Hi Ken,
I will give it a go even when there are certainly better BB to discuss religion.

You ask if the religious group know as the Jehovah witness is a cult.
But what is a cult?

According to the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971) the term, “cult,” originally referred to “worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings…a particular form or system of religious worship; especially in reference to its external rites and ceremonies …devotion or homage to a particular person or thing.” More recently, the term has taken on additional connotations: “3 : A religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious…4 : A system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator…5 a. great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work…b. a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion.” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, 1994)

However, Rutgers University professor Benjamin Zablocki (1997) says that sociologists often distinguish “cult” from “church,” “sect,” and “denomination.” Cults are innovative, fervent groups. If they become accepted into the mainstream, cults, in his view, lose their fervor and become more organized and integrated into the community; they become churches. When people within churches become dissatisfied and break off into fervent splinter groups, the new groups are called sects. As sects become more stolid and integrated into the community, they become denominations. Zablocki defines a cult as “an ideological organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding total commitment.” According to Zablocki, cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members, in part because members’ adulation of charismatic leaders contributes to their becoming corrupted by the power they seek and are accorded.

So is cult good or bad? I suppose it depends who you ask. It seems that traditional churches or denomination use the term as a whip for smaller groups they disagree with or that challenge their teachings. Small groups in their beginnings may see this term not as derogatory but as proof of their zeal for the one cause that makes them different.

In the particular case you ask, it is difficult to use a classification for the simple reason that their doctrine has changed many times over in the last 40 years, and members who have entered the organisation recently don’t know much of what their predecessors use to preach only 20 years ago and would certainly not believe you if you told them.

From time to time someone writes a book about this group highlighting what the author interprets as errors of doctrine, contradictions, or signs that show without a shadow of doubt that they are not what they appear to be.
Invariably such books become obsolete, because the teachings of JW adapt and change in what I can only interpret as an attempt to accommodate their critics, for lack of a better explanation. This is made easy by their high members turn over.

If you are interested in the JW history, their credo and claims, past and present status, a Google search will give you ample to read. I suggest you read from their own websites and from the opposing view to have a balanced opinion.

I will volunteer the opposing views on the link below, but you are free to seek you own information. This days it is at anyone’s fingetips.

http://www.xjw.com/

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

It’s not tough at all.

Any agent knows that the house history is part of what you are trying to sell. If the house belonged to a famous artist it would be disclosed with fanfare.

A murder history if 150 years old would make for an interesting sales pitch, because it is recent, it may scare a few off.

The reality is that it is impossible to hide and the agent was a fool for trying, and I am almost certain he did so at the request of the estate.

I have already considered to put an offer for $500k but my wife does not want any part in it, so no cigar. I am sure there will be others lining up for just the same.

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

http://www.arach.net.au/~algernon/gaudeamus/

Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus
Post jucundum juventutem
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.

Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.
After a pleasant youth
After a troublesome old age
The earth will have us.

Ubi sunt qui ante nos
In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos
Transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre.

Where are they
Who were in the world before us?
You may cross over to heaven
You may go to hell
If you wish to see them.

Vita nostra brevis est
Brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter
Rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.

Our life is brief
It will be finished shortly.
Death comes quickly
Atrociously, it snatches us away.
No one is spared.

Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.

Long live the academy!
Long live the teachers!
Long live each male student!
Long live each female student!
May they always flourish!

Vivant omnes virgines
Faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres
Tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.

Long live all maidens
Easy and beautiful!
Long live mature women also,
Tender and loveable
And full of good labor.

Vivant et republica
et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.

Long live the State
And the One who rules it!
Long live our City
And the charity of benefactors
Which protects us here!

Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores!

Perish sadness,
Perish haters.
Perish the devil,
Whoever is against the student fraternity,
As well those who mock us!

Quis confluxus hodie
Academicorum?
E longinquo convenerunt,
Protinusque successerunt
In commune forum.

Who has gathered now
Of the university?
They gather from long distances,
Immediately joining
Our common forum.

Vivat nostra societas,
Vivant studiosi!
Crescat una veritas,
Floreat fraternitas,
Patriae prosperitas.

Long live our fellowship,
Long live the studious!
May truth and honesty thrive,
Flourish with our fraternity,
And our homeland be prosperous.

Alma Mater floreat,
Quae nos educavit;
Caros et commilitones,
Dissitas in regiones
Sparsos, congregavit.

May our Alma Mater thrive,
That which educated us;
Dear ones and comrades,
Who we let scatter afar,
Let us assemble.

