TrueTomHarley

No wonder I have so many insecurities. My own father used me as a bookmark! Now that’s what I call child abuse! Â #PoorMeÂ

I do note that @Jack Ryan has been known to post ten provocative items in a day.

It also says nothing about the composition of the moon. Yes James, I think you’ve found the smoking gun

I have figured out how to do it and I’ve taught them all.

All Bible translations say that Christians are a spectacle to the world. But the New World Translation better captures the flavor of the Greek word and renders the term ‘theatrical spectacle.’ Is it because its translators are better acquainted with the concept of acting on a stage? They have acted in millions of plays on every front porch. Sometimes they have received rave reviews. Sometimes they have received horrid reviews. Sometimes they have been run out of town. In the spiritual paradise, actors exchange field service experiences. They talk about new approaches. They kibbutz on how to better expose the Trinity doctrine. If they go online, they send paradise pictures to each other. It is all fine to do this. It is as it should be. It is a paradise, after all, and in a paradise, you do not take out the trash. You know that housekeeping will do that. Occasionally, however, some guest notices that the trash is piling up. “I’d better attend to that,” he says, and having done so, resumes his place at the play, just like you would pick up a paper on the Kingdom Hall floor. Or even turds at the dog park, because you appreciate a clean dog park. http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/07/picking-up-women-at-the-dog-park.html It is not to be expected that the coordinators of the play will personally take out the trash. This is again as it should be. They will continue to provide the food and drink and focus on efforts to invite more to the play. Since the paradise is proving popular, they work to extend it into other areas, even taking into account the fact that people ‘talk funny’ over there. Some of them do not even notice the trash, and the ones that do reassure themselves with the knowledge that housekeeping will take care of it. They know that no one who is plowing and screws up the furrows by looking behind is well-suited for the Kingdom of God. They know that when the children are criticizing you no matter what you do, the answer is to let ‘wisdom prove itself righteous by its works.’ They think of David, who noted (or did he?) that people kept muttering about him all day long and chose to respond by keeping his mouth shut. All this is as it should be. Will they thank the one who is attending to the overflowing trash? Most likely not. Who is to say that he should be thanked? Taking out trash can backfire sometimes. Maybe he will spill some. The coordinators keep themselves so busy that they may not even notice him doing it. If they do, possibly they will not be happy about it. “Doesn’t he know that housekeeping is coming?” they may say. Or they may note he didn’t do it right this or that time. ‘Don’t you have faith to see the big picture?’ they may ask. ‘Here: consider another way you could reason with someone about hellfire,’ the other stage actors might add.

On Twitter, I follow a certain journalist who wrote about us. It was a very favorable article, so I do not pick fights with her on other matters. Still, I'm sure you will find a recent tweet from her interesting. She laments that during her college days she had such high hopes for - she listed a few - certain socialist leaders primarily in South or Central America. Then she complains that all of them had let her down. Will that overly affect her writing? I doubt it will. She has been conditioned to think in a certain way. It is part of the perils of being so young and having such limited experience. She looks like she could be my granddaughter. (of course, almost everyone does) Though it is neither here nor there, I have become amazed that i can predict with almost total accuracy, from just knowing two or three circumstances, whether a person will root for Trump or Obama. This is a very predictably divided world we live in.

This particular scam probably hauls in millions, though not (I hope) from any one person. I think the utility you mean is called system restore. I have used it too. If you do a hard reboot, as I think you must, you will lose any unsaved data. And if you are not savvy enough to know what’s going on, as no one is at first, you will panic when the screen returns even after reboot, not realizing that it comes via a browser session that may be restored. I doubt chasing Trump has anything to do with it. This scam has been around longer than he has.

I am assuming that the @officesupport Twitter account is fraudlent, and that they just monitor social media for any mention of Microsoft.

