WordWolf

I just finished skimming the entire thread in one sitting. Here's the closest he came to rebutting on this thread. =============================First response was page 7. page 8.

That's it! And if you haven't seen the show, you should try at least one episode. (CBS.com has the episodes for viewing, and the standard timeslot is CBS Monday 8pm-8:30pm.)

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." - Hans Niemoller (translated)

Ok, if no one else is going to post one, I'll go. "This car weighs, let's say, 4,000 pounds. Now add 140 for me, 120 for you..." "120?!?" "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I insult you? Is your body mass somehow tied into your self worth?" "I’m a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know." "Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun’s apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality." "Participate in the what?" "Love is not a sprint, it's a marathon. A relentless pursuit that only ends when she falls into your arms. Or hits you with the pepper spray..."

I want the answer now! Now now now now now!

It was reported here that lcm was so clueless, he thought people would be lining up to take his wap class. So, the idea behind "full-time ministers" was a full-time SALES FORCE for wap, with the idea that this would bring in lots of students and new wayfers. Of course, this failed miserably, and just resulted in having to pay a full-time sales force. Right after that came a purge of some of the full-time ministers. Coincidence? Doubtful.

Since God Almighty told us to obey man's laws, I'd say God Almighty agrees the legal expectation of citation is "appropriate" credit/ FALSE. That's easy for anyone who owns a copy of "Babylon Mystery Religion". The ENTIRE BOOK was based on the (PUBLIC DOMAIN) book "The Two Babylons." It's properly annotated all through the book- Woodruff credits Hislop correctly in every case. And NO ONE ever claimed that was a problem to read. Your opinion doesn't match the evidence OR any honest definitions. (This should be no surprise by now.) *** God can't contradict Himself. He told us to obey the laws of the land. Where God's people defied authorities in their day, they expected to go to jail-and they did. Look over Jeremiah's life to see what it's like for a man of God to "buck the trend" like you suggest about vpw. *** It's unoriginal and dishonest for you to keep saying this, but what else is new? First of all, vpw had classes of BG Leonard and Stiles' materials taught all over the US. How often does he mention "I'm taking sessions 9-12 directly from Leonard and Stiles?" We can all count to ZERO. So, first of all, this "free publicity" is a fiction. It's easy to see, since you claimed-in the SAME POST- that he left out the legally-appropriate citations. Second of all, plagiarism is illegal even IF you give it all sorts of qualifiers. "No one was hurt" "He benefitted the people he plagiarized" and various other lies don't change that.

Correct!

Mark, I think the "so-called" refers to the meaning of the term. From the Wikipedia entry on the same word, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedangta "The name 'Pedangta' is derived from the Syriac mappaqtâ pšîṭtâ (ܡܦܩܬܐ ܦܫܝܛܬܐ), literally meaning 'simple version'. However, it is also possible to translate pšîṭtâ as 'common' (that is, for all people), or 'straight', as well as the usual translation as 'simple'. Syriac is a dialect, or group of dialects, of Eastern Aramaic." "The name 'Pedangta' was first applied to the standard, common Syriac Bible in the ninth century, when it is called such by Moshe bar Kepha. However, it is clear that the Pedangta had a long and complex history before receiving its name. In fact the Pedangta Old Testament and New Testament are two completely separate works of translation." "The origin of the Pedangta New Testament is complicated by the existence of two other Syriac gospel traditions: the Diatessaron and the Old Syriac. The earliest New Testament translation into Syriac was probably Tatian's Diatessaron ('one through four'). The no longer extant Diatessaron, was a continuous harmony of the four gospels into a single narrative. It, rather than the four separate gospels, became the official Syriac Gospel for a time, and received a beautiful prose commentary by Ephrem the Syrian, which remains the chief witness to its content. However, the Syriac-speaking church was urged to follow the practice of other churches and use the four separate gospels. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus on the Euphrates in upper Syria in 423, sought out and found more than two hundred copies of the Diatessaron, which he 'collected and put away, and introduced instead of them the Gospels of the four evangelists'." "The early Syriac versions of both Old and New Testament with the four gospels, excluding the Diatessaron, is called the Old Syriac (Vetus Syra) version. There are two fifth-century manuscripts of the Old Syriac separate gospels (the Sinaitic Palimpsest and Curetonian Gospels). These are a comparatively free translation of the Greek text, the so-called 'Western' recension of it, and apparently making use of the Diatessaron text for phrasing. The Old Syriac Gospels were probably produced in the third century (although some date it to the early fourth century). The Old Syriac uses the Pedangta Old Testament for Old Testament quotes (and thus is the earliest witness to its existence) in the gospels, even in places where the quote is quite different in the Greek. There is also evidence that translations of the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles also existed in the Old Syriac version, though according to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History 4.29.5, Tatian himself rejected them. The Pedangta is a reworking of Old Syriac material to form a unified version of the scriptures for the Syriac-speaking churches. " The Wikipedia entry on Lamsa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Lamsa "A native Aramaic speaker, he translated the Aramaic Pedangta (literally "straight, simple") Old and New Testaments into English." "Lamsa was a member of the Assyrian Church of the East. He was a strong advocate of one of that Church's beliefs: Pedangta primacy (a form of Aramaic primacy). His hypothesis was that for the New Testament, the Pedangta was the original text, and the Greek version was translated from it. In support of this, he noted that Aramaic was the language of Jesus and the earliest Christians,[1] because of the historical fact that, according to Lamsa, "Aramaic was the colloquial and literary language of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, from the fourth century B. C. to the ninth century A. D." [2] Lamsa further claimed that while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the original was lost and the present Hebrew version, the Masoretic text, was re-translated from the Pedangta."

