WordWolf

You don't mean the Home Studies, do you? You mean the written test to take the Advanced or something, right?

Well, you WERE the one who raised the issue of "why has the initial poster stopped posting?" I posted to address that. You might have appreciated a refresher. Especially since this board operates differently from every board I'VE admin'ed or mod'ed, which makes it likely you could say the same. The "rules of engagement" are from a different "playbook." It's not like I drafted a lengthy letter or anything. You're welcome. So am I. If no sorrow was added to others while I was receiving benefits of knowledge, that would really have been noteworthy, at least to me. Shame it didn't happen like that.

By chance, I just caught the end of that commercial. Yes, he was imitating the reverb and sound off the speakers at a club.

[Actually, there's been posters on this thread- not any of the usual posters- who saw the direct relevance of the turn of discussion into a direction not anticipated in the initial post. They explained how they saw the connections. Perhaps there's a legitimate way to see this as part of the same discussion-since they certainly saw it that way, and a number of people have said they do, as well. Perhaps there's a legitimate point of view here that's not Jonny Lingo-specific. Perhaps it's worth considering.] [i found benefits as well, and I posted about them on this thread pretty early on.(It's on page 2, if you're curious.)] [Discussions of reasons pfal doctrines and practices were DISCARDED ARE on-topic for this thread, based on the initial question. That covers a lot of ground.] [Then again, have you seen what it generally takes to have a serious thread critical of vpw and pfal without posters trying to change the subject and negate the thread? From your post, it would sound like there's one type of thread that never gets interrupted, and a different type that always gets interrupted. Every substantial thread gets interrupted, especially the opinionated ones. It's not just the threads YOU like. Oh, and BTW, I once STARTED a thread specifically for the benefit of people who ONLY wanted to talk about PRO-vpw and PRO-pfal matters, since some people were complaining they couldn't get a break. It languished from disuse- and much of the use it did get was COMPLAINTS from the pro-vpw and pro-pfal people, which struck me as a little odd.] [Others feel differently, and think the comparison is not a fair one, and have explained why. There is such a thing as "agreeing to disagree."]

Are you planning on a new argument- who derailed the thread, when, and with what weapon? I'm just curious-it looks like you are here, and I just wanted to know.

Goey! I hope you're sticking around for some coffee and pie....

I know you're really keen on his usage of the word "piracy"- which, apparently, is some sort of controversial term for reasons I'm not aware of, but he's using it correctly in English. cg has failed to cite his sources, which, as I've pointed out plenty of times, including in this thread, is a legal requirement he is still bound by. For him to fail to do so-and he most assuredly failed to do so- is both illegal (even works in the public domain must be cited, if they are sources) and unethical (by appropriating the work of others and giving no source, he's saying "I did this" and hiding the actual sources. This is willful deception and a number of other things.) The main thing he's insulated from is lawsuits, since the main purpose of a lawsuit would be to RECOVER DAMAGES. Since he has legal rights over much of the source material in use, nobody can sue to RECOVER DAMAGES- there are no moneys to "return". Therefore, he can certainly be sued- at least on behalf of the public for where he failed to cite Bullinger's public domain materials, if under no other basis. However, lawsuits aren't cheap. They cost money, lots of money. Apparently, nobody with a lot of money cares enough to direct a lawsuit against cg for his actual breaking of the law- which is a felony when practiced at that level. That having been said, do you have a more APPROPRIATE term for what Juedes described? He was speaking of the plagiarized materials and the variety of practices and doctrines taken without attribution from others, primarily vpw, and about some related concepts. I'm sure if there was a more appropriate term for what he described, John would have no problem with adjusting his site. This, of course, presumes there IS a more appropriate term, and not just a more euphemistic, less harsh-sounding one.

There's a sticky at the top of this forum that you might find of some use. (Or you might not, but we meant well.) The Friend-Finder forum is specifically for finding old friends, if you're specifically looking to do that. Of course, you're welcome to participate in any threads you see fit, whether serious, or frivolous, regardless of forum.

