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Utah, the New Red Planet

tsornin writes "The Philadelphia Inquirer reports in this article that Mars Society crews have chosen Wayne County, Utah as an effective simulant for the Red Planet. Although Mars exploration is hardly a high priority on any government's list at the moment, Robert Zubrin and other Mars Society members hope that through their research in Wayne County and in the even more remote northern Canadian location, they can show world governments that a mission to Mars is viable."

9 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Tux racer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    I cannot fucking understand why tux racer does not have an options menu that lets me pick the fucking resolution.

    I mean, how long do you spend writing a game and forget about basic fucking options?

    Yah, eventually I found the dot-file to configure it, but PLEASE, this is ridiculous.

    Now my whole weekend is ruined cause I spent 3 hours looking for the tux racer config file. FUCK!!!

  2. Who is Xenu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I'm going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Right, then I'll begin.

    Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

    Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

    Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

    These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

    The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).

    After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting".

    When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.

    As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.


    That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called "body thetans". And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these "body thetans" and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.

    Well what did you think of that story?

    What? You thought it was a stupid story ?

    Well so do we. However, this story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years).

    We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains.

    Most of the Scientologists who work in their Dianetics* centres and so called "Churches" of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret "upper" levels of Scientology. It may take them many years before they reach this level if they ever do. The ones who do know it are forced to keep it a secret and not tell it to those people who are joining Scientology.
    Part of the first page of the secret OT III document in L. Ron Hubbard's own handwriting

    Now you have read this you know their big secret. Don't let us put you off joining though.

    * Dianetics and Scientology are trademarks of the Religious Technology Centre. This document is not connected with that organisation in any way.

    1. Re:Who is Xenu? by AnalogBoy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Trying to get slashdot in trouble with scientology again?

      Remember. These people are only slightly more crazy than your average Stallmanite. The chief difference being, they will kill you. :)

    2. Re:Who is Xenu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      The Xenu leaflet was written by Roland Rashleigh-Berry, a regular poster to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. He has assured people that the information in the leaflet is correct. He is an ex-Scientologist and although he never did the course to which the leaflet refers (he left in discust when he discovered the material) he is a scholar of the subject and has easy access to the confidential materials of the Church of Scientology and the materials that form the basis of the leaflet. Roland has listened to the tape "Assists" many times and this tape is the source of most of the material of the Xenu leaflet. The transcript of that tape is also here at Operation Clambake, and he has assured us all of its accuracy. Roland is well aware that the Xenu leaflet is a powerful weapon against the Church of Scientology and that attempts will be made at some future date to gain control of the Copyright of the leaflet in order to stifle its distribution. To that end he donated the Copyright irreversibly to the International public domain. He now no longer owns it nor can he ever claim exclusive ownership of it. The leaflet now belongs to everybody and can be copied freely without permission. His wish is that it be used to expose the Church of Scientology wherever they may be, hence his push to have the leaflet translated into as many languages as possible. Operation Clambake proudly presents links to the Xenu leaflet in all its translated versions.

  3. And using New Jersey to simulate... what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    This brings us to the next question: what other planets could we simulate here on Earth? For instance, what would New Jersey simulate?

  4. Meet the new boss... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Pity this got modden down. It is one of the most cogent arguments I've read on the subject.

    I expect you were just trolling, but seriously, RMS and the FSF *are* out to take away our livelyhoods in the name of some nebulous, socialist ideal.

  5. Re:LESU OTENARI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Amoonte najis cobar gentu. Agantis se moxir forwar!

  6. i know about text config files by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    and snarks