Dear Cirt, I know you've been having a bit of a hard time of it lately over on WP. First there was that whole thing where you were trying to label Gloria Gaynor as a Scientologist and people wouldn't let you because the only source for it seemed to be a reprint of a list from Wikipedia. Now everyone is in your face about that wine bar article and the only people who support you are clowns like Cyclopedia. And Jimbo is involved. Again. I don't think he likes you.

I hope you are ok. I think you are, because you don't seem to let people's opinions phase you, you just respond politely and keep right on doing what you were doing. I just want you to know that despite all that, we here at WR all love and respect you as much as ever.

That out of the way, I have some bad news for you. You know Jamie Sorrentini? That minor actress whose mother owns the wine bar and whose WP bio you created? Well, bad news. I know how you think she's not a Scientologist anymore because of that blog posting, but maybe you should read what her husband Tiziano Lugli wrote in January.

"We haven’t attacked the church, we haven’t been declared, we’ve not joined any squirrel group nor have we gotten audited by anyone outside the Church.
" I can't understand most of the crazy Scientology jargon, but I think the gist of it is that they are both still Scientologists.

Anyway, sorry about that, but I thought it would be better if I told than if you found it out from someone who doesn't have you best interests at heart.

All the best,

carbuncle

Hmm...just thought of another Cirt "joke".
Too nasty to repeat though. (Sorry.)

Absolutely, but apparently the guy is still pretty pissed off (he's an Italian pop singer, and therefore was eligible to attend "CC," the Celebrity Centre where famous CoS members don't have to mix with the hoi-polloi so much). Frankly, reading the writings of Scientologists is hysterically funny for anyone who used to work for the Government - it's like non-stop parody!

It looks like what happened was that after doing a ton of free work for the CoS (mostly recording L. Ron Hubbard's lectures in Italian), he hooked up with a woman (not Jamie Sorrentini) who was either just getting into Scientology, or agreed to try it because of him, but she didn't have much money, which is always a BIG negative for a would-be Scientologist. Thing is, he had all his own course materials since he'd already been though every $cientology cour$e imaginable, so she didn't want to buy her own books and stuff - I suspect we're talking about several thousand dollars here, and quite possibly five figures in US currency (in Italian lire it would be something like 80 figures). Well, as everyone familiar with Scientology knows, showing even the slightest reluctance to pay for course materials is the Worst Thing Imaginable™, so they basically tried to destroy this guy. Since he was a celebrity (at least in Italy) he got through the first round of that, but apparently not the second. He's saying that he wasn't "declared" (a Suppressive Person), so technically he hasn't been thrown out and still considers himself a Scientologist, but clearly he isn't happy.

Why the USA still treats these people as a "religion" is beyond me, but I guess it's for the same reason they treat Wikipedia as a "charity" - either someone's getting paid, or somebody's got some dirt on somebody else. Mere bureaucratic incompetence isn't enough to explain either of those things.

Actually I'm still trying to figure out why the U.S.A. acknowledges the existence of any religious organization.

It's entirely for organizational income tax reasons. For some odd reason the Supreme Court, in one of their dumber decisions, decided that the separation of church and state required that the "state" government not be able to tax churches (or religious organizations, since obviously a church need not be physical).

Now, to me, I would think that the only problems would arrise if the stated decided to differentially tax religion A at a different rate from religion B. There probably should not be a religious tax exception in any case, since that puts the federal government in the role of deciding what is and what isn't a "real" religion. The CoS with their idiot theology qualifies for a tax deduction, but (say) the Church of the Marvelously Maintained Motorcycle does not, even though it is considerably more rational and (I would argue) may keep its conscientious practitioner even happier than most religions keep most people. Therefore why is it not a public service? Why are these damn E-meters tax-free but scuba depth guages and ppO2 sensors are not? I don't want to be an Operating Thetan, I merely want an operating rebreather.

In the USA, the people get the government they deserve ... the people get the religion they deserve ... and the people get the encyclopedia they deserve ... or at least one they can masturbate over. Yes, folks, that's "Ahmurika" ... The Land of the Free (Pron). And as per the original Shakespeare or de Tocqueville, no, is it not democracy.

The real problem is that they then consider they have the right to export and ejaculate it all over the rest of us too.

* I write "Ahmurika" as to emphasis the separation between those rightfully accused from all the decent, laid back and entertaining folk that just happen to be interned there by an accident of birth.

One might seriously, why does seriously America truly excel at cult creation and cultish behavior? Especially intensely materialistic and violent ones ... where is Cirt from, BTW?

Is it a reflect on the state of the society as a whole? One that has exchanged the beauty of unorthodoxy (see video) for greed and indulgence. (And such a humorless one ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...n/Jedi_realist). I mean, it is not just your CIA that are involved in making them.

So you're saying that some Scientologists lie about their real stance on Scientology?

Maybe you should think about that.

Jon

Cheer up, Cirt -- if alternative lifestyles appeal to you, just head down to Nashville and get Eric Ventress to tickle your funny bone. Or at least I think that he will -- he seems to be fixated lately on a specific part of the male anatomy.

