rhino

A real job looks boring ... this could be interesting/different. But to just do a replay with the same script would be really sad. So Vic ... strike out on your own and don't let the old fogies cow you. YOU are the vic ... change the principles or you are doomed ... or just do CP1 ... cancel the rest ... you are the man ... fug em if they can't take a joke. Don't be a replay ... whaddya think Ham ... does that help?

Well he didn't come up with those on his own ... he said those are two quotes that he heard ... so someone actually retemorized them, and quoted them to him. But then he talks of the next ten months ... which is not really a year ... so I'm already lost ... And that table doesn't seem to be in the kitchen ... isn't it a dining room table? Should there be pfal books in the cupboard? I wonder how many committed souls they have ... it says they are FULL ... I guess that is 12, like the twelve apostles ... and Jesus in the mist ...

As long as the levees hold, it seems not so bad this time, though I haven't seen anything from the Houma area where it actually came in. There is a lot of water sloshing over the levee in the industrial canal though ... that should subside in a few hours. This one is metal, some are earthen.

Well, he didn't really mean to teach "if it's wrong, I'll tell you" ... it is just one of those incongruities that stands out to me ... even then I had to laugh at it. What he taught in piffle was seemingly just stolen, so it is when he is off script that you hear his real thinking ... maybe. It appears from what my3cents and others have said, that VP didn't even respect the research team to come up with anything on their own, unless it had his stamp of approval. Or worse, he started with the answer and then looked for something to substantiate what he wanted. I guess we don't know if he left the church for more freedom to "research", or if he had already given up by then, and turned to the "dark side".

Proof texting ... thanks for that term Tzaia. Prooftexting is the practice of using decontextualised quotations from a document (often, but not always, a book of the Bible) to establish a proposition rhetorically through an appeal to authority. Critics of the technique note that often the document, when read as a whole, may not in fact support the proposition. Ministers and teachers have used the following humorous anecdote to demonstrate the dangers of prooftexting: A man dissatisfied with his life decided to consult the Bible for guidance. Closing his eyes, he flipped the book open and pointed to a spot on the page. Opening his eyes, he read the verse under his finger. It read, "Then Judas went away and hanged himself" (Matthew 27:5b) Closing his eyes again, the man randomly selected another verse. This one read, "Jesus told him, 'Go and do likewise.'" (Luke 10:37b) Of course we heard that example. But VP taught in the foundational class how things were for His Way Ministry. I forget the lead up words, but then he says ... "if it's wrong, I'll tell you" So in his mind, he was the ultimate decider of truth. All the rest of the teaching was just so we'd be able to make the sales pitch to new recruits.

Gustav seems to be getting her top blown off ... which is a good thing ... It is a little weaker and maybe heading a little more to the west, which is good news for New Orleans ...

This does look really bad ... but especially for New Orleans, if it were to head there ... maybe they will reconsider rebuilding in low areas if they get hit again ... I know many that rebuilt after Katrina ... maybe it would be time to sacrifice the low areas to the sea ... or to parks ... as noble as it seems to rebuild the city, why put government funds into building below sea level .. we are not Holland ... we have more land ... the gulf water is hot ... this looks to be bad coming in ... yikes ... I'm feeling sick again, like last time ... just because I know so many in New Orleans ...

Insulation and stopping air infiltration is the first and best use of energy saving money ... at least if you don't have a modern air tight home. Once the house is well insulated and tight ... ground source heat pumps are pretty good ... and yes, we need lots more nukes. Nukes can make a lot of electricity, and we have lotsa COAL right here in the good old USA. We are the Saudi Arabia of COAL. Pellet stoves are maybe not practical for most people ... you can go get a nice wood stove and burn wood with a little more effort ... I have all the wood I need, but not all the energy I need to mess with it. Good points about fossil fuels chas ... I think much of the excitement now is rooted in politics and economics ... not the reality of all the COAL, oil, natural gas, and NUCLEAR potential we have ... At least that is what I have learned ... so far ... I did do solar and wood for a year ... kinda fun ... takes some involvement though ...