Those who have followed me elsewhere know I have been grumbling about Word lately. When I grumble, I grumble big. I did it on Twitter, too, even tagging @microsoft. Very quickly I heard from @OfficeSupport Hi, Tom. Thank you for reaching out. Please tell us more about the issue that you're having? Also, which Office application are you using? We'll wait for your response. Me: This is kind of you to respond. The ‘Link to Previous’ button seems to have no effect. Office365Word. Enter chapter titles in odd header & it still populates headers of other sections. Sometimes it does. Othertimes no. Am I misreading the instructions? Would you like to call our technical support team for a help? They can walk you through and guide you on how to use the Word. They can also answer all your questions in real time. Call them at 1-800-642-7676. Me: If I enter the number you have given me, 800-642-7676, into a search engine, I come up with a host of pages saying that the holders thereof are frauds and liars. …We understand the caution regarding this. We would like to confirm that the number we’ve provided is a legitimate Microsoft number… A day or two passed. Then I heard from them again. Hi, Tom! How’s everything? We hope you're having a great time. We’d love to hear about your experience with our Social Media support here: http://msft.social/dDqG3B . Feel free to send us a message anytime if you need our help. 1/2 Me: It’s not going well at all. Googling the phone number you gave me, 1 800 642 7676, returns many pages that say you are a scam. (Concurrent with their tweet above): You may also Subscribe to our Customer Support YouTube channel here: http://msft.social/RqoPMD . Thanks for your time! 2/2 Me: One channel is all I need. If Google says the phone number you gave me, 1 800 642 7676, is a fraud, I will not hold my breath on a YouTube channel. Clean up that mess, if it is wrong. ......... Everyone knows this phone number. This is the number that pops up when suddenly your screen freezes and you are advised that you have a virus or much worse. If you call them, you will find that they speak English poorly, and are intent upon having you cede control of your computer to them so that they may better 'help' you. Look at your address bar and you will see it is simply a web page that has taken over everything else. That does not mean it is easily disposed of. Ususally a hard reboot is required, and also that browser session must be prevented from re-opening. Plainly, these folks are outside of the country, so they are not easily thwarted. Even so, I am a little surprised that the actual Microsoft, big as it is, does not do whatever it takes to shut them down, as it leaves a horrible ugly taste toward their products from those who have been so accosted, and probably drives many to Apple. Maybe @admin, influential as he is, can pass this along to them. This is a job that even @The Librarian (the old biddy) may not be able to handle.

You must have cried when they told you that those Mark verses are phony.

Hey, did anyone here borrow my book "Great Meanie Snakes of the World"? I am missing it, and you never know when the topic may come up.

Any group of any fundamentalist leaning claims this. It is not just Witnesses. Agreed, 'liberal' churches are less likely to claim this, but that is because they are less likely to claim anything. Some of them have been found to have pastors who shed their belief in God.

No. I don't make mistakes. I did it on purpose to show I felt his pain and was at one with him. Obviously. (Oh, all right. I'll go back and fix it.)

A 30-ish, I would guess, reporter attended one of this year's regional convention, this one in New Orleans, and wrote some reasonably nice things about it. He didn’t fall upon his face and do a Zechariah 8:23 – ‘We will go with you people, for we have heard that God is with you people’ – but considering his non-religious reporter background, I’ll take what he did write and thank him for it. You don't have to quibble over every little thing. Since I have time on my hands, and no, I was not notified by an attendant (guard), let me see if I can respond to a few things he raised. His words are in italics. Mine in regular font. The Jehovah's Witnesses' Annual Convention Was So Organized It Was Creepy. They are extremely organized. It might strike one as creepy who is not used to it. Aside from the occasional door-to-door visits and that one time, which I still feel guilty about, when my brother drenched some evangelists with water balloons from our second-story bedroom window, I had never really met a Jehovah's Witness. It took me two trips to the dry cleaners to get those water marks out of my suit. Also, I knew Prince was a member, and any religious group that could claim Prince as one of their own was either extremely terrifying or weirdly edgy and almost cool. The ebook Tom Irregardless and Me contains the most complete, and perhaps only, written compilation of Prince’s JW life. It is in the free download section. …they even took care of cleaning, despite the Superdome's retainer on dozens of janitors. It may be the only event for which they get time off. The Witnesses usually show up a day beforehand, as well, for a massive scrub-down. One Superdome employee said to me, "These guys are guarding the elevators like Obama is here." As far as I know, he did not come. He would have been invited, but may have been hard to reach. Plus, their floral-printed dresses and charcoal suits made most guests look like they were dressed for a wake. If one is not used to seeing folks dressed up, and it is a rarety today, the sight could easily give that impression. As a further sign of their top-down control of every aspect of the convention, or maybe just a tight budget, none of the concession booths were open. It is like that in every convention and has always been. People brown-bag it. However, go back far enough to the 50’s or so and there were makeshift kitchens set up & taken down to serve a full meal to every attendee. Food arrangements have progressively streamlined since then. It's a bit unsettling to realize you're one of the only people in a room of nearly 40,000 who think you're not destined for heaven, and not even destined for the earthly paradise that the remaining Jehovah's Witnesses will inherit after all the other degenerate heathens like me are abruptly taken out by the apocalypse. Their beliefs are their beliefs after all, but I don't often contemplate the afterlife in the presence of a group whose faith is so relentless. It's convert or burn, and that's heavy s**t, man. [**s mine] We would not phrase matters this way. We just try to bring the gospel to as many as we can, and after that things are out of our hands. As the expression goes, ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.’ There was a big, climactic event on the bill that sounded like it was supposed to be a live drama depicting something from the Book of Something. Jonah. it was from the Book of Jonah. Actually, it was the entire book, which is overall quite short. …everyone was wearing way too much makeup. It was like a B movie made by the Bible Channel. I actually thought the movie was pretty good, overall. They have come a long ways in a short time, and once were downright cheesy. Great attention is paid that all props are historically accurate. It may be that you just miss the Hollywood pizzazz that moviegoers become accustomed to. Admittedly, they are not paid actors. They, too, are volunteers. a bunch of men walked around holding "Quiet Please" signs that had already been made. This happens before all sessions, as it takes participants a while to break off visiting with friends they may not have seen for a long time. But while I still don't understand the Jehovah's Witness faith or its people, and while I may still think of them as cult-addled nuts, they're still just people. You know, I’ll take this. I appreciate it. And I really do like the article with its reminder of the first impression we make on many today. But they also like peanut butter sandwiches. I hate to think of the garbage I might eat were it not for my wife, who attends to such things far better than I do. ...and they especially like organizing conventions. The exact program is reproduced hundreds of times during the year around the world, each with the same degree of organization, so as to serve every member. Ours was in Rochester, and here is a post on a previous one. http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/07/reporter-at-2-oclock-roger-that.html