(vers. C. W. Kindeleben 1781)

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

Celvia. The idea that any kid can be made into anything we like is an hypothesis.
Not that it hasn’t been done, but I never proposed it as a solution to education. I just say that it is possible, even when highly impractical.

Look at two extremes. One no school, no tuition, nothing the kid is left at his own will, he can become a scientist if he decides to go to a library and teach himself or a bum living on the streets.

The other extreme, you rise him in a bubble, with an army of tutors specialist of all sorts that can turn him into a poet, painter, world athlete or rocket scientist, you decide for him.

Both are perfectly plausible scenarios.

School is in between.
Some schools far too close to the first proposition, other schools attempting to emulate the second.

The above is a purely economic proposition, the fact that some kids may refuse to participate is immaterial. (This would be an IF persons thinking)

In the real world, parents must take part in the above scenario because they don’t have enough lack of ethics for the first proposition nor unlimited money for the second.

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

PS
Kay

Optimus loquere silentium est

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes*

Ok ok Aussie, I answer your post too … [cap]

I thought about your post this morning after reading it, and thought of answer it this way:

There are two class of people in the world (according to Marc’s classification, not Guttenberg nor Linnaeo)**
The IF and the THEN types.

“IF” people are always thinking of clever ways that humanity could be better of IF only this or that, and they will always tell you that your ideas are not that good because they do not apply to ALL.

“THEN” people are the one that think up ways for the person to survive and thrive according to circumstances. They observe events and THEN act to achieve a purpose according to such shifting events that unfold.

The ‘IF’ are in the know of all the things that are happening and how things could be better IF only this or that.

The ‘THEN’ are in the know of all the things that are happening and how to progress based on such happenings.

IFs tend to blame outside events for their problems, THEN see problems as the result of personal miscalculations in their assessment of external events.

IFs can only take action becoming politicians and leaders, but since those positions are scarce, IF are usually rather frustrated because outside events cannot be changed unless the government or the boss or the parents etc etc
Socialist and communist parties, unions and clubs are full of IF and they certainly make for committed and fierce opponents.

THENs can take action anytime every time in any place and under any circumstances since they know all they need to change and shape is themselves for things to start happening. THEN are usually more the silent achiever type but they do make for committed and successful leaders if they can see it would be profitable for their set goals.

IF are extremely altruistic in principle but rather inefficient in making altruistic things happen since…you know… things would be so much better if only …

THEN are also altruistic but they have a pragmatic approach to it. They think that in order to help others they must help themselves first and such makes for a much more practical situation where achievement is followed by further action and further achievement.

Well you may already know if you are an IF or a THEN… or do you? What? You would know IF I only …… [biggrin]

………………….
* If you can read this you are overeducated
** Guttenberg and Linnaeus were the botanist who started the classification of plants.

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

Aussie, you make a few good points, however…
we are mixing the subjects even further.

I think that success must be defined in order to have a debate about what it is.

We may want to define success as the achievement of a goal. So… if my goal is to become a doctor, the day I have my graduation ceremony I have succeeded. If my goal is to be happy, the day I am happy I have succeeded.

The point about private schools is that they give the kid additional tools to achieving a goal that they would otherwise be ill equipped to achieve.
In this restricted definition they give tools for success.

Now if you are talking about some ill defined “success in life” and see then professionals who having succeeded in acquiring some social and financial status now fail in your eyes because they drink or are unhappy, I am afraid you have now broadened the scope of school far beyond it’s reach.

If you expect a private or public school to produce happy prosperous successful people, with the curriculum we have you are dreaming. No such school exists, not private nor public.

Just like you make some examples of unhappy doctors or layers, I see every week scores of unhappy and suicidal tradesman and employees that cannot make ends meet. Becoming a plumber is no guarantee of happiness (if happiness is the measure of success and that has not been defined yet) as it is not to become a doctor.

Yet I can state without a shadow of doubt that you have much more chances to be happy as a doctor than you have as a plumber, and this is just laws of average.

But who says that school is to make happy people?

We are failing to include the family of this hypothetical kid here, and it is such entity, conceded not very p.c. this days of attempting to make mum and DAD fade into oblivion, that needs to be considered as the forge that will produce with the help of school a new individual.

Balanced and adjusted or not, as a product of a long process that started at birth and continues all his/her life.

So to the original debate about why private schools I say: Why? Because you want to give your child all the tools he can have to achieve.

To achieve what, you say?
That is another entirely different matter.

The setting of goals is personal and so someone may go to King School to be a successful plumber, another will go to become a successful doctor and a third perhaps to become a successful criminal. All will succeed in achieving such goals because the King School is designed for precisely that.