"I thought you were dead!" "Me? Die, and miss all the excitement?" "Store's closed, Mister." "I'm not here for cigarettes or bubble gum, my boy." "Otis, I just never have a chance to have a good time around here." "Things change. Always do. You'll get your chance! Important thing is, when it comes, you've got to grab with both hands, and hold on tight!" "So it must be fate, destiny, blind chance, luck even, that brings us together. And as the poet said, the rest is history." "Where are you going? Where are you taking me?" "Hey, are you the kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Noooo, of course you're not! That's-why-I'm-not-gon-na-tell-you!" "Oh, God." "Besides, I just love surprises, don't you?" "Classic military strategy: surprise attack." "It'll be a slaughter!" "That's the spirit!" "No, MY slaughter!" "I'm sorry, it was an accident. I didn't mean to step on your, uh, whatever that is." "You still want to go? And miss all the excitement?"

Right. We heard the famous line "A horse is a horse" (of course, of course), and Picard claims to be Mr Mot, the ship's barber, and Tim Russ plays a criminal The episode title is "Starship Mine." Your turn!

"Captain." "Mister Data. Bridge." "It has been quite a day, has it not?" "Yes it has." "However, a change of routine is often invigorating and can be a welcome diversion after a long assignment." "Exactly." "I understand that Arkaria has some very interesting weather patterns." "Data -- are you alright?" "Yes, sir. I was attempting to fill a silent moment with non-relevant conversation." "Small talk?" "Yes, sir. I have found that humans often make 'small talk' during awkward moments. Therefore, I have written a new subroutine designed for that purpose. How did I do?" "Perhaps it was a little too... non-relevant. However, if you're interested in small talk keep your eye on Commander Hutchinson during the reception this afternoon...... he's a master."

"I thought you were dead!" "Me? Die, and miss all the excitement?" "Store's closed, Mister." "I'm not here for cigarettes or bubble gum, my boy." "Otis, I just never have a chance to have a good time around here." "Things change. Always do. You'll get your chance! Important thing is, when it comes, you've got to grab with both hands, and hold on tight!" "Hey, are you the kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Noooo, of course you're not! That's-why-I'm-not-gon-na-tell-you!" "Oh, God." "Besides, I just love surprises, don't you?"

"I thought you were dead!" "Me? Die, and miss all the excitement?" "Store's closed, Mister." "I'm not here for cigarettes or bubble gum, my boy."

Just looking, in general for Windows 7 information. I plan on sticking with XP as long as I can, and migrating in steps to Ubuntu Linux when that's no longer an option.

Ok, I remembered some of my funnier experiences. They were all in chatrooms, of course. One time, I became almost a bystander as 2-3 other people in the room became engrossed in a personal discussion about relationships. (Teenagers, of course.) The discussion got to some point where a guy was saying that this girl seemed to be flirting with him, but then the other person replied that they thought she was still going out with (another name.) That's when I began typing again. Me:"Maybe she wants a 'spare.' You know, a toyfriend." Him:NO!!!!! I will not play second banana!" Me: "Second kielbasa?" Him:"NO!" Me:"Second chorizo?" Him:"NO!" Me: "Second bratwurst?" Him:"I will not be a Second-Anything-Penis-Substitute!" I didn't reply to that. When you're doubled over your keyboard laughing, holding your stomach, you can't TYPE. There were also some running gags I did. After the anthrax mail scare in Manhattan, I had a running gag. I would go get coffee..... "AAAAH! There's ANTHRAX IN MY COFFEE! No, wait-that's sugar." Or getting french fries.... "Aaaaah! There's ANTHRAX ON MY FRIES! No, wait-that's salt." Some people heard me do that one once, and enjoyed sitting in on repeat performances a few days later.