I remember that flamboyant short-wave preacher Gene Scott

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Scott

would not give his donors the usual tax receipt stuff so they could turn around and get a deduction and such. I believe his argument was to keep the government from rummaging around in his church's finances, getting lists of donors and such to cross-check everything. The government doesn't need to know which religion you support, or words to that effect.

Which seemed strangely honorable, at least for this "industry". If it had an effect on donations it is hard to say. But one suspects there were (are?) probably deeper reasons for it.

It was a sad day on shortwave when Scott died. All the other cult wannabe types filling the lower ionosphere with hundreds of megawatts of Jesus babble are just stupid and crazy, completely unlistenable. Scott was far smarter, and far more crazy. Way more entertaining. At least until he started verbally/emotionally abusing his volunteers and staff, live, on the air.



Now you want to talk about cults?

When I was taking my advanced scuba course, I walked up to someone fidgeting with some equipment in the back of their car and asked where the course was -- only to realize he wasn't on the course. Instead he was doing something with a fancy rebreather, gear I had never seen up close before. Turned out the guy was an even bigger gearhead than I. He'd found his religion, and it was clear that us lowly bubble-makers are on the one-way road to hell.

He was on TV locally in L.A. He used to intersperse his sermons with saxophone solos. His wife was preaching on his show, as well, as I recall, and how has her own website, so his legacy may be living on.

True. I'm trying to resist. The new Poseidon/Cis-Lunar Mk VI Discovery thing is one amazing bit of machinery, removing most of the gearhead need. The whole computer, sensor, and battery system is embedded in a piece of plastic that slips in the top-- click. It's totally closed circuit, and handles a simple gas manifold valve between your O2 on one side, and your standard mix diluent (air, nitrox, trimix, whatever) on the other side (which can be used as a bailout bottle or takes a LP line from a separate one if you like). The scrubber cylinder is small enough that it goes in the standard cylinder hole in your old BC, and saved space is because the counterlung bladders are over-the-shoulder on both sides.

Turn the thing on and it goes though dozens and dozens of self-checks. It keeps you at 1.4 atm PO2 at any depth (so long as you're below safety stop depth, obviously-- you're at almost 1 atm PO2 at the surface, breathing nearly pure O2). If anything goes funny, or the system can't figure out something or a sensor goes down-- whatever-- it gives you the big beep to go off the system, and one switch at the mouthpiece puts you on open circuit from your bail bottle and you start blowing bubbles without even changing mouthpieces.

I think it's probably far safer than the old systems, even if it is a sort of "fly-by-wire". The chance of your computer screwing up is now smaller than the chance of your forgetting to turn on your hot mix flow and forgetting to watch your PO2 in the old systems. A famous Nobel-winning nuclear physicist died that way on an old Cis-Lunar, and one of my early dive instructors many years ago using a Drager Dolphin blacked out at 40 feet while teaching students (I wasn't there) and would have died himself had not one of his beginners (on her first dive) been a paramedic who noticed he was just drifting and took him up to the surface.

Of course, you have to weigh the advantages, which are not that great for the type of diving that is my favorite, which is usually coral reefs at 40 to 60 ft in as warm water as I can find. On a standard rental Al-80, if I don't do anything exciting I get about 50 minutes at that depth before I have to head for the safety stop, and if I stay down longer, somebody else has to go up, and the divemaster is not going to wait around more than an hour. People on the boat get restless, there's another dive site often to be set out for, and the rebreather divers, if there are any, don't get much benefit. And quite often 45 minutes at a site is enough for me.

Due to the perversity of the universe, the very places where rebreathers are nice (cold deep water and kelp up here in the north Pacific, long deep wreckdives, etc) are the very places where you're usually wearing a drysuit. In which, when you need to pee after an hour, you can't.

If I buy a Discovery rebreather, it will have to be the combo unit with Depends.

Rebreathers don't really run out like old-skool scuba, do they? I bet you'd be pretty pissed (pun indifferent!) breathing away on the bottom of the sea with your soggy ass-anchor, waiting for the winch. Then again, good excuse to go naked, which as Ottava would agree (where is he anyways?), is the only reason anyone ever does anything.

Hey, even a stopped clock...!

Well, it's the only reason a lot of people go to Burning Man.

Rebreathers and dry suits go together only because they're designed for similar conditions, not because you must use one with the other. You could dive a rebreather naked-- the new ones are barely larger than a standard tank and BC. It's just that it's water that is cold and deep (and often both) are where rebreathers are needed for time, it so happens that you also often need a drysuit unless you're a member of the polar bear club.

Esepcially if you've been perverted by tropical water. I use a 5 mm at 80 F sometimes and feel fine. I use air like crazy when I shiver or am even not relaxed due to being cold, and of course everybody uses it like crazy at depth. You get about 15 minutes at 120 feet on an Al-80, so if there's something interesting that deep, you really need something better (a rebreather, or the traditional doubles and slung deco bottle of the open circuit tech diver).

Wet suits are far colder, especially at depth, where the little air bubbles in the foam neoprene that provide the insulation, are much smaller. The advantage is you can pee in them and it doesn't matter. No small thing.