Now later in life we come to know that the plumber cheats on his wife and the doctor steels Rohypnol from the pills cabinet, whilst the criminal is in gaol.

Should we blame it on private education? Too much pressure to achieve?
I don’t think so, a person’s balance and happiness is a goal in itself, so it is the goal setting process that has failed.
If a person has set a goal of becoming a doctor but has forgotten to plan for happiness and balance, he has succeeded in one department and failed in another. Is the school to blame? Probably not, and the blame is most likely on the parents.

What happens sometimes is that people do plan for happiness but mistakenly think that they can only achieve one, and become either an unhappy professional or a happy nobody, and choose the “happy nobody” The point is that one can succeed in more than one aspect and success in a profession must not come at the expenses of happiness in life.

I could add that the choice of the “happy nobody” is aided greatly by the popular wisdom that poor is spiritual and rich is evil but made that point already clear in other occasions.

Jo, the point I made before that anyone can be trained to become whatever we want and that such is only an economical proposition is a simple as it sounds.
It is not practical for many reasons but that does not take away fromthe fact that any kid can be trained to become almost any trade profession or art form we desire, it is only a matter of time and money. Extreem? Yes, but not wrong.

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

Kay, I must disagree with one point you make.

You say that a kid that is not “academically skilled” will not improove regardless of money spent.

Any kid possessing all his thinking faculties intact, can be in theory be tought to become any profession you like. You cannot make him brilliant, but you can make him a functional doctor, solicitor, dentist, vet, plumber, carpenter, and even a musician, writer painter or sculptor.

The difference is purely economic. The brighter the kid is, the easily he can do it by himself and costs little money. Some kids would cost more to make and other will cost a lot. So it is exclusivley an economic decision.

The education system is made for the average and caters for the average, the brilliant and the challeneged fall by the side. Yet both can be made into whatever we want if we have the resources and choose to use them for that purpose.

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

So we must release more land for housing in order to have more intake looking for affordable housing so that we grow like New York….[baaa]

Interesting.

I bet you that if we had bigger land release and housing construction was booming the same author would write an article on the lines of:

“This year intake of people in Sydney was 70,000. Where will it end? Are we in danger of becoming the New York of down under? If Bob Carr keeps on with this ridiculous idea that the solution is in the numbers we will be overrun and … bla bla bla”

[biggrin]

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc

Hi Gambini
You live in SA, what areas are still growing over there … or have we missed the boat?

Marc

Hi Nadine.

All of the above, plus…

Something to ponder: Entrepreneurs are by definition inventors, lateral thinkers, innovators, people who brake the rules, go against the trend and against popular wisdom.

In post ’90ties depression’ era I “discovered” Regional NSW and the fact that I could buy houses for 60-80K and rent them for 150 plus. I had been investing in Sydney as everyone else did, on the mantra of negative gearing for capital gain.

When I asked my mentors about investing in regional towns they laughed me out the door.
I felt like a fool while they explained to me how I would “never” have any capital growth and I would just work for the bank.

When their wise talk did slow me down for a year, I finally had the courage to dismiss their fixation with capital growth and my best performers are now in regional NSW.

When Steve’s book came out, I did buy it and found it very informative and helpful, but the idea that you could go 2 hours out of Sydney or Melbourne and buy good solid investments was already a thing of the past. An army of investors was then already combing for properties in ever widening circles out major cities and the book only made such army numbers double.

I remember a few years back when the NSW south coast was a bonanza for cheap holiday places. No one liked the south coast and everything worth mentioning was up north. Suddenly someone started a TV series on the South Coast and I remember commenting that this was the beginning of the stampede, and time to start buying somewhere else.

Whilst the crowds filled the real estate agency in Merimbula and Huskisson, I turned to Tasmania where there was a lot of bargains for the picking.
I don’t know how but the rush found it’s way into Tassie and for fear of being run over I returned home to Sydney to relax.

Cost x 2 / 1000 = rent.
I am now on the look for something that fits such criteria in Sydney. If I say I found it I would be jumping the gun….. yet I think I did.

I am negotiating a purchase that if all goes according to plan will work out positive cash flow in the middle of Sydney. Of course it is not a suburban brick veneer 3 bedroom to be rented to a family of 4. That would set me back 4 to 500k and get 250 rent if I am lucky, and no it is not a commercial property.

I am not at liberty to say much more but must stimulate your thinking juices so that you can invent your own discovery.

One think I want to ask. Whenever you find your market, PLEASE do not write a book about how to do it.
I am out of breath from trying to stay ahead of investing “systems” and in Sydney it is so nice and peaceful now that one can even think. Don’t spoil it please [biggrin]

May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
Marc