WordWolf

I'd like to note that this "separate the fish from the bones" quote comes straight FROM them, specifically from JAL. I'd be a lot less suspicious of claims like this- except I've been watching the results. We've seen spiders from people's noses, and leaders who rule by divine fiat, and "personal prophecies" any good charlatan could equal or better, and MORE programs where kids pay to perform manual labor, and leaders who have to be pried off the Christians like a barnacle. When I see results like I've seen, I have to question my fundamental assumptions, since the evidence isn't matching them. Maybe there IS NO "separate out the bad doctrines and keep only the good ones." Maybe the entire FRAMEWORK is harmful, and that FRAMEWORK is what will be brought along. So long as it is, there can be some COSMETIC changes, and replacing ONE harmful doctrine with ANOTHER harmful doctrine, but there will still be one or another. Oh-and honest inquiry is still verboten.....

Not every minute, but it's good to think things through, especially one's "sacred cows."

*falls over giggling like a loony*

Indeed it is. The Graceland references were on my mind when I answered the last song. I'm not sure if he spells his last name "Cohn", though.

"It is far easier to whisper advice from behind the scenes rather than risk its merit at the point of attack." "D*, I KNEW I was getting hosed." "We'll put the velour industry on full standby." "On the contrary. You are a good and decent man, and you've acted honorably. I shall try to follow your example."

"Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale"

Opening line to "Graceland", title cut, IIRC, for Paul Simon's album of that name.

Actually, it was Bob Dylan, not this "Zimmerman" cat..... Your turn, waysider.

Probably not, but I just LOVE that last exchange. Plus, I never included any references to Tribbles.

"Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine"

"Another technical journal, Scotty?" "Aye, sir." "Don't you ever relax?" "I am relaxin'!" ""Laddie... don't you think you should... rephrase that, a mite?" "You're right, I should. I didn't mean to say the Enterprise should be hauling garbage, I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage!"

If the Wadi had only been exposed to Vulcans as Alpha Quadrant representatives before coming through the Wormhole, and they arrived on DS9 immediately looking for Quark's, that meant the Vulcans recommended Quark's. Fascinating. :) (Hey, Phil Farrand pointed it out first.) This is "Move Along Home", when the Wadi maneuver Quark into a "game", with his friends as the pieces- and the pieces, like in chess, can be lost. (With that in mind, I liked the ending.) I haven't seen this one in quite a while-did they stop airing it?

Since the link didn't work for me either, I put "movie timeline" into a search engine, and found it pretty fast. http://www.themovietimeline.com/ I'm not ready for that-I'm still dizzy when I try to keep track of the continuity of the Wold Newton Universe. http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp.htm It starts with a real meteorite landing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton,_...ng_of_Yorkshire Then a fictional writer had some fun with it. "The Wold Newton Family is a group of heroic and villainous literary figures that science fiction author Philip José Farmer postulated belonged to the same genetic family. Some of these characters are adventurers, some are detectives, some explorers and scientists, some espionage agents, and some are evil geniuses. According to Mr. Farmer, the Wold Newton family originated when a radioactive meteor landed in Wold Newton, England, in the year 1795. The radiation caused a genetic mutation in those present, which endowed many of their descendants with extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and drive to perform good, or, as the case may be, evil deeds." In a literary fiction version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", hundreds of fictional characters have been connected as ancestors or descendants of the handful present, or having interacted with them. (Starting with the family itself, including Sherlock Holmes, Phileas Fogg, Allan Quaterman, Tarzan, James Bond....) You can follow the link for the whole thing.

"My Baby She Wrote Me a Letter". I heard Joe Cocker do it, there may have been others. And someone else spoofed it and wrote "Vanna, Pick Me a Letter", about Wheel of Fortune, but I don't know who. (Not Weird Al, I'm confident.)