A) Once any of us has started a thread here, the thread belongs to the entire board, whether we wish it to or not. (Technically, it belongs to the admin, but he doesn't get possessive of the threads.) We can ASK posters to cooperate, but if they do not, or if the thread takes a direction we didn't anticipate or even didn't WANT, we can't enforce our will past asking again, nicely. (The staff reserves the right to make exceptions, of course.) B) Since she last posted on page 2 of the thread, when discussion was still along the lines of what she asked, I'd say she got as much as she was going to get from this thread, and then saw no need to post any further. I don't see the situation as her "abandoning a thread". Posters are not required to continue to post on a thread, or to post at all on any thread. Without her saying so one way or the other, any reasoning (including mine) as to why she's not posting on the thread any further is simply speculation- and speculation largely independent of any evidence to base a speculation on, for that matter.

Or he might not have answered because I already did- last post, previous page. This is the short version of what I said a page back.

Someone beat me to it....... Yeah, have a happy everything.

I've come to the conclusion that knowledge is really good, but is not the MAIN thing. (Yes, that's coming from me, so that should tell you something.) To quote a comic-book character, "I've found it's more important to be One-Who-Cares rather than One-Who-Knows."

Obviously a Q episode. Was this one "Deja Q"? The Q-less Q?

I think you meant an "inferi." We saw inferi at the end of Book 6, in the locket's cave. They appear to be mindless zombies. Bathilda Bagshot's situation was never explained, but she was definitely not "mindless". She had a programmed personality, and had Nagini implanted in her. No explanation was even suggested as to how that would work, not in any book, (including "'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them' by Newt Scamander") nor her website, nor any interview. In a word, yes. It was perhaps in his soul, perhaps in his mind, but either way, it didn't happen anywhere except Harry'sperceptions. It's a little different from the beginning of the third Matrix movie in that respect, but otherwise similar in that it had the hero temporarily stranded between life and death at a train station. He didn't SEEM like the kind to cave in normally, did he? Then again, he was trying to save his daughter. Well, it's not completely conflicting with the descriptions. Memories have been extracted- in the form of silver strands-and captured in bottles. We saw the strands in Book 4 (Dumbledore trying to divine the mystery before him, using the Pen-Sieve), Book 5 (Snape separating some memories when "teaching" Harry Occlumency) and Book 6 (Slughorn's memory.) We saw memories in a bottle all through Book 6, during Dumbledore's private sessions with Harry. I took the non-strand aspect to be Snape struggling to pass them along before he died-rather than the wand-technique used in the other books. I thought the supposed hints could have been taken either way, and found there was insufficient support to back them without the memories in Book 7. The hints WERE discussed by fans, and the ones I discussed were two: A) Why was "Snape's worst memory" his WORST memory? (Book 5) The argument FOR was him driving off Lily. The argument AGAINST was the abject humiliation Snape was suffering. B) Book 5, "Dudley Demented." When Harry was explaining about the attack by the Dementors, Vernon Dursley asked what a Dementor was. Petunia immediately rattled off "The guard the wizard prison Azkaban" (I may have paraphrased slightly.) When everyone stared at her in shock, she explained she had overheard "that horrid boy" explain that to Lily. The question was: was Snape the "horrid boy" instead of James Potter? The argument FOR was that James doesn't seem like a "horrid boy", and why else would Snape be horrified the Potters were killed? The argument AGAINST was that Petunia was negative on all magic, so ANY wizard would be "horrid", and there's no reason to suppose Snape ever MET Lily outside of Hogwarts or interacted with her in there, even. (In "Snape's Worst Memory", a stranger might have told James to stop bullying Snape, since it was wrong.) Further, Snape owed James a life-debt, and then was responsible for his death. Personally, I don't think there was much substance to the hints. They're obvious if you know exactly what information is critical and which to ignore, which is to say, almost-coincidental. I also think that it made no sense for Snape to insult Tonks for her Patronus changing shape to correspond to the person she loved, when his had been so for years. The argument for him saying that is that Snape can be a real a-hole sometimes, but I find that SPECIFIC barb out-of-character. Finally, the only things connecting Lily with a doe is that she was married to Prongs. This meant he needed to know about Prongs, first of all, which he seemed to be, at least by the time of the series. (Book 3, his comments to Lupin about the parchment by Wormtail, Moony, Padfoot and Prongs. "I think he got that parchment FROM THE MANUFACTURERS." He seemed to know he was addressing one of them...) However, of all things, Snape hated James, loved Lily, and defined Lily in terms of her marriage to James? I find that inconsistent. If there was some direct connection between Lily and the doe, that would be different. However, we have no reason to suspect she was also an Animagus, especially since it was so difficult, they are so rare, and her strength was in CHARMS, like her wand, while James' was in TRANSFIGURATION, like his wand. A lot of fans loved it, many BECAUSE of the profanity. Fenrir Greyback and Bellatrix Lestrange were the sickest followers of Voldemort, and HAD to go. Ron Weasley joined George as proprietors at Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes. She mentioned that in one of the interviews.

