Empire of the Odd

American atheists lined up to be “de-baptized” in a ritual using a hair dryer, according to a report Friday on U.S. late-night news program “Nightline.”

Leading atheist Edwin Kagin blasted his fellow non-believers with the hair dryer to symbolically dry up the holy water sprinkled on their heads in days past. The styling tool was emblazoned with a label reading “Reason and Truth.”

Kagin believes parents are wrong to baptize their children before they are able to make their own choices, even slamming some religious education as “child abuse.” He said the blast of hot air was a way for adults to undo what their parents had done.

“I was baptized Catholic. I don’t remember any of it at all,” said 24-year-old Cambridge Boxterman. “According to my mother, I screamed like a banshee … so you can see that even as a young child I didn’t want to be baptized. It’s not fair. I was born atheist, and they were forcing me to become Catholic.”

Kagin doned a monk’s robe and said a few mock-Latin phrases before inviting those wishing to be de-baptized to “come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water.”

Ironically, Kagin’s own son became a fundamentalist Christian minister after having “a personal revelation in Jesus Christ.”

“One wonders where they went wrong,” he chuckled to the TV show.

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NYU professor Gabriella Coleman opened this profoundly profanity laced academic talk with a question: why have internet enthusiasts been drawn to denounce Scientology so vehemently for two decades? Scientology, she explained, has provided a perfect nemesis for geekery.

To the geeks, freaks and hackers of the net the Church of Scientology subverts the idea of technology to be about control instead of the freedom they cherish. Scientology has a long history of intimidation and litigation against its detractors and former members, which is abhorrent to the wilder ends of the internet. No end is quite as wild as 4chan, and it was out of 4chan’s endless quest for the lulz that online organized resistance to Scientology would emerge. After the infamous Tom Cruise video on his own experience of being a Scientologist and the church’s attempts to get it away of public scrutiny, Anonymous emerged from 4chan, a non-organization hellbent on the Church of Scientology’s absolute destruction. Anonymous started out harassing the Church online, but eventually translated to sometimes hilarious street protests, and disgusting pranking. “They decided to emerge form the internet bunkers and hit the streets,” says Coleman.

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http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_china/2010-07-15/558172052582.html

By Allen Xie

Hangzhou, CHINA- A UFO was spotted over Xiaoshan airport last Wednesday, causing a one-hour flight delay and grounding 18 airplanes.  The UFO was first picked up by the airport’s radar at 8:30 pm. Many locals claimed to see what they describe as a bright white light moving across the sky. Wild theories from aliens to Russian spy planes have popped up all over the web.

China Daily reports that the Chinese regime have knowledge of what the UFO is, but won’t comment on the matter as it connected with the military. The rumors and speculations have been fuelled by various eyewitness accounts. There have been numerous pictures and videos posted on the web of the incident and similar UFO sightings all over the world.

One video posted on YouTube clearly shows the UFO and its enormous exhaust trail as it flies over Hangzhou. The UFO looks like a comet and the even pulses once in mid-flight, creating a bubble in its exhaust trail.

Anderson Cooper has made himself a powerful enemy: the Church of Scientology.

Back in March, Anderson Cooper devoted a week of his show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” to a special investigation into allegations of violence and physical abuse within the Church of Scientology. Now, the church has struck back, devoting an entire issue of one of its magazines, “Freedom,” to an attack on Cooper and CNN:

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what he thought were children that “disappeared all of a sudden”, while driving from Hertford to Puckeridge

The sighting was in July last year, but has only emerged within the last few days on a UFO-watcher’s website.

In his tantalising account the ex-cop, who identified himself only as Nick R, wrote: “I saw whilst driving along the A10 going home one evening after work north a light which was not the moon, orange and oval in shape. I drove into my parking space in Puckeridge and went into my flat. Faffed about for about 10 minutes then went outside for a cigarette.

“I saw something which I have never told anyone about. My flat was in Cambridge Court in Puckeridge backed on to fields. I saw in the twilight what I thought were kids messing about. No, as the light faded around 21.30 the orange globe appeared in the sky. I was at this time watching something on TV, then went outside for a fag again.”

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By Julian March
Julian.March@StarNewsOnline.com

Published: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:54 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, June 28, 2010 at 6:54 p.m.

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By Alan Scherstuhl, Monday, Jun. 21 2010 @ 8:00AM

The trouble with having a religion founded by a crazy writer is that crazy writers tend to write crazy shit. Traditionally, the Church of Scientology has handled this by making access to the craziest of L. Ron Hubbard‘s jabberings a reward you might earn in exchange for having blown thousands of hours and dollars. (Scientology is to religion what Farmville is to games.)

But what do you do when your founder drops this in a cheap-o paperback?

“A society in which women are taught anything butthe management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.”

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A Walsall man has told BBC WM that aliens and UFOs are responsible for a string of animal attacks in the UK.

Mike Freebury, a member of the Animal Pathology Field Unit, has investigated the mystery of ‘cattle mutilations’ for a number of years.

The phenomenon, first reported in America in the 1970s, involves the unexplained deaths of rural animals.

The bodies are often discovered with missing limbs and organs, removed with surgical precision.

Mike says that the illegal attacks are also happening in Britain – and UFOs are responsible.

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SYDNEY — A bright spiralling light, believed by astronomers to be a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, was spotted in skies across Australia’s east coast just before dawn Saturday, sparking a UFO frenzy.

Described by some witnesses as a “lollipop-type swirl”, the cloud of light was seen over the country’s three easternmost provinces — New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory — shortly before sunrise.

“It had a distinct bright centre, much like a bright star … (with) trails spiralling and fattening out from it,” Canberra resident James Butcher told broadcaster ABC of the spectacle, which he said lasted two or three minutes.

Other witnesses likened the spectacular phenomenon, footage of which was quick to hit the Internet, to a “huge revolving moon” with a swirl in the middle, or an illuminated cloud moving high and fast above the horizon.

“It certainly had that lollipop-type swirl … but it was travelling low and fairly fast, and as it went past me and I looked up, it looked like a row of lights, maybe four lights,” one Brisbane resident said.

Astronomer Andrew Jacob, acting curator of the Sydney Observatory, said it was most likely SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, launched Friday from Cape Canaveral shortly before dawn broke over Australia.

“It fits best, a rocket travelling overhead with something venting out of it, fuel venting out of the motor,” Jacob told AFP.

“The rocket’s probably tumbling or spinning a little which creates a spiral effect, a little like water coming out of a hose when you spin it. That’s the best explanation I have so far, probably the most likely one.”

The light was travelling the wrong way for it to be an astronomical phenomenon, and Jacob said he had ruled out other possibilities such as comets, a spotlight on cloud or reflection of the moon, or a meteor shower.

He said the timing was right for the SpaceX rocket to have travelled over the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and the Indian Ocean and be in skies over Australia at the time the spiralling light was seen.

The fact that it could be seen over such a broad area meant whatever caused the flare had to be very high in the atmosphere or in orbit above the Earth, Jacob added.

“All the information points to this SpaceX rocket,” he said.

The launch of the privately owned Falcon 9 test rocket marked a milestone for the space industry in the race to develop commercial carriers capable of ferrying cargo and astronauts to the orbiting International Space Station.

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