http://www.childbrides.org/abuses_people_magazine.html In God's Name After years of neglect, the law takes a hard look at Colorado City, Ariz., a sect-run town where old men marry teenage girls, TV is banned, and polygamy runs rampant By: Thomas Fields-Meyer, Oliver Jones in Colorado City People Magazine Pennie Peterson was 14 when she learned she was about to become the fifth wife of a 48-year-old man. Frightened, she ran away from her family--which included her father, his three wives and Peterson's 38 brothers and sisters--and met friends by a roadside in Colorado City, Ariz. "They took me to their house in Las Vegas," recalls Peterson, 34, nearly 20 years later. "And I never went back." Colorado City, a desert town some 50 miles north of the Grand Canyon, is a world of its own. Just below the border of Utah, the community teems with children, yet there are no competitive sports leagues, no dances, not even a backyard pool. Most kids are homeschooled. Even quilting bees have been forbidden by town leaders for fear they might promote gossip. Men and boys dress in a uniform of dark pants, striped shirts and suspenders; women and girls wear long-sleeved, ankle-length dresses, even in summer. But what truly sets this place apart is the group that controls it, a radical Mormon offshoot called the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) that has more than 8,000 members and espouses polygamy--which is illegal in all 50 states. One local historian estimates that plural marriages account for about half the city's unions. Mayor Dan Barlow, 70, a polygamist, sees nothing too unusual about his town. "We are just families," he says, "with a little bit of a different take on things." Now, after decades of being ignored, that little difference could land town leaders in big trouble. Last year Barlow's son Dan Jr. pleaded guilty to sexually abusing one of his daughters. Then, in May, a couple who had been threatened with eviction from church-owned land after they refused to allow their 16-year-old daughter to become the second wife of a 37-year-old won a court ruling allowing them to stay. Three months later a jury convicted a local police officer of bigamy and unlawful sex with a minor. And state officials in Arizona and Utah are investigating charges of welfare fraud in Colorado City and the adjacent town of Hildale, Utah, which also has many FLDS followers. Although many Colorado City families live in sprawling homes, 78 percent of them are on food stamps. "The history of this sect is all about money and power and sex," says Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who is leading the charge against FLDS in concert with Arizona officials. A Mormon himself, Shurtleff calls the polygamists "an embarrassment" to the mainstream Church, which proscribes polygamy. "We're adamant about rooting these people out." The investigation predates the Elizabeth Smart case, in which Utah police allege Brian David Mitchell, 49, kidnapped the then 14-year-old to make her the first of seven virgin brides. But both cases shine a light on the practice of polygamy, which still flourishes in this part of the country. "There may be 40,000 polygamists in Utah alone," says Shurtleff. "We do not have near the resources to go after [all of them]. But we do have the resources to go after other crimes in polygamist communities like Colorado City and Hildale, particularly crimes against children." The crackdown could bring drastic change to Colorado City, where church policy forbids newspapers and television and, according to one high school teacher, no one has gone to college since 1992. Sect doctrine says that in order to enter the celestial kingdom's highest level, a woman must obey her husband and a man must take more than one wife. After the mainstream Mormon church banned plural marriage in 1890, the forbears of the FLDS moved from the Salt Lake region to this largely uninhabited area, where they could practice polygamy with little interference. In July 1953, Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle sent a force of more than 100 to arrest the men of what was then known as Short Creek, arresting 122. But the raid generated such ill will--news photos from the period show tearful children being ripped from their parents' arms--that Pyle was voted out of office the next year, and the issue became a political hot potato. "That raid was badly managed," says Ron Barton, who has spent three years investigating the sect for the Utah attorney general. "It set back efforts to control what was going on in those communities 50 years." It also enabled the church's top official, or prophet, to wield unparalleled influence in Colorado City. These days that position is held by Warren Jeffs, 46, who has not made any public appearances since a jury convicted policeman Rodney Holm of sex abuse in mid-August. Under church doctrine, only the prophet can grant permission to marry, and he regularly made matches. DeLoy Bateman, 52, a high school science teacher who left the sect five years ago, says that when Jeffs's father and predecessor, Rulon--who died last year at age 92--began assembling an "army" of wives to prepare for a miraculous ascent to heaven he expected in the year 2000, he married some 56 teenage girls. "Because they are married in secret, we have no idea precisely how many there are," says Barton.Lawyer Rod Parker, who represents the group, says after a man first weds, subsequent marriages are performed only within the church and don't involve underage girls, therefore breaking no laws. For the FLDS, he says, "the issue is, who controls marriage--the state or God and God's representative, their prophet?" The church has further clouded the lines between church and state with an arrangement called the United Effort Plan, a 1942 common-law trust designed to protect church members' property from the state. Today the UEP owns much of the land in Colorado City and in neighboring Hildale. Although residents don't pay rent, they are expected to give at least 10 percent of their earnings to the church. Shurtleff says that includes substantial amounts of welfare money collected by the sect's women--who, because they are single mothers in the eyes of the state, qualify for government aid. "Women and children live in poverty," he says, "while rich old prophets get richer and have more and more young brides." The sect's tight control over the territory can make life difficult for the few who split from the church. Teacher Bateman, for instance, had two wives and 15 children when the town's sheriff threatened to take four of his kids away over a marital dispute. He left the church but is now fighting its efforts to evict him from his huge 18-bathroom home. But the power is beginning to shift. In December 2001, Pennie Peterson was at home in Phoenix when her sister Ruth Stubbs showed up with two of her children. "She was underweight, stressed out, dark circles under her eyes," says Peterson. At age 16, Stubbs had been coerced to marry Rodney Holm, the police officer, who was twice her age and already had two wives, including one of Ruth's sisters. It was the testimony of Stubbs, now 21, that convicted Holm of illegal sex with a minor and bigamy on Aug. 14. Church leaders are nervously anticipating Holm's sentencing on Oct. 10: Two days after Holm was found guilty, the prophet Jeffs canceled the regular Sunday services and has not been seen publicly since. Law enforcement officials are also watching with interest. In the only other case against a Colorado City polygamist, the mayor's son got a suspended sentence, serving just 13 days for molesting one of his daughters after his other children appealed to the judge for leniency. Says Shurtleff: "There hasn't been justice made available to these women and children." That leaves some of them stranded in marriages with plenty of company but little hope of escape. "We're chattel to them," says Pam Black, 51, a former FLDS member who was 16 when she was coerced to marry. Black left the cult three years ago to live with her mother in Hildale when her husband (who has since died) became increasingly tyrannical and wanted to take on other wives. "My rage was driving me insane," says Black. For the women Black left behind, the nearest hope are organizations like Help the Child Brides, which offers aid and advocacy for women harmed by polygamy, and an underground network of activists like Black and Peterson, who have successfully escaped plural marriages. The women have helped persuade local officials to establish a justice center in Colorado City to offer shelter for others like them and to prosecute abusive spouses. But that's unlikely to open until mid-2005. In the meantime Black speaks out whenever she gets a chance and, with Peterson, tries to keep state officials focused on what was for so long a secret in Colorado City. "Word is getting out," Peterson says, "and that's definitely troubling the leaders up there." People Magazine Originally published October 6, 2003 For more information email: theHOPEorg