Oldies, I'd leave this alone, except we've seen this happen before, so I shall ask you a simple yes-or-no question or two. Whether or not you answer it, and if your answers are in simple yes-or-no format, will, I think, indicate a lot as to where your thinking is at this time. I shall begin. 1) Do you believe that the testimony of all the victims, all the people that knew the victims, the twi authority figures, and the people currently running twi, indicate that the overwhelming likelihood is that at least some of the rapes and other sexual crimes vpw has been said to have been committed, were in fact committed by him? (Yes or no: do you think the weight of the evidence says "vpw did it-he committed these sexual crimes?) 2) If so, do you believe it was wrong of vpw to have carefully set up places to commit sex crimes, and set up a structure of persons to facilitate this, and use the "from birth to the corps" papers to select his victims, and commit these sex crimes regardless of intent to "heal" or whatever justification was used, and to have women monitored afterwards, with their reputation savaged and them made pariahs if they looked like they were going to tell someone what he did? (Yes or no: do you think it was wrong of vpw to have committed these sexual crimes?) 3) Do you think that those who were victims of sexual crimes by vpw should go silent, so as to keep others from thinking negative about vpw, even if their testimony is the truth? (Yes or no: do you think it is wrong for vpw's victims to tell their stories now?) 4) Do you think that the proper response to all the victims of vpw's sex crimes is to claim that they were all willing participants, that they must have wanted it if they didn't immediately run to the police? (Yes or no: Is it right to think all his victims were consensual if they didn't go straight to the police?) 5) Do you think that the sole opinion of all aspects of twi should be reflected by the sex crimes of its founder? (Yes or no: Do vpw's sex crimes pose the beginning and end on all matters twi?) =========================== (I added the last as a softball.) See, the reason I ask these questions is simple. From time to time, there's been a "moment of enlightenment", a "turning point" of "but now I see", and then months later, the reset button was pressed, and it's like that whole conversation never happened. So, I ask outright. Please speak plainly, and answer in a yes-no fashion, using as many words as you need, but including a clear, unambiguous, unequivocal yes-no answer that any normal English reading adult could see means yes or no. If you wish, once you've done that, I'll do the same for 5 questions of your own. And if I find myself unable to on any question, I shall explain plainly, in detail, and give the answers related to it that I CAN give plainly. Fair is fair. ======= Oh, and if you elect NOT to address these questions, of course, that will tell the reading audience something in and of itself.....