It's been in the works for some time. You name and device tops every list.

You are being too cerebral about this. Take a fruit with you from the supermarket out the door, without paying for it, making it a forbidden fruit. The experience will help you see the problem from a new perspective. If it does not, I will appear at your trial as a character witness.

This is probably a reference to an Awake article of the 90s. I wrote of it here: http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2010/10/jehovahs-witnesses-and-blood-transfusions.html and here is the specific passage (the post is lengthy): I also thought it well to take a look at that May 1994 Awake quote which Matt uses to advance the notion JW youths are dropping like flies for their transfusion refusals: “In former times thousands of youths died for putting God first. They are still doing it, only today the drama is played out in hospitals and courtrooms, with blood transfusions the issue.” Not that I accuse Matt of anything devious. I've no doubt he used the quotation in good faith. It's likely from a web source purporting to be informative, but in reality existing only to denigrate a faith its author detests, trying to make JWs look as fanatical as possible, and doing so for philosophical reasons, rather than anything having to do with medicine or lives. So is the statement taken out of context or not? It's a little difficult to tell, for there is no context. The quote is a one-line blurb on the magazine's table of contents designed to pique interest in the articles to follow. The articles to follow describe the cases of five Witness youngsters in North America. Each was admitted into a hospital for aggressive cancer or leukemia. Each fought battles with hospitals, courts, and child welfare agencies determined to administer blood against the patient's will. Each eventually prevailed in court, being recognized as “mature minors” with the right to decide upon their own treatment (though in two cases, a forced transfusion was given prior to that decision). Three of the children did die. Two lived. It's rather wrenching stuff, with court transcripts and statements of the children involved, and those of the participating doctors, lawyers, and judges. In no case do you get the sense that blood transfusions offered a permanent cure, only a possible prolonging of life, ideally long enough for some cure to be discovered (which has not yet happened). One of the children, who did die, was told that blood would enable her to live only three to six months longer, during which time she might “do many things,” such as “visit Disney World.” There's little here to suggest that “thousands of youths are dying for putting God first” who would otherwise live. Frankly, I think the quote is sloppily written. “They are still doing it,” says the quote. Doing what? Dying? Dying in the thousands? Or putting God first without regard for the immediate consequences?

