Empire of the Odd

jtotheizzoe:

A Solar System Across Sweden

A 1:20 million scale solar system has been built that covers the entire nation of Sweden. With different buildings and sculptures representing different planets and solar bodies, the replicas begin in Stockholm (with the Sun and inner planets) and stretch all the way to the far north town of Kiruna (the point of termination shock), 950 km away from the “Sun”.

I’ve put the names of what the above sculptures represent in the photo captions.

To see the full list of pseudo-planetary landmarks, check here. Any Swedish followers seen any of these?

Russian scientists have been slowly and meticulously drilling down into the sealed Lake Vostok in Antarctica and were expected to break through pretty soon, into a lake that’s been completely cut off from anything and everything for 20 million years. But unexpectedly, the Russian crew has been unreachable by radio for the last seven days. This sounds like the build-up to an awesome horror movie.

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?A colleague of mine once explained to me why he keeps away from Scientology stories at his publication (which will remain nameless).
He wasn’t concerned about the church’s reputation for litigiousness, and he wasn’t worried that a story about Scientology’s most recent controversies and excesses wouldn’t resonate with readers.

No, his reluctance was much more quotidian. “The problem I always have with Scientology stories is the massive backstory, which is an obstacle that fails the cost-benefit test,” he told me.

I completely understood where he was coming from. It isn’t easy dealing with the steamer trunks of baggage that come with explaining new developments in Scientology. Which is why I’m all the more impressed with the job Jim Lippard pulls off while he deals with all of the complex backstory in an upcoming issue of Skeptic magazine, and which editor Michael Shermer gave me an advance look at.

Keying off the publication of two books about Scientology published last year — Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology and Hugh Urban’s The Church of Scientology — Lippard puts together a robust yet concise history of the church, and along the way makes the case that L. Ron Hubbard’s creation is in serious trouble.

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