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Same at our Costco. It’s next to a firing range in constant use by local and county police.

I doubt it. Bethelite guards used to carry guns in the factory up until the 1960s. I recall a well known story of a brother who shot up a large roll of paper for the printing press because it shot at him first. (Actually it “popped” several times because that’s what tightly rolled rolls of paper will do when they contract and expand from temperature changes. I’m told that the biggest concern is keeping out protesters. Also the “webmaster” told me that they also are always on the watch for hackers who try to get inside the network to get to the databases. That was the gist of my hacking jokes that started at the top of this thread.

I also have trouble extracting a sense of humor from AI tools.

Don’t know if this happens to you. But when I bring up Gaza I get a version of this AIPAC ad on the page. As I did just now: (I strongly dislike AIPAC)

I always get confused when a Subaru comes up behind me because in my rear view mirror it says U R A BUS.

It’s amazing how people like Joe Rogan have become better than most modern journalists. I’d listen to him more but his show is too long for me and I need a summary first. I met Dr Peter McCullough in Tampa when he was staying directly across from my wife and I in our hotel room. My son and I talked to him in the lobby briefly. I am not quite as impressed with him now that he has tried some questionable methods to turn his own work into a money-making machine. But Rogan and McCullough were both very good sources about Covid. I am more and more impressed with Tucker on the majority of his current shows: Putin, covid, exposing the idiocy of Christian Zionist supporters, etc He is going where no man with his popularity has gone before. Alexander Mercurion is another example of the best news commentary on the Ukraine war but he is too detailed and will give a two hour program on the day's battles and predictions and comment on both sides of the news reports. You get a much better sense of who is doing more spinning and who is doing more straightforward reporting. It's useful, or at least interesting, but who can give 10 hours a week? Scott Ritter does well with shorter summaries on shows with Danny Haiphong for example. But his own super-pro-Russian biases come through too often. There are a couple of excellent resources for Gaza-Israel reporting from people who have lived and worked in both Palestine and Israel. But people tend to defend the indefensible even if they are generally giving correct info. They try to read excuses into bad actions by Hamas. Scott Ritter does this too.

The link was excellent. I remember my parents going to pbs and npr but only after Walter Cronkite was no longer THE source. In those days I trusted the NYT the way my doctors still trust the Lancet or the BMJ. Rogue reporters have explained a lot about how we were fooled for so long. Tucker Carlson is often the new best source on several topics and has ditched much or most of his prior ideological baggage from 4 or 5 years ago. Clayton Morris from “Redacted,” also a former Fox News commentator, still carries more of that baggage than Tucker I think. I like that Clayton’s wife, Natalie Morris, raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, is consistently anti-war. anti-bigotry, and anti-woke, and neutral where she can be. But for some topics they are spot on. For that matter Fox itself is often the best of the bunch for being less inclined to be influenced by current State propaganda.

My overall point is that most Witnesses I know in the United States are very political and don't even know it. Often much more political than their neighbors who vote. There are certain limits to what we will say about our political views, but I think we don't recognize that those political views often come out inadvertently in other ways. In fact, I've seen strong political views among Witnesses who only use the line "we don't take sides in politics" when they wish to shut down an argument they disagree with. My parents and many relatives were of the type that said they wouldn't be fooled by all the lies and exaggerations from MS-NBC supposedly on the "progressive left." Nor the lies and exaggerations from FOX News on the supposedly "conservative right." But that didn't stop them from being fooled by thinking that CNN was not mostly "state-sponsored media" that would cherry-pick stories now and then to keep up the ruse that they weren't. As long as they continued to support corporate sponsors, including "Big Pharma" and "Big Military Industrial Complex," it was clear what side they were going to take. And although Trump was golden to all networks for his ability to spout controversy, one of his biggest sins for CNN was the fact that he went 4 years without getting the USA involved in any new wars. We were watching CNN once, not on purpose, and although many segments were introduced with "Brought to you by Pfizer" one was introduced "Brought to you by McDonnell-Douglas." As if any of us watching were about to go out and buy McDonnell-Douglas fighter jets and missiles for accessories. Of course, even the segments brought to you by Pfizer weren't really for any of us to be swayed in our pharmacy choices, either. As with all corporate media, those ads are really just payments to CNN; they are all just a way for corporations to PAY (bribe) the news writers and commentators to realize on which side their bread is buttered. They are merely buying influence. ---- All this was probably just my own rationale to excuse my own tendency to throw in opinions about politics, politicians, and the mainstream corporate media. There are no easy answers to how someone should go about getting their news, or how to feed their own opinions. But I would be happy to hear about the various sources people use when trying to find the "truth" about various world events.