If you think ‘theybes’ are the coolest thing since GPS technology, you just may not be comfortable as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you think the idea is stupidity on steroids, Jehovah’s Witnesses may be a home for you. (Theybe parents encourage their child not to read anything into their anatomy, and they seek to keep it hidden from others to the extent possible, so the children can choose their own gender when they reach 4 or 5 years of age, not having been ‘prejudiced’ by genitalia) If you think ‘moral decadence’ is a pejorative phrase, you will not feel at home with JWs. If you feel it is spot-on ‘tell-it-like-it-is,’ you will. If you think the world today is ‘onward and upwards; Yes, there are some problems, but nothing that human ingenuity can’t fix,’ the Kingdom Hall is not where you’ll want to be. If you think this world is in its death throes, you may. It is all perspective. It’s all spin. When people of the first perspective write a book or make a movie about JWs, you know they are going to slaughter them. The very same circumstances that Witnesses view one way will be viewed, and usually skewed, the opposite way by those holding opposite views. There is no mystery to it. They may or may not be apostate, per the definition that good @sami supplies, but that is not the main point. They have decided the lifestyle they left behind is not so bad after all, and have returned to it. Peter speaks of it in canine terms. So does @Vic Vomidog Once again, today’s Trump/Hillary uproar proves to be a godsend—a template seen in other areas of life. Both parties see the very same exact set of facts. Then they spin, represent and exaggerate them 180 degree poles apart, and do nothing but rage at each other on the media. It all serves to expose the nonsense of ‘critical thinking.’ We think from the gut, not the head. The heart chooses what it wants and then entrusts the head to create a rationale for it. The overall ‘crime’ of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it becomes more and more clear, is to dare to be separate. It is no more than 1 Peter 4:4 at work: “Because you do not consider running with them in this course to the same low sink of debauchery, they are puzzled and go on speaking abusively of you.” It confuses them, but they figure out the appropriate response in a hurry—to speak abusively of those holding the Christian course. “Water’s just fine here in the low sink!” more and more people shout. “Whatever is wrong with you, wanting to stay out? We even have Jack the lifeguard here, and he has cleaned up his language today. Oh, and did I tell you that he's making a movie?”

It is typical of the nonsense that afflicts much of journalism these days. What is an off-the-cuff remark by someone who may be opinionated and is simply representative of the tangled interaction of humanity, is presented as though it is official controlling dogma from on high.

Just once I would like to see media, when relating this problem that modern 'bloodless medicine' can usually accommodate, also stating that the 'oppressive' Witness teachings also eliminate drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, not to mention war participation, making Jehovah's Witnesses far and away the 'safest' religion out there. Only once have I seen the Witnesses' stand not get butchered on TV, and even that was not spot-on in all respects: in an episode of 'The Practice:' http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2006/09/the_practice_ge.html

This suggests, whether it is intentional or just clumsy, (the reviewer seems to accept it as intentional) that had she terminated the pregnancy, all would have been well. In actuality, an abortion would greatly multiply the 'wrong.'

I have a library lending-exchange program with @The Librarian (the old hen)

I posted this elsewhere on this forum. Now I see that it fits better here: Richard Lowell Bryant, a United Methodist minister, rained on ‘Trinity Sunday’ recently by declaring of the doctrine: We made it up, saying in part:  “The truth is: God was nowhere to be found when we made up the Trinity and turned it into a tool to isolate, annoy, and explain God’s expansive love in terms of dysfunctional family.” http://um-insight.net/perspectives/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-trinity His brethren men and women of the cloth hastened to correct him. Especially did one Dr. Hunter, who says: “Several of my students sent me the article, knowing the central place the doctrine of the Trinity holds in the courses I teach at United Theological Seminary.” Dr. Hunter responds with a twelve-paragraph reproof to his fellow minister. https://goodnewsmag.org/2018/07/in-defense-of-the-holy-trinity/ Two things can be observed about his reply. 1. It will barely be comprehensible to the person of common sense, and 2. No appeal is made to scripture for support, a tacit admission that none is to be found there. After all, the New Testament is the origin, if not the blueprint, of Christianity. Is it not telling that he does not go there? He goes there only a little, to cite John 16 and Jesus’ statement therein that the helper will come along later and reveal all things. He appears to have in mind, per a previous paragraph, the decree of the Council of Nicaea, which took place 300 years after Christ, and in which the Doctor expresses confidence that it was directed by Holy Spirit. But as to the scriptures themselves teaching a triune God—zip. He doesn’t touch it. The Bible verses can be tortured for that meaning, of course, but tortured is what they must be. They involve taking literally numerous passages which, in any other context, would instantly be recognized as figure of speech. However, it does serve to complicate the obvious and thus serves to supply Dr. Hunter with a teaching career. Not that Dr. Hunter is a bad man. No, he possibly is a very good man. But he is likely a product of what Jesus spoke of long ago to religious leaders of his day: “Woe to you who are versed in the Law, because you took away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not go in, and you hinder those going in!” Since they took the key away, later generations don’t necessarily know that there is a key. http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/07/most-church-doctrines-are-not-found-in-the-bible.html

Yes he is, and this is absolutely the last time I let this dog on a Bible translation team! Just look at what it did to Matthew 15:27! "She replied, 'Yes Lord, but really, the little dogs do eat of the steaks and hamburgers falling from their master's table. They are also partial to sausage, too. Pork chops go down nice. Um, pass the ketchup please. And, by the way,.." #NotInAnyManuscriptIKnow