that appears purely intellectual, as though coming across ones fighting a battle that does not matter.
 

This is true of Isaac Asimov, who died of AIDS from a blood transfusion. I discovered this in writing up a post about him. It wasn’t widely known—his family hushed it up. And it was not acquired until his later years. All the same, it’s not a nice way to go, it probably shaved a dozen or more years from his life, and who knows what he might have written in that time:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2007/07/isaac-asimov-an.html

That being the case, it saves swaths of time if we can discover what are the glasses another is using.
It has been mentioned before that if one is atheist, it will so heavily influence anything they utter that you simply waste your time addressing them—unless you are speaking specifically of atheism or if you are speaking to those beyond them.  Atheism is for them the force that refreshes, and if you could demonstrate that each and every accusation against human organized worship is false, they still would say, ‘Well, there’s no god anyway.’ So why should you go there with them? What you as a Christian view as commendable delayed gratification they view as a woeful and willful flushing of one’s life down the toilet. When you say, ‘Well, every project needs headship, so I’ll cooperate with these people,’ they say, ‘They’re even more deluded than you! Cult leaders, through and through! The farther you can get from them, the better.’
Within the realm of religion, find out if the other believes we’re in the last days, for it will so heavily influence anything they say as to make any other criticism of theirs irrelevant. There is no sense swatting the water downstream, for it is immediately replaced. Unless you go to the source—are we in the last days or not?—any subsequent conversation, unless it is directed at those lying beyond, is fruitless. The entire ‘life boat’ scenario that so much Witness action and thinking depends upon is absurdity to them. Addressing some controversy about ‘Tight Pants Tony’ as though that was something that really troubled them, is just spitting into the wind. Even if you win, you haven’t gotten anywhere. I’ll wear pants the size of parachutes if it fits in with lifeboat protocol. 
Find out, as soon as possible, how they feel about ‘the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.’ Many people, even those religious, are repelled by the thought—how could God be so mean! they say. Find this out as soon as you can, because it will determine much of what they subsequently say and, again, you can find yourself quibbling with a point so far downstream—critiques over how Witnesses do this or that—as to quibble all day over a comparative nothing.
And, Lord knows, find out whenever you can if the person is ‘Proud to have come out of the closet’ gay, because if he or she is, you don’t stand a chance in discussing anything involving traditional morals as found in the Bible. Whatever you are debating, with you thinking that if you can make the point it may stick will not. Their ‘sexuality’ trumps all else.
All the above are largely matters of the heart, not the head. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This leads the unobservant to think the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. This is why one might buck at ‘rationality’ as the be-all and end-all. Rationality offers good insight into the head, but poor insight into the heart.
The best talks and writings are those that, while not ignoring the head, appeal primarily to the heart. Jesus did things that would infuriate any strict devotee of reason. He routinely spun parables that he declined to explain—let the heart figure it out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. He answered questions with counter-questions. Try doing that with a modern ‘critical thinker.’ He launched ad hominem attacks. People may say that the ad hominem attacks of Matthew 23 are not really ad hominem attacks because the scribes and Pharisees actually were that way, but this wlll be said by anyone launching such an attack.
Allen Guelzo the historian lectures about how subjective history is, not at all how most of us suppose it. We get a hint he may be right when we recall the expression, ‘History is written by the victors,’ but he greatly expands on the idea by including new trends and waves of thinking among the ‘victors.’ That’s why (he does not make this point, but likely would if his lectures were given today) Americans pull down statues of Columbus and the forefathers that they once put up. History has (once again) flipped. The good guys have become the bad guys.
But doesn’t our modern day critical thinking solve the problem of subjectivity? he asks. No, it only makes the situation worse, he says, because it repackages our dubious biases as laudable critical thinking. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity,” Dale Carnegie said. The trouble with critical thinking is that those who most heavily advocate it too often assume they have a lock on the stuff.
Accordingly, while your remarks must make sense so as not to explode the head, to go exclusively there is to miss where the action is. It is the heart that is the seat of motivation. One may be dubious of a discussion that appears purely intellectual, as though coming across ones fighting a battle that does not matter.
 