Seems that being a female member of the cult may be a matter of being "carefully taught." Here's one woman's story. A few women here may be reminded that vpw selected women who were already sexually-abused before deciding who to rape or molest because they're easier to victimize if they survived the earlier sexual abuse, because their sense of self is ALREADY broken. (For those who forgot, those "From Birth to the Corps" papers were used for that- one of vpw's attempts began, according to one poster, with him summoning her to him privately WHILE HE HAD HER PAPER IN HIS HAND.) http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Health/sto...7099&page=1 "As a member of an isolated polygamous sect in Arizona, Laurene Jessop says she was sexually abused by her father, who had four wives and 56 children, and mistreated by her husband, who was already married to Laurene's sister. After enduring a lifetime of desperation, she fled her home in Colorado City, Ariz., a town dominated by the group, called the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints." "From a very young age, everyone in Colorado City is taught that outsiders are evil. They wear old-fashioned clothes, and they fervently submit to the rules of Warren Jeffs, a man they call "The Prophet." Young girls are destined to be married off in their teen years to older men, who keep several wives. The girls are expected to bear many children and obey the sect's strict patriarchal rules. The FLDS split from the mainstream Mormon church in 1890 when it disavowed polygamy. Laurene returned to Colorado City to reconcile with not only the damage caused to her life by polygamy -- but her lost childhood." "As a teen, Laurene was married to an older man chosen by the sect named Val Jessop. He had already married Laurene's sister, so Laurene says she knew him "a bit." But she adds, "I always felt like I was an intruder." ""I was trapped. I felt like I had done my very best in trying to live my religion," she said. "I was taught that, the only rights a woman has is to be obedient to her husband."" "Val told Quiñones he wants the kids back -- and denied he is a polygamist. Even though he has two wives, he says it's "plural marriage."" "However, Laurene says her wounds from Colorado City run much deeper than her marriage to Val Jessop. She says her father sexually abused her. It started when she was in puberty, she said. "There would be several of us girls in the room. And he would come into the house and go around and kiss each one of the girls -- put his hand down your blouse -- say, 'Oh, looks like you're getting bigger, you know -- you're developing, you're coming along very well here,' " she said. "Then he would go to the next girl and give her a kiss, do the same thing, the next and on around the room." Laurene and 12 of her sisters reported they'd been molested, she says -- though the abuse stopped short of actual intercourse. In 1983, her father, Jack Cooke, pleaded guilty to sexual assault and went to prison for five years." "He said at the time he didn't view his fondling of his daughters as abuse. It wasn't sexual, he said, claiming it was "on the same premise as our religion." "I had the idea that I was the big boss," he said. "I believed those children were mine." He compared his position to a farmer with his animals. But he also said "every intimacy which I had with them, they understood perfectly that if I did anything they didn't like, to tell me and I would not do it." Laurene denies this. She says he told his daughters they "weren't normal if we didn't like it. And, that all men do that to their daughters." Cooke continued: "I'd say it was consensual, whatever we were doing. I was not imposing on them." When Laurene finally confronted Cooke, he greeted her by saying, "Hello. I want to feast my eyes on you, beautiful lady." She ignored his remark, and instead, asked him several questions she had carefully prepared for the moment. "Can you tell me in your own words what you did to me sexually?" she asked. He replied, "You know that you're one of those few, that I don't remember hardly touching at all." When she told him the explicit details, he responded, "I did?" But he didn't challenge her. "I won't call you a liar," he said. She continued: "I was a very tender age. I remember every smell. I remember every detail of it." The memories of her fear came back to her. "We weren't safe at home. We weren't safe at school. We weren't safe anywhere," she said." ========== "Meanwhile, the sect's iron grip on Colorado City may be beginning to loosen. A year ago, the county attorney sent special investigator Gary Engels there in search of criminal activity. He recently got eight men to surrender to face allegations they married underage girls. (All have pleaded not guilty.) He now has a warrant for the arrest of the sect leader, Warren Jeffs, on charges of forcing underage girls to marry. But he says he doesn't know where Jeffs is right now. "He travels with bodyguards and I'm sure they're probably armed. And, what their directive is -- and how they'll protect him, we don't know," Engels said."