I blanked on Dr Catheter saying that. (But I DID remember the character's name. How I forgot he was in the MOVIE is beyond me....)

The "100,000" number was never TRUE. There were NEVER "100,000" people in twi. twi INVENTED that number. (They lied and exaggerated about everything ELSE, so this should be NO SURPRISE.) Here's how the 100,000 number supposedly was derived, AND why it's a lie. Supposedly, 100,000 people EVER signed up for pfal. That's where that number comes from. And I don't know if that was invented entirely. Supposing that's an accurate #, why is the 100,000 figure an exaggeration? Very simple. Not everyone who signed up for pfal EVER SHOWED UP FOR SESSION 1. (When I took it, I think there were 8 people signed up- 7 showed up for Session 1.) Not everyone who showed up for session one SHOWED UP FOR SESSION 12. (When I took it, out of the 8 signed up and 7 attending, THREE graduated.) Not everyone who finished Session 12 stuck around after that- some people left very shortly thereafter, some stayed a month or more. The actual membership numbers were much smaller. Someone said the best measure of attendance in twi at any time was that the ROA attendance was 50% of innies. So, double the attendance figure of the ROA (until lcm cancelled the ROA and membership was already low) in any year, and you have the approximate number of twi members total. The biggest membership period for twi, IIRC, was 1979 to 1982. Membership#s never reached 50,000 in any of those years. Even IF there had been 100,000 over 50 years, that STILL is a PUNY statistic for a group that supposedly was WORLD-WIDE. Here's a few numbers for comparison. At any ONE TIME (not "over 50 years"), here's UNITED STATES (only the USA) statistics for: Assemblies of God (year 2002 numbers) 2,687,366 National Baptist Convention of America (1987 numbers), 3,500,000 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (2003 numbers) 4,984,925. Mormon/LDS church (2004 numbers) 5,588,177 United Methodist Church (2002 numbers) 8,251,042. Southern Baptist Convention (2003 numbers) , 16,400,000 Roman Catholic Church (2002 numbers) 66,407,105 http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html If you want to look at international numbers, twi is a drop in a bucket. less than 50,000 at any time, less than 100,000 over 50 years, and lots of groups have over 1 million (1,000,000) members AT ONCE. http://www.adherents.com/adh_rb.html

Here's where most of the quotes came in... "Okay you guys, listen up! People pay good money to see this movie! When they go out to a theater they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth! Do I have to come up there myself?" Hulk Hogan in the movie theater, when the Gremlins succeed in messing up the projector. (This was a LOT funnier to me, since I had seen a projector problem in the same theater recently, then saw this movie, so I had a second of thinking this was another projector problem....) **** "Fred, what we want is, I think, what everyone wants, and what you and your viewers have: civilization." "Yes, but what sort of civilization are you speaking of?" "The niceties, Fred. The fine points: diplomacy, compassion, standards, manners, tradition... that's what we're reaching toward. Oh, we may stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention, chamber music, Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish over the centuries, that's what we aspire to; we want to be civilized. You take a look at this fellow here. (Shoots him in the head) Now, was that civilized? No, clearly not. Fun, but in no sense civilized. Now, bear in mind, none of us has been in New York before. There are the Broadway shows - we'll have to find out how to get tickets. There's also a lot of street crime, but I believe we can watch that for free. We want the essentials. Dinettes. Complete bedroom groups. Convenient credit, even though we've been turned down in the past." In an experimental lab in the building, one Gremlin drank some sort of intelligence-enhancing potion. He became "the Brain Gremlin" and was voiced by Tony Randall. The Brain Gremlin had GREAT lines, as you can see. **** "All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there'd be the most appalling publicity." **** "BUY! BUY! BUY!" "SELL! SELL! SELL!" "Well, it's rather brutal here. Right now we are advising all our clients to put everything they've got into canned food and shotguns." Gremlins, and the Brain Gremlin, after taking over a financial advisor office in the Clamp Building. **** "Sir, I'm... I'm sorry about the building." "I'm not." "You're not?" "For one thing, we're insured for the damages. For another, maybe it wasn't a place for people anyway. It was a place for things. You make a place for things... things come." Clamp himself, philosophical about how his high-tech building was all wrong for people, to Billy. (Clamp seemed to be a pastiche of Donald Trump and Ted Turner, with a few more details thrown in.) It's the only movie I know of with a restaurant that serves CANADIAN food. (What?)