That being the case, it saves swaths of time if we can discover what are the glasses another is using.
It has been mentioned before that if one is atheist, it will so heavily influence anything they utter that you simply waste your time addressing them—unless you are speaking specifically of atheism or if you are speaking to those beyond them.  Atheism is for them the force that refreshes, and if you could demonstrate that each and every accusation against human organized worship is false, they still would say, ‘Well, there’s no god anyway.’ So why should you go there with them? What you as a Christian view as commendable delayed gratification they view as a woeful and willful flushing of one’s life down the toilet. When you say, ‘Well, every project needs headship, so I’ll cooperate with these people,’ they say, ‘They’re even more deluded than you! Cult leaders, through and through! The farther you can get from them, the better.’
Within the realm of religion, find out if the other believes we’re in the last days, for it will so heavily influence anything they say as to make any other criticism of theirs irrelevant. There is no sense swatting the water downstream, for it is immediately replaced. Unless you go to the source—are we in the last days or not?—any subsequent conversation, unless it is directed at those lying beyond, is fruitless. The entire ‘life boat’ scenario that so much Witness action and thinking depends upon is absurdity to them. Addressing some controversy about ‘Tight Pants Tony’ as though that was something that really troubled them, is just spitting into the wind. Even if you win, you haven’t gotten anywhere. I’ll wear pants the size of parachutes if it fits in with lifeboat protocol. 
Find out, as soon as possible, how they feel about ‘the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.’ Many people, even those religious, are repelled by the thought—how could God be so mean! they say. Find this out as soon as you can, because it will determine much of what they subsequently say and, again, you can find yourself quibbling with a point so far downstream—critiques over how Witnesses do this or that—as to quibble all day over a comparative nothing.
And, Lord knows, find out whenever you can if the person is ‘Proud to have come out of the closet’ gay, because if he or she is, you don’t stand a chance in discussing anything involving traditional morals as found in the Bible. Whatever you are debating, with you thinking that if you can make the point it may stick will not. Their ‘sexuality’ trumps all else.
All the above are largely matters of the heart, not the head. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This leads the unobservant to think the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. This is why one might buck at ‘rationality’ as the be-all and end-all. Rationality offers good insight into the head, but poor insight into the heart.
The best talks and writings are those that, while not ignoring the head, appeal primarily to the heart. Jesus did things that would infuriate any strict devotee of reason. He routinely spun parables that he declined to explain—let the heart figure it out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. He answered questions with counter-questions. Try doing that with a modern ‘critical thinker.’ He launched ad hominem attacks. People may say that the ad hominem attacks of Matthew 23 are not really ad hominem attacks because the scribes and Pharisees actually were that way, but this wlll be said by anyone launching such an attack.
Allen Guelzo the historian lectures about how subjective history is, not at all how most of us suppose it. We get a hint he may be right when we recall the expression, ‘History is written by the victors,’ but he greatly expands on the idea by including new trends and waves of thinking among the ‘victors.’ That’s why (he does not make this point, but likely would if his lectures were given today) Americans pull down statues of Columbus and the forefathers that they once put up. History has (once again) flipped. The good guys have become the bad guys.
But doesn’t our modern day critical thinking solve the problem of subjectivity? he asks. No, it only makes the situation worse, he says, because it repackages our dubious biases as laudable critical thinking. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity,” Dale Carnegie said. The trouble with critical thinking is that those who most heavily advocate it too often assume they have a lock on the stuff.
Accordingly, while your remarks must make sense so as not to explode the head, to go exclusively there is to miss where the action is. It is the heart that is the seat of motivation. One may be dubious of a discussion that appears purely intellectual, as though coming across ones fighting a battle that does not matter.
 

It is not commonly recognized how smart beavers are. Most of them are graduates of Dam U.

It is not commonly recognized how smart beavers are. Most of them are graduates of Dam U.

Without again copying @Pudgy’s cartoon, which reveals a certain — ahem—cynicism of social media that leans left, which is practically all of it . . .
the founder of the BITE model that is used to recognize ‘cults’ is very political, active on Twitter (sigh…X) and invariably comes down on the left side of most (if not all) issues. He has a book out called, ‘The Cult of Trump.’ It could be argued that when you think half the country has fallen victim to a cult, it is evidence that you have drunk too much of the KoolAid yourself.
BITE stands for all methods of ‘control,’ behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional. Ironically, nobody seeks to control information like many of these social media companies, going so far as to ban large swaths of communication, and those who engage in them, on the grounds of being ‘misinformation.’
I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.  He described the latter as very enamored with Asimov’s three laws of robotics—but also very concerned that most of his competitors are not. He has developed a feud with one of the Google heads (Page or Brin, I forget which), who has accused him of being a ‘specist.’ (one who favors his species) They used to be tight.
‘Um yeah, I kind of like humanity,’ says Musk, accounting for why he is fond of Asimov’s laws. He is in the minority. Most of these other guys want to let AI rip, go where it goes, go as fast as it can be developed, and if it one day outsmarts and outmaneuvers humans, swatting them as one might swat a bug that gets in your way, well—that’s evolution for you, survival of the fittest.