Here was the general conversation, skipping a part where I had just explained how 30,000 Palestinians, largely women and children, had been killed, and the majority of major news outlets were still equivocating about whether Israel had gone too far. But when half-a-dozen mostly "white" aid workers were killed, suddenly Nancy Pelosi (friend of the aid organization founder), Joe Scarborough, Elizabeth Warren, and a bunch of others turn on a dime to stop giving Israel a free pass -- embarrassing their own man Biden. THEM: Well, anyway, we don't take sides about literal Israel, and we don't discuss political sides of who supports whom. ME: But that last part is just information, even history. THEM: History is one thing but the Bible says don't speak against the King. What's that it says in Ecclesiastes? (Ecclesiastes 10:20) . . .Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king, and do not curse the rich in your bedroom; for a bird may convey the sound, or a creature with wings may repeat what was said. ME: Yeah. That's where we get the expression: "a little birdie told me." Basically, it means that someone on Twitter will turn you in. Or all the government agencies will be listening in on Twitter. THEM: Very funny. You mean "X." ME: Yeah, but they still call them "tweets." THEM: But still we don't take sides, we don't even say anything against any ruler, whether he's good or bad. We only pray that they make decisions that are good for us. ME: I don't think it's wrong to say something against a ruler. Don't you think Hitler was a bad ruler? THEM: But he's not a king now is he? He's dead. ME: I mean even when he was alive. THEM: Well, of course, because he was attacking Jehovah's people. ME: But it would have been wrong to say he was bad while he was attacking millions of Jews? THEM: [changing subject] But look how respectful Paul was talking to Felix, he never said a word against him. ME: Maybe not, but Luke tells us he was probably looking for a bribe. That's pretty negative. ME: continuing . . . And Jesus called Herod a fox. THEM: Well maybe he was "foxy" -- "crafty" not always a bad thing. ME: You don't believe that . . . and even if it was a good thing, then Jesus was taking sides. THEM: Anyway . . . it's wrong.

The conversation went like this: ME: I'm just now seeing the new article on the front of jw.org, about whether Bible prophecy points to literal Israel. That seems to be on everyone's mind. THEM: Absolutely. One of my studies just asked that question and I went through the usual scriptures, especially Galatians 6. I hadn't seen the article yet. I wish I had. ME: Yes, the article uses Matthew 23:37 "your house is abandoned to you" and Galatians 6, and Romans 11. THEM: I think I used Romans 11, too. ME: I just noticed that the article says one thing that might be confusing though. “A dulling of sensibilities has happened in part to Israel until the full number of people of the nations has come in, and in this manner all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:25, 26) . . . By the expression “all Israel,” Paul meant all of spiritual Israel. ME: continuing . . . Actually, I don't think that will make sense to most people though. I mean, ultimately, yes, it's spiritual Israel that is saved. We know that from Galatians 6, but in this context people are going to notice that Paul actually was speaking about the two olive trees and the LITERAL Gentiles getting grafted into the tree representing LITERAL Israel. THEM: But it means all of spiritual Israel will be saved. ME: That's the only way it works out in the long run, yes. But doesn't it make more sense that as many of literal Israel as possible get saved because it's these people of the nations who now have Jehovah's blessing, and this makes some of natural Israel jealous? And that helps lead to the salvation of as many natural Israelites as possible. (Romans 11:11) etc., etc. Who is right on this point is not important here, it's the next part of the conversation. Next post . . .

As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I always learned that you don't take sides in politics. In our family, this meant that you also don't discuss politics. Discussing it inevitably turns to offering opinions that favor one ideological side over another. But in a recent topic on the forum, several other JWs and/or those who have been associated with JWs brought up issues that appeared to take sides for or against the two major U.S. presidential candidates, as of April 2024. As factual commentary, this doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, if one favors one candidate over the other, this doesn't bother me either. But I just had a serious discussion about our (JW) view of politics with an 86-year old Witness, who thinks just like my own family always had. It started with the current jw.org front page article on: Does Bible Prophecy Point to the Modern State of Israel? When you read the article you also get pointed to other articles: Will Armageddon Begin in Israel?—What Does the Bible Say? Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Zionists? If you read more and go to specific links, you can also find articles on Human Rights Organizations, Russia and the European Court, etc. Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia Russia Withdraws From the European Court Or even end up linked to a mildly amusing article such as: Who Is to Blame—Russia or the Tourist? But the conversation, next post, made me think of our general stance on political discussion.