Ok, let's move this along. This is "Gremlins 2:the New Batch."

Ok, this is one of the few Voyager episodes I've ever seen. Voyager was trapped in a spatial version of a causality loop. The thing didn't actually start, but it went on infinitely- they detected a distress call, and went to investigate, finding an Intrepid-class ship like Voyager. They investigate, and get caught in a loop in space. (Drop a signal marker, go in a straight line, then run into the signal marker.) They also had a shuttlecraft trying to land on the present-time Voyager rather than the past-time Voyager so both could exit the whatever-they-called-it, paradox bubble is what I'll call it. Could have just had the shuttlecraft fly out too, but, hey, added pointless drama to the script. I appreciate that even Paris realized this didn't work and there was no origin-point that triggered the loop.

Please elaborate. HOW is Windows 7 "not as annoying" as Vista? Is it what 7 does that Vista does not do? Is it what 7 doesn't do that Vista does? Is it differences in how 7 does things Vista does? http://xkcd.com/528/

I'm not ignoring this thread. Sadly, I do not have my answers all typed out at present. I shall type them out when I can and join in. (In case anyone was curious. I think this warrants a better response than I can just rattle off.)

How successful was the wow program? It depends upon how one defines "success." Go back to the "founder." What he wanted, from the beginning, in his own words, was "everyone would listen to me." He wanted the 10% of people's incomes- people's tithes. ("CSBP" was mandatory.) He wanted women to have sex with- willingly or not. He wanted the blind obedience of insiders. He wanted money, sex, and power, creature comforts. He wanted to satisfy the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. ======================= So, the programs were organized around vpw's sins. The participants in the programs were equipped according to what vpw could get ahold of, with a view towards what vpw wanted, and what would cost vpw little or nothing. NOW look at the wow program. What was the cost-in dollars- of the program? NOTHING. The wow program TURNED A PROFIT. The wows were required to SPEND MONEY to join. What were the expenses of the wow program? 1) Expenses of the program itself: NONE. wow "families" were set up so that participants would drive themselves to their assignments in the cars they already had. 2) Expenses of the pfal classes they ran: classes required a machine to play back classes (Beta or audio) and the tapes of the classes. Since classes required the registration income of 7 people MINIMUM, this, as always, was a considerable PROFIT. What were the manpower "expenses" of the wow program? Did the wow program "cost" them people? No-people who went "wow" were MORE loyal after their year, generally. (Some people went more than once.) =========== So, for a "family" of four wows, twi made a profit when they were sent out, and did NOT pay anything back to keep them out for the year. (If there were initial problems with housing, local twi-ers helped them out-of-pocket, and- rarest of all- local leaders did so. Generally, this was about housing, since wows were expected to get jobs IMMEDIATELY. Local leaders were known to help them canvas entire cities until they got jobs. This was not necessarily a bad thing, but should be mentioned.) At some point, they ran at least 1 pfal class, at a net financial profit to twi. They probably ran at least a few. For each class, it was expected at least one person per class (1 for at least 7) would remain in twi, to tithe, buy twi materials, run pfal classes, and otherwise remain longtime profit-generators for twi. The strength of the wow program is that vpw had virtually NO TRAINING involved in the wow program. The wows were sent out, told to succeed, and expected to succeed based on their own abilities, skills, and trusting God. Nothing's wrong with trusting God, of course, but neither that nor their own abilities had anything to do with the program! Was the wow program successful? With no investments into the wows, the wows generated income, and added (many or few) people to twi, who became regular sources of income. Some of THOSE people became more wows (as we saw), and a few joined the Corps. Of those that joined the Corps, they were secretly part of the pool of candidates vpw drew his victims to rape, molest, coerce, and groom into having sex with him. ================ The wow program was not particularly a success FOR THE PARTICIPANTS. (There's MANY programs that would have trained them better, and those aren't twi programs.) The wow program was not particularly a success FOR GOD. (Putting them through Leonard's class, and following up the way Leonard did, would have been better.) The wow program was a success FOR VPW, and thus, for TWI.