Without again copying @Pudgy’s cartoon, which reveals a certain — ahem—cynicism of social media that leans left, which is practically all of it . . .
the founder of the BITE model that is used to recognize ‘cults’ is very political, active on Twitter (sigh…X) and invariably comes down on the left side of most (if not all) issues. He has a book out called, ‘The Cult of Trump.’ It could be argued that when you think half the country has fallen victim to a cult, it is evidence that you have drunk too much of the KoolAid yourself.
BITE stands for all methods of ‘control,’ behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional. Ironically, nobody seeks to control information like many of these social media companies, going so far as to ban large swaths of communication, and those who engage in them, on the grounds of being ‘misinformation.’
I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.  He described the latter as very enamored with Asimov’s three laws of robotics—but also very concerned that most of his competitors are not. He has developed a feud with one of the Google heads (Page or Brin, I forget which), who has accused him of being a ‘specist.’ (one who favors his species) They used to be tight.
‘Um yeah, I kind of like humanity,’ says Musk, accounting for why he is fond of Asimov’s laws. He is in the minority. Most of these other guys want to let AI rip, go where it goes, go as fast as it can be developed, and if it one day outsmarts and outmaneuvers humans, swatting them as one might swat a bug that gets in your way, well—that’s evolution for you, survival of the fittest.

This is true of Isaac Asimov, who died of AIDS from a blood transfusion. I discovered this in writing up a post about him. It wasn’t widely known—his family hushed it up. And it was not acquired until his later years. All the same, it’s not a nice way to go, it probably shaved a dozen or more years from his life, and who knows what he might have written in that time:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2007/07/isaac-asimov-an.html

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

Mine too. Maybe if I had the experiences you report I would feel as you do. I have had calamity in my life, but not that one.
Isn’t this your 6th or 7th mention of The Fugitive? Though there is tragedy in the world, those not immediate victims continue to go to the movies, to concerts, to plays, to read books, to surf the internet, until in Eliphaz’s words, ‘it becomes your turn.’ Maybe all such activity should end until there is no more pain, but it does not.

Mine too. Maybe if I had the experiences you report I would feel as you do. I have had calamity in my life, but not that one.
Isn’t this your 6th or 7th mention of The Fugitive? Though there is tragedy in the world, those not immediate victims continue to go to the movies, to concerts, to plays, to read books, to surf the internet, until in Eliphaz’s words, ‘it becomes your turn.’ Maybe all such activity should end until there is no more pain, but it does not.

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

Sam: "Yeah, that's right! I don't care! I'm not trying to solve puzzles here!"
Dr K: "Well, I am. And I just found a big piece!" Despite denials, he presents to me as a man on a mission.
 Nah. Overstated. If you cave on the issue or decide you can't conscientiously go along with it, you sit in the penalty box for a while until they let you out to resume the game. You do this even if you are firmly convinced the ref made a bad call.  As long as you don't cuss the ref out publicly or visibly offer him eyeglasses, he will let you back in.
"Ouch!! I'm not so sure about that call!" says Sportscaster Paul from the broadcast booth. They're sending Many Miles to the penalty box!! Oh, wow! It won't go well even with his temporary absence--he is one heckuva player, but--gasp! What's this? Many Miles is not heading to the box! He took off his skates, broke his stick, threw them at the ref, and is heading home! 'It is altogether a defeat that he has done this!'"
We overestimate our importance. If it wasn't them providing headship, it would be someone else who would also reveal human foibles. Get in that penalty box with Pudgy; he's there every time you turn around. He even puts himself there before the ref calls a penalty, and thus reminds me of my own daughter long ago, who responded to my wife's scolding  by putting herself in the corner unbidden.
 
That may be the greatest understatement of all time.