The last time I was here, they were more ambiguous about taking pictures and sharing them with friends, so I literally took a picture of just about everything and I even posted a set of pictures here. But this time they give stricter unambiguous instructions about the personal and family use of pictures taken, even when you can take a still picture vs a video. And the instruction is now explicitly that they cannot be shared on any social media platform. Sorry. The 4 "museums" at Warwick are still about the same as before. With a few updates and a few older things cut out. The Bible museum is still the best. Probably the best of its kind anywhere. There is a separate segment on the use of the Divine Name in Bible translations, and it's very good. There are several bits of interactive equipment that were working perfectly in 2018 and 2019 but are now giving trouble. For example, touchscreens that take your input about all kinds of things, such as whether you have worked on a WTS construction project, or which book you studied in preparation for baptism [e.g., Let God Be True, What Does the Bible Really Teach, Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Paradise ...Regained, etc.] and then it gives statistics on many of these things for everyone to see. [e.g. 68% of all visitors this week have worked on a WTS construction project, etc.] One thing that bothered me a bit was the reduction of material in a special "Watchtower History" museum that had a lot of pre-1919 information about the persecution mostly starting with the 1917 Finished Mystery book. They changed the name and now start it mostly in 1919. And then cut out a large percentage of interesting stuff. Also, they have the big wall-sized "Chart of the Ages" in one of the rooms highlighting Russell's early work. And another wall-sized chart called "Bible Chronology" that Russell's early followers also used in their meeting places. Those charts have the dates on them -- even if some of those dates appear to be embarrassing today. But now there is a new "Chart of the Ages" I have never seen before in the Patterson museum on a similar historical subject but it seems like the dates have been removed. The chart is still titled "CHART OF THE AGES" and the museum label below it says: How was the training provided [in Russell's time]? The "Chart of the Ages" was used as the primary basis for practice talks. It's evidently a wall sized blow-up of a page from one of the publications, because it still has the pictures of the pyramids on it, but on the chart itself, in says in fine print (on the side): "For Explanation see The Plan of the Ages published by Bible and Tract Soc'y, Brooklyn N.Y." Also odd that they left out the word "Watchtower," just Bible and Tract Society. I could be wrong, but it looks like it was edited to remove the embarrassing dates that are on the large one at Warwick. If I remember, I'll look it up unless someone here already knows if there was a "generic" chart of the ages.

I can see how some of them might start feeling "angry," but I doubt any of them would feel "dejected." I'll go to the mid-week meeting here tonight. Last one was attended by Brother Tony Morris III, Sister Sydlik the First, Brothers Ken Cook and Bill Malenfant. Maybe I could get them all into the same committee meeting with me if I answer a question inappropriately. LOL. No chance for Morris, I guess. I would only want Sister Sydlik there because she must know what her husband really thought about the WTS explanations of Daniel's 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 days. And they didn't disfellowship him for questioning.

lol. Why do you think I’m attracting attention to this forum through their internet network right after making a donation?

About two more weeks and the lake will be gorgeous with greenery all around again. The second picture is my old IBM stomping grounds. The third is back in the far corner of the lobby where my attempts at hacking are out of the limelight.

The brothers and sisters who have their part in the Bible village museum try to stay in character as if they are in a convention drama even if you ask them a question. They don’t have to of course but some of them have fun with it. One sister doing basket weaving and dyeing yarn for a loom asked me where I was from. I told her New York via California and Missouri and she wasn’t sure if she had heard of such far away places.

It seems so odd to me that literally about 60% of the male commuter Bethelites have beards. And almost half the regular Bethelites I’ve seen so far. Young and old alike. Even some who appear to be only 16 years old. They are all over 18 of course but they look so much younger now that I am 66.

It’s “587BCE”. Just kidding. No I covered it in the picture because I don’t think they really want it shared.

