From: fun@thingy.apana.spaaaamtraaaaap.org.au (David Gerard) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: quote from 'Zodiac' by Neal Stephenson Date: 19 Oct 1997 18:11:40 +1000 Organization: Please try to understand before one of us dies. Lines: 55 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: thingy.apana.org.au X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.4.3 UNIX) Just read this book yesterday, and the quote below jumped out at me. If you take 'chemical' allegorically (e.g. for 'meme' or 'idea'), it's highly applicable to Scientology. I think I'll be putting this one on my Web page. ('Zodiac': a type of motorised inflatable raft the main character in the book is very fond of.) BTW, read the damn book. It's set in the 'present day' (1988; at one point, one character suggests to another to get one of them new 386's), but is really standard SF with a super-capable hero who wins and wins. But it's an invigorating and entertaining read. ARSCC Boston will either love or hate it for the amount of geographical detail. From 'Zodiac' by Neal Stephenson (p.57 of the 1995 Bantam Spectra edition, ISBN 0 553 57386 1) The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they're constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don't even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they'd printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of airplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns. All the old men within twenty miles who have come down with tumors become implacable enemies. All the women married to them, all the mothers of damaged children, and even those of undamaged ones. The politicians and the news media trample each other in their haste to pour hellfire down on that corporation. The transformation can happen overnight and it's easy to bring about. You just have to show up and point your finger. No chemical crime is perfect. Chemical reactions have inputs and outputs and there's no way to make those outputs disappear. You can try to eliminate them with another chemical reaction, but that's going to have outputs too. You can try to hide them, but they have this way of escaping. The only rational choice is not to be a chemical crook in the first place. Become a chemical crook and you're betting your future on the hope that there aren't any chemical detectives gunning for you. That assumption isn't true anymore. -- http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/scn/ http://www.suburbia.net/~fun/scn/ I hereby encourage all earthlink.net users to leave for a provider whose email and Usenet messages are not boycotted by the rest of the net, and for ISPs to continue to block earthlink.net email and Usenet messages from Earthlink, until earthlink.net *stop* the flow of junk email and spam. For more information, see http://www.best.com/~dkeith/spamlink.htm