Life isn't always easy if your father or grandfather was Jim Jones, the legendary founder of the People's Temple. Jones and wife Marcelline adopted seven children of varying ethnicities. Son Jim Jones Jr. lives an upstanding existence as a pharmaceutical sales rep and volunteer basketball coach, but has been hounded by his past throughout his life. Meanwhile, grandson Rob Jones is San Francisco's top high school basketball player. But sometimes the legacy just follows you. (Video)
posted on Jan 1, 2008 - View this thread

Reading the January edition of Harper's, about Brasilia, I was struck by a bit about what is apparently one of many cults in around the capital city: the Valley of the Dawn. A Jewish UFO cult? The ultimate in syncretic religions? Book your flight now.They're a lot more open to foreigners than Macumba
posted on Dec 27, 2007 - View this thread

When Ron Paul email spam started hitting inboxes in late October, UAB Computer Forensics Directory Gary Warner published findings on the spam's textual patterns and the illicit botnet used to spread it -- findings which were picked up by media outlets and tech websites like Salon, Ars Technica, and Wired Magazine's "Threat Level" blog, the latter in a set of followup posts by writer Sarah Stirland: 1, 2, 3.
posted on Nov 5, 2007 - View this thread

"The time is right, and the time is now! The Lord has spoken to you. He has commanded you to create the New Jerusalem, to prepare for His arrival, to gather the flock, bring together the faithful, spread the Word. Blinded like Paul on his way to Damascus, you are now set to follow His Way. But how do you start such an ambitious project?" Dr. Emeril Lazarus has all the answers.
posted on Jun 16, 2007 - View this thread

Why waste time on playing roleplaying games or writing pastiches when you can actually worship Cthulhu? Join an existing Cthulhu cult or form your own!. They've got a book and everything! (though it may contain big chunks of wiki-plagarism). As ever, the ability to rock a traditionalist shaved-head-and-goatee satanist look considered a plus.
posted on Apr 29, 2007 - View this thread

"Thank God I Was Raped!" Thank God for creepily masochistic self-help concepts! Thank God for network marketing publishing stunts that prey on the deranged! Thank God I was scammed out of real money by an advocate of rape therapy! But most of all, thank God there's an affiliate program!
posted on Mar 27, 2007 - View this thread

The Thirteen Towers of Chankillo in Peru may be the Western Hemisphere's oldest known full-service solar observatory, showing evidence of early, sophisticated Sun cults, according to archaeoastronomy professor Clive Ruggles. The 2,300-year-old complex featured 13 towers running north to south along a ridge and spread across 980 feet to form a toothed horizon that spans the solar arc. Last year, another ancient observatory was discovered in Peru by Robert Benfer. The Temple of the Fox is 4,200 years old, making it 1,900 years older than the Chankillo site, but wasn't a complete calendar.
posted on Mar 3, 2007 - View this thread

Everything you know about Pythagoras is wrong (except the bit about the beans). Less the golden-thighed Einstein of the Ancient World and more the L. Ron Hubbard of Magna Graecia. [Last link has some rude words]
posted on Feb 22, 2007 - View this thread

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda believes he is the Apostle Paul. Or Jesus. Or maybe the antichrist. Many disagree, but he and his purported thousands of followers continue to present their case.
posted on Feb 19, 2007 - View this thread

The Tax Man Cometh:

"They believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that their citizen's understanding of the written law should, and in some Platonic sense does, trump the realities of dealing with the government. This makes them uniquely American rebels--more true, they maintain, to the nation's core values than those of us who follow the pragmatic advice . . . "You mess with that shit, you are going to jail."

