James Thomas Rook Jr.

They seem to have completely *koff* ... lost their marbles.

This is VERY PROBABLY true as written ... almost to a certainty. Touch is the most important of all human senses at that age ... Keep your children LONG on cuddles and hugs and skin to skin contact ... ... and short on pocket money.

I have noticed that Toms tend to clump together in groups, like fungus. *koff*

It's like when I make something for the house .... I like to have the side no one will ever see painted ... because I will know. As long as you and I are alive, and people like us, we will be appreciative of his work ... but even that does not matter ... HE KNOWS. People that do not understand this should read the book "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand ... and then see the movie. ( In that order...). I was already a "true believer", so I was stunned by the book, and the movie. I felt better ... much better .. for years afterward! Not everybody wants to be a vegetable farmer in the New System .... there are those that want to build STARSHIPS! .

...could be worse ..... ...could be a FOOD FIGHT! ...

Logic and reason is not your best characteristic, is it?

Disregarding the plain ugliness of nipple piercing with hardware hanging from the punctured holes, having pins, rings, chains, baubles and beads hanging from one's nipples is a REAL PROBLEM when you go through metal detectors at Airport Security. ... that why Ah wears clip-ons! *koff*

Can God make a rock so big that even HE cannot lift it?

I coulda used some of those lithium batteries for that old salvaged Nazi submarine I found while Scuba Diving. (reference to an old movie "Assault on a Queen") *koff*

It would be presumptuous of me to agree or disagree without KNOWING, based on FACTS .. (..remember FACTS?). One guess is as good as another, and knowing what I do about physics, my GUESS would be ... NO.

I sang to my daughter, Michelle, on her mother's stomach during her gestation, and when she was born, instead of a slap to get her going, I talked to her. She said "WAH!" instead of crying, and turned her head towards my voice. She was delivered by midwives, not in a hospital.

The first Kingdom Hall I went to I had a tile floor sloped downward like a movie theater to the stage and podium. I had a large bag of marbles I hid from my mother. We arrived late and sat on the back row. I dropped the bag and the marbles spilled out and rolled to the front, each making noise and hitting chair legs and shoes on the way down. That's when I learned to pray. .

It varies ....

You are wrong, TTH .... (SUPRISE!) ... the Hemlock Water Treatment Plant, almost 28 miles due South of Rochester, YOUR HOME TOWN (?), is almost 900 feet above sea level ... and most of Rochester is somewhere around 250 to 500 feet above sea level. The water is treated AT THE PLANT and enters several pipes about 5 feet in diameter, and for every 33 feet of drop going through those pipes towards Rochester, gains a full atmosphere of PRESSURE from the gravity. It's a HIGH PRESSURE line requiring gasketed and flanged steel pipes. Rochester prefers to buy it's water from Hemlock Lake because it does NOT require electric pumps, like say, the treatment plant North of the city drawing water from Lake Ontario, which does require pumping because it is UPHILL to Rochester users ... It costs MONEY to pump water to the head of a water treatment plant, and then uphill and to the top of a water tower, etc. The Hemlock Lake Facility has all the pressure it needs, and MORE. and the water is treated NOT in Rochester .. but at the Hemlock Water Treatment Plant. A 4" pipe opened fully at the bottom would shoot a column of water several hundred feet into the sky. Sewers, on the other hand, ARE NON- PRESSURIZED GRAVITY LINES, and are NOT pressure pipes ... except for "force mains" (uphill sewer lines, and hydraulic siphons .. a comparative rarity ..) are designed to flow 3/4 full, maximum, by gravity, as above 3/4 full the "hydraulic radius" actually makes a full pipe flow more slowly and less efficiently than a partially filled sewer pipe, because of friction against the pipe's side walls. They usually have "slip joints" with rubber "O" rings, and a lot of ground water seeps into sewers with the MUCH cheaper pipe fittings, which can be bent into a radius with about 12 degrees at the end of each pipe section, if needed. They have MANHOLES with vent holes that are at atmospheric pressure, THAT DO NOT SQUIRT SEWAGE HIGH INTO THE SKY. THERE IS AIR IN THE MANHOLES, AND AIR IN THE SEWER LINES I have never sulked away from one of your ranting challenges ... because I do not NEED to ... you are ALWAYS wrong. You also always misquote me in order to make yourself look good, many times by SELECTIVELY quoting, and then make up some disparaging fantasy and try to project it from YOUR mind, to me. That's OK ... I am not the slightest bit offended ... if you want to continue it's no problem for me to continue to cut you off at the knees. That is the advantage of an outrageous sense of humor ... most EVERYTHING is FUNNY! I EXPECT to be challenged on everything I say, without exception, so how could I possibly be offended when someone calls me on it and actually does? That is the way it SHOULD BE. The only alternative is to have a Nation of Fools, con-men, and their marks. Oh, and by the way ... there is not a "channel", anywhere in the system. It is a magnificent system that still works the way it was designed over a hundred years ago. You may be justifiably proud of your (edited: Great Grandfather's) efforts. NEXT?

That's OK ... just knowing he is alive gives me solace. That the Society sold that Kingdom Hall to another religious group does irritate me, but the neighborhood had changed so much as to be dangerous. Oh well !