I'd have to review this before knowing for sure if he used the term "possesso" or not. (I haven't had a chance yet.) "Like the rest of them" is an opinion. Nobody said they believed he was a "MOG who teaches 'The Word' and the way of peace." You just invented that claim, then objected to it. I object to it too-why did you invent it? You could have skipped it and given us ALL a break....

You are entitled to your opinion. Others consider RD to be a huge exception to the usual rules, since his responses were completely different, even then (he's not running an offshoot, nor fronting for one, nor advertising for one, and hasn't been.) But, you're entitled to disagree.

Got it in one! The quotes were from early on, when he pretended he'd studied the ship in history, how the bridge looked, wondered where Worf sat in meetings, etc. Go, George!

"Ah... this is wonderful. Actually, quite a bit larger than I thought." "Do you always sit there, on that side of the table?" "Usually. Why?" "It's not important."

Next movie.... "It is far easier to whisper advice from behind the scenes rather than risk its merit at the point of attack." "D*, I KNEW I was getting hosed."

Master Control Program! Abbreviated MCP, of course. I haven't seen this movie in a long time! Would you believe someone gave this movie a bad review simply because they overheard a small child come out of the theater, wishing aloud they could live in the world inside the computer? (I thought kids were allowed to use their imagination....) This has to be TRON. If he'd capitalized 'User', I might have gotten it sooner.....

George Orwell????

The episode is "the Arsenal of Freedom", one of my personal favorites. It's got Vincent Schiavelli as a computerized arms dealer, and it's one of those "this lesson has a moral" episodes- "the arms race is wrong!" but is fun despite that. One saucer separation, one "the Captain is on the Away Team! WHY!" and so on. One of my favorite scenes was Riker looking for Captain Paul Rice of the USS Drake. When a holographic impostor of Rice appears, and tries to question Riker, Riker starts giving him useless "information." When Rice asks him about the ship he's on- "The Enterprise, isn't it?" Riker says he's serving on a different ship, "the Lollipop." The impostor's never heard of it, so Riker gives him more information. "It's been recently commissioned. It's a Good Ship." How many OTHER chances do you get to hear a Star Trek crewman claim to be serving on The Good Ship Lollipop?

I think we all can understand this can feel like a thankless job. "Why don't I do something simpler, like carry water uphill in a sieve?" However, I think this is a tremendously good thing, and I'm hoping it can continue much longer. If you don't find that in your heart, however, I think we could understand.