Speaking of security. It’s much tighter than it was in 2019 when I was here last. There is the iron gate out front and the brother has to make a phone call with your name and appointment confirmation # to another person inside before they open it. Then you must stop for an attendant who asks you for the info again. Then a parking attendant. Then a brother at the main lobby door who only lets you in with a card key. I was just in Patterson to see the Bible Village “Museum” tour. It was excellent but too short. They also have a “legally establishing the good news” tour/museum and a Gilead school historical tour which now covers the other schools more extensively than before. I am back in Warwick now. Got here a bit early so I’m looking out on the lake. Very nice. I’ve worked while looking out on this lake before. But for IBM and not the WTS. IBM is at the other end of the lake. We used to handle our disaster recovery setup with them and I was sent here twice for my secular work.

I just got into JW.ORG’s Wi-Fi network. That’s because they gave me the password and I’m sitting in the lobby. In fact someone gave me a card with the code on it. All you have to do is express a need for it. Like making a donation. lol.

And you'll find that Neugebauer, Weidner, and hundreds of others also persistently advocate for 587 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year.

I understand why you keep bringing this up, but it's sounds hypocritical. With very few exceptions you have relied only on authorities who "persistently advocate for 587" as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year. So why do you persistently use authorities who advocate for 587 as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year, but then say that "these individuals" need to align themselves with God rather than with mankind. You quote F. Richard Stephenson, but I'm sure you know that he also advocates for Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year as 587 BCE Jehovah gave the sun and moon to help people count days and seasons and years. (Genesis 1:14) . . .and they will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. The ONLY way we have to identify BC/BCE dates (like 587 or 607) is through astronomy. I'm sure you know that. Does it automatically make Stephenson, or Sachs, or Hunger, or Steele unaligned with God, just because 100% of all persons who study Babylonian signs for seasons and days and years will say that Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year was 587 BCE? If not, why does it suddenly make an individual unaligned with God, just because they agree with all the same authorities you have used to try to bolster your own arguments here? If at the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter can be established, then why reject evidence just because it is consistent from the mouth of thousands of witnesses?

One should note that you can't just search through a book and cherry-pick the words like "error" and "assumption." You will end up quoting portions of the book that are actually arguing for the very opposite of the premise you are arguing for. In places where you highlighted either the words "errors" or "assumption" Stephenson was making the point that placing the intercalary month too early or too late in a metonic-style cycle does NOT keep us from knowing the Julian date in terms of BC/BCE. His point about the "assumption" of universal time is also a point about just how closely we know how to adjust from that assumption to the correct delta-T calculation. In other words, there is a natural assumption that the earth has been spinning at a constant rate, but we know how to adjust for it precisely because of these astronomical observations which are consistent enough even going all the way back to around 700 BCE.

That's a good point that there are really no discrepancies to speak of within that 600-year Babylonian period, when compared with the way the Chinese recorded eclipses. He attributes this to the fact of printing on paper. (Stone and clay lasted a lot longer under typical circumstances.) Even so, there is enough to correlate several of the Chinese dynasties with the Neo-Babylonian period. As Stephenson says: ------------- Note, that just as with the Babylonian dates, the discrepancy is almost exactly the same, which is less than 22,000 seconds (6 hours is 21,600 seconds). Based on Babylonian observations, this is exactly what should be expected. This discrepancy provides confirmation outside of Babylonian records that indicates the delta-T adjustments to modern astronomy software for the rotation of the earth is correct for the same period. Egyptian records and later Greek records confirm the correctness based on the same trend-line of difference in earth's rotation times.

Excellent point. I agree completely with Professor F. Richard Stephenson's words, and I think that he explains the Babylonian astronomical records in the most straightforward and easily understood way. Here, attached at the end of the post, is his way of explaining those records from a work in 2000. What he says is directly related to the topic of why you are correct in stating that secular chronology CAN be trusted, as you stated earlier in this topic. We learn that there are about 2,000 astronomical tablets dating from that era. And 120 different eclipse timings observations published so far. (In another work he said there were closer to 3,000 astronomical tablets. And that doesn't include the 80,000 to 100,000 dated business tablets, which cover every year of every king during the Neo-Babylonian period.) This is no doubt why Stephenson has no trouble identifying Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year as 587 BCE. --------------- Historical eclipses and the Earth's rotation F. RICHARD STEPHENSON Science Progress Vol. 83, No. 1, Millennium Issue (2000), pp. 55-76 (22 pages)