Posted on 08/04/2002 8:00:41 AM PDT by Commie Basher
Since you obviously haven't done any study on the topic, your reactions must be purely emotional, which usually means the topic threatens you in some way. I'm sorry, I fail to see how it could be threatening, as I said, it would be just the opposite.
What's your problem? Is it possible for you to put into words and communicate it clearly without the emotive baggage? If you can't, then please explain why anyone should take you seriously. 
That doesn't make sense, Aliska. Given that the Jews have such a role doesn't make the Paraguayans anathema.
But again, you can't go into the specifics because YOU HAVE NO specific disagreements with the books. (Or else wild horses couldn't stop you from telling me them).
It appears to me that you are just wildly HOPING that the events depicted in the books don't happen (Rapture - Tribulation - Armegeddon) because in some way you FEAR them.
Salon continues to enlarge the subscriber base for its paid subscription offerings, including Salon Premium, as well as Salon's two online communities, Table Talk and The Well. During the June 2002 quarter, Salon added 12,700 new paid subscribers, increasing the total number of paid subscribers to its three subscription services to 47,700, of which 42,300 remain as current subscribers
A lie by omission. They added the new subscribers only because they started offering monthly subscriptions for six bucks; before you had only one choice: to ante up $30 for a full year. Also note that they have already lost a whopping 11.3% of their subscriber base due to nonrenewals. In fact, if I'm interpreting the sentence correctly, what they're actually saying is that the 11.3% drop occurred ENTIRELY in just this one quarter, which means that fully 42.5% of the people that signed up this quarter had already left for good 90 days later.
Also note that they're intentionally conflating the subscription numbers to Table Talk and the Well with the actual Salon subscribers in order to pump up their numbers. This is about as legitimate as if Newsweek included all the subscribers to the Washington Post in its numbers, just because they're both part of the same company.
Compared to the year-ago period, paid subscriptions have grown 130% as a percentage of overall revenues for Salon.
More spin for the purposes of lying. Paid subscriptions have grown 130% from a year ago because in the first quarter last year they had JUST STARTED their paid subscription crap right before the end of the quarter. Going from 10 to 23 subscribers in the course of a year would not be very encouraging, but it would still be a "growth of 130%."
"Paid subscriptions are a major priority for Salon. We're capitalizing on a new trend on the Internet and growing consumer acceptance for paid content," said O'Donnell. "We continue to aggressively promote Salon Premium, The Well and Table Talk to our large base of readers (over 3 million) each quarter."
Stupidity #1: There is no growing consumer acceptance of paid content for paid content's sake. People have always been willing to pay, as long as the content was original, extremely useful stuff that couldn't be obtained anywhere else (example, the Wall Street Journal site). But they are not going to start shelling out $30/yr or more to every single site they visit now for free. At best, they'll pick one or two sites and completely abandon all the others forever. (And almost everyone's going to end up picking their favorites from only 5 or 6 big sites that really offer a lot of bang for their buck.) Salon is not going to be one of those sites. It is a shell of its former self, with only a tiny fraction of their original editorial staff left, and 100% of their truly good writers long gone. And the simple fact is that Salon offers nothing that isn't available elsewhere for free. Ninety percent of the major newspapers and news channel sites offer far more fresh content every day with the same major liberal bias, and there's no charge for any of it. For the true hard core leftists, there's Alternet, the Village Voice, the Nation (well, they charge for some stuff), Mother Jones, tompaine.com, on and on. A lot of the people who currently have subscriptions to Salon are either doing for only because it's "for the cause" (Salon shutting down will be interpreted by the entire country as a total repudiation of their viewpoint), or because they really wanted access to one or two of Salon's really good writers, who have of course all long since left. In either case, these are not situations in which subscribers will continue paying up month after month, year after year. The ones doing it for the cause will get "donor fatigue" eventually, and the ones who were in it for the writing no longer have any reason to stick around even now. In the end, only a sizable amount of extremely high quality content will allow a publication to continue publishing in perpetuity. Salon ain't got that.
Stupidity #2: 42,300 paid subscribers out of 3 million readers? That's 1.5% of their readership who have signed up. Not something to brag about.
"While new signups are important, renewals are key to any successful subscription business. We're experiencing Salon Premium renewal rates of 66%, a vast improvement from traditional print magazines," added O'Donnell. "We believe we can improve those renewal rates to 70% plus going forward."
Without knowing the details, this statement is meaningless. A renewal rate of 66% is a death spiral if you can't generate a large number of new subscribers at the same time. It's actually a loss of fully 1/3 of your subscribers, followed by another 1/3 loss of what's left, another 1/3 loss of what's left after that, etc. Also, we have to know how many of those are the $6 monthly subscriptions and how many are the yearly subscriptions. If a new monthly subscriber decides to stick around for two more months before dumping Salon, that's a hell of a lot less meaningful than a full-year subscriber who re-ups.
And if you disagree with Lost_Tribes, the name-calling and dancing graphics will start in, because LT can't take any disbelief of his views. He can get very obnoxious.
You began this "conversation" by attacking the books without going into one word of WHY.
I called on you to be specific. I did this four seperate times. You could never BE specific no matter how many times I asked you to be.
I conclude from this that you are baselessly attacking the books because you FEAR what is in them.
Specifically, how so?
That, and the fact that you have no articulatable ideas.
Uh, oh, here comes another weasel slinking out of the woods!
The answer is the same, put your money where your mouth is. My position is amply clear. It's on the table and open for discussion. If you don't have the intelligence to argue the facts, please don't bother throwing rocks. You have already lost.
But if you wish to engage in intelligent dialogue, please click on my LostTribe Profile below and read the 3-MINUTE HISTORY. That's where this discussion begins, and ends.
The Worldwide Church of God has repudiated the "Anglo-Saxons are Israelites" theory. From their website:
"Today, after having carefully researched the tenets and history of its belief that the United States and Britain are the descendants of the ancient Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, the Worldwide Church of God no longer teaches this doctrine. While it may be an interesting theory, there is simply a lack of credible evidence, either in the biblical account or the historical record, to support a conclusion regarding the modern identity of the lost ten tribes of Israel. We recognize that there were hermeneutical and historical inaccuracies in the Church's past understanding of this issue."
Can you please show me where losttribe supports this theory? I've read his personal page, his posts and teh book by Capt, and see none of that.
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