I haven't read Ehrman ... but have stepped outside that bible box long ago ... It seems this is part of the definition of a grease spot, if you leave the Bible thang ... perhaps the logical conclusion of any bible believing faith is something TWI like ... absolute adherence to "the Bible". But most live lives of quiet perspiration ... they just work away and go to church and feel superior in their little Bible world. So very many still "cling" to the Bible ... even if they left TWI. I'm not sure even now how to address people that are proud they left TWI, but have stuck to their splinter or even their strict Bible belief. Penworks seems to have done some continuing education research and has been brave enough to move beyond "the word of gawd is the will of gawd". Thank gawd. :) I don't think that leaves only hedonism or a "grease spot" existence ... and I actually feel the true grease splotters are those that are limited in their belief to the grease spotted writings in their king James bibble ... perhaps with a myraid of notes from Bullinger or LCM slobberings. If we drop the premiss that there ever was a perfect written word, where do we start? We DO exist ... and there does seem to be good and evil, or at least better and worse ... but where ARE we? Stepping outside the pure bible stuff makes looking at things like the US constitution more interesting. We know who those men were and what they wrote and what they were trying to achieve. They came out of some societal advancements ... and were looking to move forward ... "we hold these truths to be self evident" ... that is an interesting starting point maybe ... not exactly a premiss I guess ...

And what about all the drinking? Is that the way to unlock great truths ... if vp needed his drink to teach corps nights ... here is a solution for you Ham ...

It seems the point is ... GSC should be sure to stick to the facts. (or the GSC community as a body) The tendency is to say it is urban legend that the damage he had from the filming was related to the cancer ... But we don't have any evidence of that ... and there may actually be indications that either scarring or damage from the lights COULD be related to the later cancer. So that possible "urban legend" can not be debunked. No one really knows when the cancer started or the cause. If the insightful at GSC make unsubstantiated claims ... it makes the other facts seems less legitimate. The first had accounts from the many women, or second hand from others that knew from other women .. of the many other sexual attacks or intimidations ... fall in another category. They are a body of evidence on their own, so are substantiated to the degree you believe so great a cloud of witnesses. This thread started with the fish hook rumor ... but seems really about debunking the filming/cancer link. I'd say the rumor is not debunked, not substantiated ... but the possiblity seems credible. Another question that arose ... did VP really say ALL cancer was from a devil spirit ... as that has been part of the associated VP smear ... that he must have been possessed according to his own doctrine. I only vaguely recall some teaching about a spirit, because a cancer had life of its own. But maybe that smear is not substantiated either. Maybe we should look it up on snopes :)

Well that is interesting ... I had to look up lacuna ... I saw in art it may be an area of a painting that is missing or bare from damage. For people still loyal to old vpw images, the bad things become black holes. Their full image is a fairy tale, and the mind seems able to sublimate and hide a multitude of sins, to maintain the fantasy. It seems Jeff's transition in the initial post is an example of an "awakening". If we can pull off the outer layer of what we wanted the thang to be, something more raw and real appears. Even after twenty years, it seems there can still be discovery at a place like GSC. And removing the blinders helps us see what went wrong, so we can willfully decide what we want our life/masterpiece to be from here on. If we are not God's special chosen few (TWI or Corps), who are we? What is past is prologue. Mostly we probably hide things about ourselves ... like T-Bone mentioned .... admitting we were tricked, for example. But to go on being tricked doesn't seem a good alternative. Shedding a TWI fantasy for another fantasy seems standard operating procedure, but as we age and notice our own physical frailities, contemplating reality hopefully becomes easier. Did VP give up on his MOG fantasy at age 50 or so, and decide to invent his own MOG world? ... that was around his PFAL filming time ... did he turn at some point, to looking at reality ... or did he still think he was MOG ... and his own lacunas allowed him the privilege of strong drink and many women? btw, I saw the oldest man in India just died, he was 139, so maybe we still have time ... ha