It would be reasonable IF it hadn't been common knowledge that cg had wrangled rights over the pfal class from the bot when they all agreed they killed vpw at the close of POP. Depends on the TYPE of piracy. Depending how the word is used, it may be a MORAL wrong (fleecing the innocent in a legal fashion)or a legal crime so small the public thinks it's not a big deal (music piracy, pirating videos). On the other hand, it can refer to robbing ships at sea, which IS a serious crime. (Ever hear of plans by ship-pirates to sue the music industry for diluting their trademark on piracy by connecting teenagers with a pc with robbery on the high seas? :) ) Myself, I would guess-based on the reasonable informed information-that the relationship between Geer and TWI at the time they gave him rights over pfal was the direct cause of them granting him legal rights over pfal, after which he was able to use pfal as he saw fit. When it comes to "why didn't they sue when he made it again under a new name", I'm not a copyright lawyer, and would guess that there is a murky ground there where his granted rights might grant him the rights to use the material. Thus, there was no point suing someone when they weren't going to win. At twi, it's currently all about the money. Follow the money. A) There were no copyright laws in effect at the time.B) Barnabas wasn't violating any copyrights, whether de jure OR de facto. Non-issue. It was wrong for vpw to entirely take material originated by others, and intentionally refuse to give due legal credit for the original sources. That's plagiarism, and copyright violation, and those are FELONIES at the amounts they were practiced personally by vpw. Likewise, it was wrong for cg to entirely take material originated by others, and intentionally refuse to give due legal credit for the original sources. That's plagiarism, and copyright violation, and those are FELONIES at the amounts they were practiced personally by vpw. Why wasn't cg sued? He held part of the copyright, so it was a crime, but the injured party can't sue him for damages, since HE held the legal rights, so LEGALLY, he was the injured party. That means that what he did was MORALLY wrong, and LEGALLY wrong, but no one could sue on behalf of society under current laws-they'd have to sue on behalf of the ones with the LEGAL rights, which he cleverly held. Legally, he's still required to cite sources, but I don't know how a lawsuit could proceed to force him to comply. So, it was wrong for cg to take material from others and not credit them- whether that source was vpw (who took the material from others HIMSELF) or the originals, BG Leonard, EW Bullinger, EW Kenyon, and so on. WHICH person he stole from is secondary to the issue THAT he stole from them. TECHNICALLY, those holding the rights to the originals- Leonard's work, Kenyon's work- CAN sue where he stole their material. Bullinger's work is now in public domain- which does not free him from citing his sources, but would allow him to quote to any degree he wanted. Leonard, for one, elected not to sue another Christian, which was his choice, and his legal right- but he added a lengthy caution about plagiarism to the beginning of his books, which shows he WAS aware. Leonard, I expect he didn't know about vpw, but so many other people plagiarized him that vpw and cg are probably low on the list for recovering damages. And yes, it was wrong, immoral AND illegal every time someone plagiarized Kenyon- whether or not the material was error or truth. .....but he's still required to CITE SOURCES on those, Dan- both for Bullinger AND for vpw, where each is supposedly the source.

'Deadwood'?

Correct! I particularly like that there's a few quotes that say what fine young gentlemen they are.... Go, George.

"You exemplify a fine new crop of young Americans who will grow into the leaders of this great country." " This desert is stupid. They should put a drinking fountain out here. " "Hey Baby. Are we gonna do it?" "You have 2 seconds." "Uh, is that gonna be enough time?" " I'm sorry, how many Hail-Marys?" "A thousand! And I want you to hit yourself! Right now!" "Um, now?" "Yes, do it!" "Agent Hurley, I want you to give this scumbag a cavity search! I'm talking Roto-Rooter! Don't stop until you reach the back of his teeth!" "Are you threatening ME?" "It's so nice to meet young men who are so well-mannered."

vpw implied it and never said so outright. Prevarication- suggesting something while maintaining plausible deniability because "I never said that" has a longstanding tradition in twi, and is still popular among vpw's apologists.

Supposing-just to humour Oldiesman- just supposing he was completely sincere- "I genuinely want to bless you by drugging you and having sex with you when you lose consciousness," is this something that should be considered legal or moral behaviour? Is it ok to drug and rape a woman IF ONE HAS GOOD INTENTIONS? Or is that only ok if The Man Of God For Our Day And Time drugs and rapes a woman? IS IT POSSIBLE that this is anything but unacceptable behaviour, ALWAYS? IS IT POSSIBLE that he was a sick sexual predator who should have been put in prison for his crimes against women?

I appreciate the effort, but do you really think you can hit a little target like their consciences when the choices are between an unpleasant truth and their devoted adoration of "the good old days" and "vpw was a great Christian leader"?

To say nothing of the parts that were lifted entirely from 2 of Bullinger's books: A) The Rich Man and Lazarus: an Intermediate State? http://philologos.org/__eb-rml/ B) Saul and the Witch at Endor: did the dead arise at her bidding?

"You exemplify a fine new crop of young Americans who will grow into the leaders of this great country." " This desert is stupid. They should put a drinking fountain out here. " "Hey Baby. Are we gonna do it?" "You have 2 seconds." "Uh, is that gonna be enough time?" " I'm sorry, how many Hail-Marys?" "A thousand! And I want you to hit yourself! Right now!" "Um, now?" "Yes, do it!"

I've had lots of fun with the locals, over the years. Seems that once a guy had a title, he was no fun anymore, but everybody else was often a blast, and didn't see a need to stand on ceremony.