The lists were extensive, and included words that were barely ever used, even in slang. Conclusion? The lists were not intended specifically to make it easier for the students to counsel others. And your evidence for this is....? I assume you have a complete list of the words used in the class, from which you did your extensive research to see that in ALL PARTS of the country they were rarely used, and FOR ALL GENERATIONS they were rarely used. This means not only do you have a list of the words from the class, but you also have a lot of data on the use of words all over different sections of the country and for many years. Where did you get all that data? Hmmmmmmmm? Where did you get all that time to gather all that data and come to your clonclusion? Hmmmmmm? I remember that from the class itself. Long lists when slang doesn't dump dozens and dozens of synonyms a few years apart. Even the suggestion of updating the lists brought in as many as 2 terms in actual usage. Or did you just shoot from the hip and assume that the words were rarely used. My memory is that there were only a FEW words we hadn't heard of before and they made us laugh a lot. My memory was that there were LOTS of words we hadn't heard used that way before and made us laugh a lot. Where's YOUR list of the usages and locations? One cannot prove a negative- so I can't prove "it wasn't used" any more than I can prove no space aliens were involved in taping a class. So, if you're going to refute me, you'll need the corresponding evidence. I'm confident most people here weren't used to hearing the majority of the slang-terms used the way they were in CFS. Furthermore, there was never a set of requirements that excluded non-ministers, the neophyte who just finished pfal, nor the 13 year old who just took pfal. 13-year olds were able to take that class-and many did. Some have posted here about it. I agree it was to get people to be willing to discuss sex. WHY it was desirable to have people willing to discuss sex is another matter entirely. I noticed you skipped this point-which was important- to spend paragraphs saying "I remember differently than you" on the slang list. Was it to draw attention away from this point? What's indisputable to me is vpw showed the early classes a bestiality video, and that included MINORS. What's indisputable to me is that vpw described the bestiality video to the classes who didn't see it. I only remember hearing that certain behaviors were screwed up and that was one of them. If there was a film or still photos of that in the 70's classes they didn't make much of an impression on me. I do remember that at that time in our culture LOTS of porn and LOTS of "new" forms of perversion was coming to the surface with lots of sensational publicity and acceptance by the media and messing with people's minds. What we learned in those 70's video classes was to not let it mess with our minds. Yes, minors were to warned and instructed because they too were exposed to the flood of new style porn of the time. The biggest exposure I had to it at the time was in the CFS class! There wasn't a hammering on of right action and wrong action, what makes one right and one wrong, etc. We DID have a description of a pornographic bestiality film where some women were trying to have sex with a dog, and they tried to physically stimulate him, then get him to have sex, but that "the dog had more sense than the women" because he was trying to get away from them. I have yet to find people (other than Mike et al) who think this enhanced their understanding of anything other than that the guy who decided this should be covered was a major perv. If there were warnings, they weren't the thrust of mentioning that. What's indisputable to me is that vpw used that class to teach that the "original sin" was masturbation- and went on to say that NOW it was perfectly fine, but THEN it was enough to kick them out of paradise- and spun that out of VERY thin reed. I don't think this is correct. You have a right to think differently. Other people remember it exactly the same, however. That's come up before. What's indisputable to me is that LONG lists of terms rarely even used in slang were given to talk about sex and body parts. What's indisputable to me is that large portions of the class were a simple hygiene/sex ed class to which stills from pornographic movies were added. It was, by the standards of that day, rather soft porn. By today’s standards it was VERY soft porn. How do I know this...? Um... Ah.... ........I read it in a book! Yeah, that's the ticket, I read it in a book. So, a supposed Biblical research organization was showing "rather soft porn" (not counting the classes that saw the bestiality video). What's indisputable to me is that a man who had no training in biology, no training in counseling, was teaching this class-when those who WERE qualified were sitting it out. In the video Dr had Dr. Fritz Wiengarner come on camera and discuss medical and physiological things. If this was necessary at all-and no strong case has been made that it was- why was a man who had no training in biology and counseling teaching it, and the medical guy only brought in briefly? Should the BEST QUALIFIED people speak on Biology, Psychology, etc? If that's the actual goal.... What's indisputable to me is that it's been reported here that vpw had brought a pornographic pen to one class, and had one of the young women come up to see it.