People that left dope and Burger King behind probably feel differently than those that left dope and college behind ... to go WOW or Corps ... Also depending on if the person was feeling down and out or feeling fine. Also depending on how far in you were and your personal experience. It is possible some were on some road to destruction, saved by some WOWs ... maybe they would have been saved anyway, but not hooked on TWI world. I think for me, eleven years dedicated to just about anything else would have been better. I did learn to clean windows, which worked well for me ... and I had fun in the city I stayed in for 15 years after POP, but I chose that location. But TWI was a dogmatic cult ... people that enjoyed some of the fun on the edges would have found their own fun in better ways somewhere else. They would have given their time and money to better causes. The armed services would have been better for most ... people could have put in their 20 years from 1975 to 1995 and have retired on half pay with benefits and real skills ...

Yeah, extended pain and misery seems wrong ... and there are certainly cases where someone on narcotics gets taken advantage of ... So on the death certificate, would the initial cause of complications leading to death be stated, or the final cause (or final solution)? In VP's case, would the ocular melanoma be listed, even if that actual site of cancer had been removed, and the liver cancer was actually the late cause, or even the morphine? I'm not so concerned about vp, but everyone should consider the scenario for their loved ones or themselves. Expressing your desires to someone and giving them power of attorney for health care may save you or them from suffering. Was VP's wife not there at the end?

Considering the ocular cancer ... I'm not biting on the fish hook. You said at the start "But as well as that, I don't doubt that filming under bright lights may have caused injury in the OTHER eye, or some damage which may have led to cancer." Both eyes probably had the same damage ... it seems quite possible if one had it, so did the other at a later date. (even if it was not from the filming, though it seems specific damage would increase the odds) Putting the Seattle oncologist (who said VP was not healthy) in the odds with the other eye getting cancer ... leaves us mostly wondering why Seattle ... a specialist perhaps, or just to keep it quiet? Or was it a "believer" oncologist, since George knew him? A fish hook story would be better than admitting to cancer, which would be damaging to the organization as well as to vp. CEO's tend to keep their health private I think, lest it give people doubt about the company's future. Perhaps VP was clever enough to spread the story through a more honest person, though it doesn't seem to have been very wide spread. As I recall, CG said vp kept asking what time it was, before he died. It seems he had cancer, but how that was dealt with at the very end seems the question, which might be more a privacy issue than a conspiracy theory. It doesn't seem he died in great pain. (I see now I see & WG mentions morphine, it seems logical to me he had some narcotic at the end) Wasn't there a message that went out before vp died? Like a day or less? Did he choose the time, more or less? That would seem a smart choice to me. If ocular melanoma was the cause of death, does that mean it was in the "good eye"? Or did removing the one eye not remove the cancer?

Or was geeer or someone his Dr. Kervorkian ... ? You do wonder about those death certificates at times ... what really happened at the very end? I have no problem with someone choosing an alternative to a slow death by cancer. It seems certainly the cancer was there ... maybe not the final cause. waysider said It would seem unlikely though that the cancer was a response to trauma if, in fact, it originated in a region not associated with the original insults. But do we know those details?

Well we don't know how many treatments he had or when it started ... there are so many things we don't know, that we can only surmise that his claim to have gotten cancer as a martyr like act of the filming ... seems to line up with his claims that he stood in the gap. Everything about had to grandiose. But since we are looking at real causes of a rare cancer, it seems there is some evidence that his 14 days of repeated flashburns (we don't even know that exactly) may have caused some deeper trauma. Apparently in certain rapid healing situations, errors are made in the healing ... Trauma and injury: some cancers seem to grow at the sites of injuries ranging from major trauma to the sites of bruises. This would be consistent with a cancer occurring from an error during the rapid-growth phase of healing. Some examples that have been examined include: head trauma, gallbladder cancer from gallstones, bone sarcomas (in old scars). In this case the healing was interrupted on a daily basis with more trauma. To me that would be a perfect setup for a future cancer ... I'm just saying from the data, it would be a possibility, especially given the other factors (tobacco, alcohol, predisposition).

