I’m a long way from the planning table here at FtB.
I’m pretty sure Ed Brayton and PZ Myers have a Master Planner’s Lair somewhere, which has a huge hot tub, beer bar and poker table, where the World Domination plans proceed.
Pictured above is the Soundproof Lair for Concealing Maniacal Laughter. I like to think the whole complex is in Scotland somewhere, probably underground, and they get there by Opening a Way into the Never-Never. I suspect Ian Cromwell, Daniel Fincke and certain others get periodic invitations to confer on important points of the Plan, although they may just be there to pick up Ed’s and PZ’s empties.
Anyway, I’m kind of a tourist here myself, a lot like you, so I can only watch as developments proceed. But I’m fairly tickled at the ads I see on my site today — for four cool secular events. I’m told that all of the ads here will eventually be perfectly targeted toward the needs and interests our particular reader audience, so this is a sign that FtB is growing toward some eventual ideal:
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But then there’s this:
I can’t advise you what to click on, but certainly anyone who visited that glossy site should also drop in at Wikipedia for a meatier overview of Scientology, the mother ship from which Dianetics now descends:
The Church of Scientology is one of the most controversial new religious movements to have arisen in the 20th century. It has often been described as a cult that financially defrauds and abuses its members, charging exorbitant fees for its spiritual services.The Church of Scientology has consistently used litigation against such critics, and its aggressiveness in pursuing its foes has been condemned as harassment.Further controversy has focused on Scientology’s belief that souls (“thetans”) reincarnate and have lived on other planets before living on Earth,and that some of the related teachings are not revealed to practitioners until they have paid thousands of dollars to the Church of Scientology.
There’s a link to another read-worthy Wikipedia piece on that bastard Galactic Overlord:
Xenu [… ] was, according to the founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm.
If I ever become Galactic Overlord, I think *I* will take all my human refuse and just drop them into a sun. It saves on hydrogen bombs, fuel cost for the millions of steampunk “DC-8-like” spaceships, and is cleaner in the sense that it leaves no toxic thetans around for a faux-messiah to clean up, 75 million years later.