Are you sure that your banjo-strumming, ‘I’m just here to learn, to help, certainly not to settle any disputes’ persona is not just a ruse? It sure seems like you are trying to settle one here:
You might take into consideration that the teaching has, in all probability, saved far more lives than it has cost. This is because, here and there, courageous doctors have worked to accomomdate it. In doing so, they have both discovered and remedied previously unknown risks of transfusion. These remedies in turn have spread into the overall population, a thousand times more numerous than that of the Witnesses themselves. Seen in this light, it almost becomes a ‘no greater love’ situation—a small number die, many times more are saved.
It is hard to come to any other conclusion upon consideration of a 2008 New Scientist article, ‘An Act of Faith in the Operating Room,’ which reviews study after study and finds that, for all but the most catastrophic of cases, blood transfusions harm more than they help. The referenced ‘act of faith’ is not refusing a transfusion. It is giving one. I reviewed the article here:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2008/05/new-scientist-a.html
See how it criticizes common practices less than 20 years ago, such as giving patients a bit of blood after operation to ‘perk them up a little.’ It is not only unnecessary, but dangerous. Having learned from this, progressive hospitals tighten the standards for transfusion, often simply by lowering the hematocrit level which once triggered one, often by making use when appropriate of safer blood substitutes, often by not simply ‘topping off the tank’ after operation, recognizing such a practice is both unnecessary and dangerous. They owe it all to Jehovah’s Witnesses. 
The above does not negate that some have died due to holding fast to their understanding of ‘abstain from blood.’ However, it could be argued that the overall world owes a great debt of gratitude to Jehovah’s Witnesses for putting them on the right track. Should not the Governing Body receive a Nobel Prize in medicine for the reform they have triggered?

Sam: "Yeah, that's right! I don't care! I'm not trying to solve puzzles here!"
Dr K: "Well, I am. And I just found a big piece!" Despite denials, he presents to me as a man on a mission.
 Nah. Overstated. If you cave on the issue or decide you can't conscientiously go along with it, you sit in the penalty box for a while until they let you out to resume the game. You do this even if you are firmly convinced the ref made a bad call.  As long as you don't cuss the ref out publicly or visibly offer him eyeglasses, he will let you back in.
"Ouch!! I'm not so sure about that call!" says Sportscaster Paul from the broadcast booth. They're sending Many Miles to the penalty box!! Oh, wow! It won't go well even with his temporary absence--he is one heckuva player, but--gasp! What's this? Many Miles is not heading to the box! He took off his skates, broke his stick, threw them at the ref, and is heading home! 'It is altogether a defeat that he has done this!'"
We overestimate our importance. If it wasn't them providing headship, it would be someone else who would also reveal human foibles. Get in that penalty box with Pudgy; he's there every time you turn around. He even puts himself there before the ref calls a penalty, and thus reminds me of my own daughter long ago, who responded to my wife's scolding  by putting herself in the corner unbidden.
 
That may be the greatest understatement of all time.

Are you sure that your banjo-strumming, ‘I’m just here to learn, to help, certainly not to settle any disputes’ persona is not just a ruse? It sure seems like you are trying to settle one here:
You might take into consideration that the teaching has, in all probability, saved far more lives than it has cost. This is because, here and there, courageous doctors have worked to accomomdate it. In doing so, they have both discovered and remedied previously unknown risks of transfusion. These remedies in turn have spread into the overall population, a thousand times more numerous than that of the Witnesses themselves. Seen in this light, it almost becomes a ‘no greater love’ situation—a small number die, many times more are saved.
It is hard to come to any other conclusion upon consideration of a 2008 New Scientist article, ‘An Act of Faith in the Operating Room,’ which reviews study after study and finds that, for all but the most catastrophic of cases, blood transfusions harm more than they help. The referenced ‘act of faith’ is not refusing a transfusion. It is giving one. I reviewed the article here:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2008/05/new-scientist-a.html
See how it criticizes common practices less than 20 years ago, such as giving patients a bit of blood after operation to ‘perk them up a little.’ It is not only unnecessary, but dangerous. Having learned from this, progressive hospitals tighten the standards for transfusion, often simply by lowering the hematocrit level which once triggered one, often by making use when appropriate of safer blood substitutes, often by not simply ‘topping off the tank’ after operation, recognizing such a practice is both unnecessary and dangerous. They owe it all to Jehovah’s Witnesses. 
The above does not negate that some have died due to holding fast to their understanding of ‘abstain from blood.’ However, it could be argued that the overall world owes a great debt of gratitude to Jehovah’s Witnesses for putting them on the right track. Should not the Governing Body receive a Nobel Prize in medicine for the reform they have triggered?