Thanks Waysider ... I did find this ... not sure how well researched it is ... but it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think his repeated "flashburns" or whatever, did some longer term damage. we've also included information on factors that might affect risk as well as factors where there is enough evidence to say there is almost certainly increased risk. The possible risk factors for eye melanoma include Eye colour Moles Too much sun exposure Exposure to UV radiation for some workers It seems VP had several factors against him. Add on smoking and alcohol ... he was a sitting duck. WW, besides the part about the liver going against your theory, there IS some evidence that increased sun exposure is a factor. So there are factors against your theory, but you hold to it based on thin air. What we know is we don't know the cause ... his repeated exposure to the extreme flashburn or whatever would be more likely to cause longer term damage ... maybe like getting sunburn after sunburn on many successive days ... wouldn't that be worse than an occasional burn? I'm not interested in making VP a hero, but it sure seems in the realm of possibility that the repated damage was a factor. It was not a cheap shot, I am thinking back to another theory you held against evidence, evidence you did not even have but I did. Your troll theory held what must have been in emails I had ... so you proposed I was the troll's tool ... you tried to make the evidence fit the claim, even when you didn't have the evidence. Get it?

I don't see other actors or musicians that had to put ice packs on their eyes after the light they were exposed to. it seems he did some damage ... but was able to see OK later. Still, it is firmly in the category of "we don't KNOW". It does fit the pattern of gas on the snow pumps ... so sure, he likely attributed it to something noble sounding. But since we don't know, why try to make some big fat claim that "we" do? As Linda said, it is rare for cancer to move into the eye from other places, apparently ... so we don't have much to go on. The fishhook story seems fishy, but hey... fishing on Drambuie is a tricky endeavor ... WW said Why is that sad? ... I perceive bias .. WW is looking for a certain result... After all the scientific quotes, it ends with surmising about anecdotal evidence. Has anyone heard of farmers that have to put ice packs on their eyes after coming in from farming? I knew lotsa old farmers with very red necks .. never ice packs on the eyes ... agree with WW's results if you want, he is looking for a desired result and is sad if he can't find it ... that is not the scientific method. Linda mentioned a couple pertinent bits of data. Increased occurrence near the equator, for example. It seems possible to me there was some trauma to vp's eyes from the filming ... no idea if that left any permanent scarring that may have been a "weak area" for later cancer. Quite possibly smoking and alcohol were contributing weakening factors ... it is inconclusive. Most likely vp did not know "THE cause". Still, why pretend to have scientific evidence when there is none ... that seems needy .. or something. Is there really a need to have all results fit the mission at GSC? The evidence is vp died pretty young, from something he claimed was caused by devil spirits, sometimes at least. It seems he tried to cover for the cancer ... he died mostly alone and alienated ... but he had a lot of years where the way world was his oyster ... I guess ... As Linda pointed out, ocular melanoma is very rare ... and it is not known what causes cancer ... except here at GSC to me the bright light from filming story seems possible, though given vp's character,the made up version seems to fit better. But this need to have to come up with evidence where none exists only dilutes the many valid arguments against the cult stuff. Now I see states relevant points ... regardless of the real cause, we know he was self absorbed to the end. Her statements seem to indicate maybe he was "clinically delusional" .. or whatever the real term would be. Why else the need to show how he was sold out by his inner sanctum? The moral of the story ... don't be a cult leader ...