One day I was looking at my cloth roll of wax carving tools, on the table, out of their sewn sleeves in the roll (they look a LOT like dental pick instruments), and from behind me, my eldest son asked me what they were ... he knowing I did not do my own dental work. Over my shoulder I gave him my best Jack Nicholson "Here's Johnny!" look with a maniacal grin, and said "... this is how I get people who lie to me to tell the truth!" You know, raising three children, I cannot remember any one of them EVER lying to me. .

The same way you determine the gender of puppies, which I have known since I was FOUR YEARS OLD. You pick them up, turn them over, and look at the bottoms of THEIR FEET!

TTH: Well, you certainly topped anything I had to say, with my measly 5 years experience ... My last posts about ONLY Sanitary Engineerin, and was NOT about me ... it was about the fact that those who "walk through sewers" perform a necessary and even VITAL function for all Civilization, and that I knew what I was talking about, having designed them. Physical sewer systems, or philosophical sewer systems .... it works the same. Otherwise.... neither your pipes nor your theology will "hold water". As usual, in your last two posts, you picked up on the buzz words, misquoted me with vulgarity, and made a tirade based solely on your continued and sustained predilection for irrelevancy, By the way ... designing and building and maintaining potable water systems is NOT Sanitary Engineering. I used to design BOTH. BOTH come under the label of "Civil Engineering" One is a pressure system for drinking water .. the other is a gravity sewer system for crap and wastewater. It's best to know what you are talking about so you do NOT get them mixed up.

Samuel Herd's supposed $20K Rolex. (sorry Librarian, off topic) This is what I consider evidence on that ... the reflection/refraction characteristics off of the face of the "mother of pearl" dial face from the light from the back and above is quite different than that on a painted dial face. Reflected light is partially polarized at 37 and 67 degrees and some of the light behind him creates moire patterns on the dial face with the regular light, off of a "mother of pearl" surface which shimmers with a particular luster because of the way the material is deposited in the shell face, in layers close to the wave lengths of visible light. I left the picture resolution at 1600 so you can download it for a better look. What evidence do you have to counter my conclusion, Anna?

Tom: To make a very long story very short .... in my hearing before the assembled Draft Board they THREATENED me with five years of Prison if I refused to be inducted ... I had previously said it would take three Marines to carry me to the induction, and it still would not work. Then at the 5 year prison threat, I said "That you can do!". They said wait outside the room, we will call you, so I sat on the "Group W Bench" ( ..an inside joke for Arlo Guthrie fans ...) outside the door for about ten minutes ... and the Secretary came outside and told me I had been granted "I-0" status ... Conscientious Objector. I remember Jim Martin ... I saw him from a distance and someone pointed him out to me as the designer of that magnificent hyperbolid roof Kingdom Hall, with the large field stone walls that were actually lightweight perfectly painted Styrofoam ( I discovered that when I pushed on the "stone" to test it as it reflected light wrong for stone ...).. He was being escorted by his elbow, as he had suffered some sort of mental breakdown, as it was explained to me. In the past 40 years or so I have thought about him, and remembered his name .... who I have never met, at least a dozen times, because of that magnificent architecture. I gave several student talks there. You spoke of him in the present tense ... I hope he is still alive. JTR PS: It is my understanding that classification 4-D was "minister of religion or divinity student", not "sufficient prior service to satisfy requirements of law." You may want to look that up. .

Few things in this world really frighten me ... but THAT philosophy is one of them.

...uh ..OK. I guess some humor just does not translate across language barriers ...

bruceg: You should appreciate that SOME people go into sewers to find out what is going on. For about 5 years I used to design sewers, and sewage treatment plants .. and have walked in flowing sewers with turds and waste of all kinds floating past my feet. I have broken up obstructions, and repaired walls and ceilings where roots and breaks occurred. Unless you take a crap and pee in a bucket, and bury it in your yard you should APPRECIATE Sanitary Engineers who, as a classic example, raised the entire City of Chicago so the gravity sewers would stop making the City a place of pestilence and disease. Sanitary Engineers have saved MORE LIVES than all the doctors of the 20th Century ... AND infinitely more than Theologians ... BECAUSE they were willing to pop a manhole, and go down that ladder into the stinking steaming sewer below. The same is true for those who insist on TRUTH ... no matter whose "ox gets gored". For those that disparage people who are willing to walk in the crap, and elevate those who ignore that it is there, and TELL YOU not to look at it ... both their sewers AND their Theology will be full of crap, and it will back up ... AND KILL THEM. .

My Elders were incensed at the comments that I made, in in deference to their irrational fears of exercising FREEDOM of speech about things that were true ... I quit Internet commenting for one full year. After receiving absolutely NO CREDIT for it, I resumed after a years time. TA DA! I try to be a straight talker, of few words, and consider political correctness a modern form of cowardice ... and am not looking for chums, buddies, or friends. The price is too high. I enjoy the whole association of the Brotherhood .... but I am not willing to pay the price ... and back when the Vietnam War was going on, and it looked like I was going to go to prison for five years ... I was trying to figure out a way I could spend it in solitary confinement.

..spoken like a true member of the Nazi Party, who believed in the exact same philosophy you have. When any in a group are WRONG, and everybody speaks in agreement ... you have CEASED being JW.ORG, and have become JW.BORG.