Of course Pawtucket can do whatever he wants, of course we have no legal right to demand anything. I'm thinking of a higher moral position that considers the whole body of contributors. There are people that want to contribute .. freely, but don't like to feel they are in some dark anti cult, squashed speech regime. If it is a bully pulpit for a few to have their own private Idaho ... that will attract a different kind of contributor. I'm expressing my view that open forums where even the anti cult sentiment gets vetted, so as not to get too off base or hyperbolic ... would be healthier. Registering is open to anyone without revealing anything. It doesn't seem to me an anti cult site, or a cultee help and reconnect site ... lends itself well to having an inner sanctum where secret topics are discussed. The moderators have that, and everyone else has the pm option, without setting up more divisions .. sure there could be advantages, I'm looking at the pitfalls. Legally ... true ... But your home is where you live ... whereas this is an open forum to the world where people have invested countless hours. It is carried over from another site, WayDale ... or whatever ... and I think many perceive Pawtucket's actions more as a charitable public service than a private hand selected club where he is king ... I'd even venture to guess that is closer to Pawtucket's perception, as opposed to a forum of folks he would invite into his living room. He and whoever he chooses will make the decision ... I'm offering my input as a public ervice, as to what I perceive would be more effective at telling the other side of the TWI story, and keeping the body of people that choose to socialize here, united or at least connected. :) (also, what happens if WayGB infiltrates ... then people feel safe, expose more than they should, and then are outed ... or whatever)

While I can see some value of being able to speak more freely, it seems too much like a place where discussions about the other discussions/people would take place. The outer circle would be more like new twigees ... But I don't know anyone still in TWI, so I don't get how P-Mosh or others are limited in the discussions, exactly. It also seems like a place where the more "popular" (AC grads) of GSC would congregate, free from "attack" or free from outside opinion. It seems this would be more divisive than helpful, and people reading to get help would miss out on those posts that discuss exactly their type of situation. People talk of how this is Pawtucket's site ... and certainly he and mod's put in more time/money than most ... but it is the basic anti cult message that most are here to contribute to ... so in that respect is is everyone's site with the common cause of exposing the fraud and overcoming some of the residue of TWI or other abuse or domination. Having to prove yourself to work your way into some sort of inner sanctum, where you have to behave as some select body decides, seems antithetical to the cause. Especially since the select body has proven to be fallible on many occasions. People can pm each other privately, but to make it more broad, to the point of whole private forums, seems too much like another power structure thang. It would put an incentive or an intimidation to post in alignment with the prominent thinking of the inner circle powers ... lest you be demoted, or not promoted. Free thinking should be at a premium here. Of course the pretense of fairness for demotion/non promotion would always be there, but the underlying personal reasons for actions would be hidden even more than they are now. It seems a move in the wrong direction.

IMNSHO, the umpires should not be part of the game ... I guess it might change the game, but for the better. They get attitudes, and maybe even money ... using the little box for ball strike calls makes sense to me. Bias stinks. And better steroid enforcement I guess ... very strict and consistent testing, with exact rules known. if athletes are taking anything questionable, let league officials know exactly what they plan to take ... then questionable tests will not be in doubt. Poor Roger Maris ... his record would probably still stand ... of course, what was he taking? Here is number 61 ... looks like he is leaning back?

That might have caught up to him as well, but it seems smokers are more apt to get lung cancer ... right?

Thanks Linda I was gonna research this .. but didn't m opinion is (I forget if it is from previous research) that trauma anywhere can result in eventual cancer. It is like an open door .. scar tissue ... throat problems ... sun damage ... whatever ... but I'd welcome a more informed confirmation. VP may have had trauma from the filming ... perhaps at that point it was something he thought he could believe out of, or was so vitally important he would risk it ... how do I know? Or maybe the cancer came from general stress ... which can cause weakness? But I am pretty convinced it is not a devil spirit ... but by then vp had the image to protect. So those close to him, maybe they had to be fed a story or two ... he couldn't say he was going to have his eye removed, so he said he was going fishing? I don't know ... but I think stress/trauma, physical or mental .. can be a precursor to cancer.

Good thing you clarified that was your daughter Jonny. I was gonna write Mrs. Bump and tell her Bump was stepping out on her with Snow White ... :o she does kinda look like snow white ...