Brian Doherty analyzes the tax resistance movement (from 2004). Meanwhile, another ugly confrontation is brewing in New Hampshire, and violence is in the air. Mr. Brown, of course, has his views.
posted on Jan 21, 2007 - View this thread

Did Isaac Hayes really quit South Park? Last night's show roasted Hayes for his irate departure following the now-infamous Scientology episode (banned from the air in Tom Cruise's litigious wake, full episode here). In the latest episode, masters of subtlety Trey Parker and Matt Stone depict Chef as having fallen prey to an insidious cult, the "Super Adventure Club", subsequently killing him off in a manner that would make Kenny jealous. But today FoxNews reports that Isaac Hayes has been in the hospital since Jan. 17th, following a stroke, and never issued a statement. Apparently, the Scientology Center issued it "for" him. [via] [previously discussed here here and here]
posted on Mar 23, 2006 - View this thread

The Mercy Seat. Described in the book of Exodus, the throne of mercy has quite a variety of meanings. Some contemporary Christians are interested in "reconstructing" an image based on Egyptian and Phoenician culture. In Judaism, the kisei rachamim is part of the narrative of Yom Kippur, as God moves from the seat of justice to the seat of compassion. In medieval Europe, and especially in Germany, the Gnadenstuhl was a perfect representation of the trinity, combining the cruxification, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit (usually a bird), into one image of mournful compassion. Nick Cave used the idea of the mercy seat as the frame for a song about murder, sin, capital punishment, and atonement/redemption, which was later covered by Johnny Cash (mp3 clip). The chair of mercy is even visually alluded to Jodorowsky's Montana Sacra, aka Holy Mountain. (Which have been inspired in part by the Ascended Masters of Mount Shasta, but that's technically another story - the bizarro California cultists story.)
posted on Mar 3, 2006 - View this thread

Penthouse Interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr Chilling interview with the son of Scientology's founder.
posted on Nov 18, 2005 - View this thread

The Process Church of the Final Judgement, is quoted on two Funkadelic album covers. In his book The Family, Ed Sanders claimed that Charles Manson took his inspiration from The Process, leading to a lawsuit that resulted in the excision from subsequent editions of the material describing the cult's influence. Here is the redacted material. Whatever the truth about Manson and The Process Chuch, it was a time of cults.
posted on Oct 24, 2005 - View this thread

RealSuicideGirl. Probably one of the few members that has her visage at the center of an art exhibit. Taking the 'fashion goth' to heightened levels of realism.
posted on Oct 17, 2005 - View this thread

Here's an account of conditions and abuse in a Scientology prison camp. Considering Scientology's philosophy, the use of prisons and slave labor (often used for the benefit of celebrities) shouldn't be surprising. (for these links, you may need a good dictionary)
posted on Jun 24, 2005 - View this thread

The Temple of Hayah: a religion that renders its followers immune to the any laws other than the Ten Commandments. Followers need not pay taxes. But TOH is mad at Wikipedia because Wikipedia hate-crimed TOH. So TOH suggests that you tip off the FBI.
posted on Jan 21, 2005 - View this thread

The Orange Papers. A deconstruction of the 12 Steps of AA and their smilarity to cult practices.
posted on Jul 31, 2004 - View this thread

Cargo cultists versus Christians. Two religions enter, one religion leaves! Differences have led to murder on an island near Oceania. Many of us learned about cargo cults from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, it seems that there's more to the story, including a Lyndon Johnson connection.
posted on May 21, 2004 - View this thread

Bankrollers of ideology. George Soros vs. Rev. Moon.
posted on Nov 24, 2003 - View this thread

ScientologyWatch.org - a blog that's sure to bug Norwegian fishermen, Brazilian soccer players, Japanese businessmen, Greek artists and Italian educators. [Link via Politech]
posted on Mar 3, 2003 - View this thread

Cult says it has first human clone, and it's a girl. Clearly this is an incredible achievement for science, but what consequences will this have on the near and distant future? Is cloning technology being utilized by the wrong people? Some consider the fear of human cloning to be superstitious. But what if somebody taught the clones karate?
posted on Dec 26, 2002 - View this thread

Sinister cult hijacks Weblogs.com? While working on an application that finds patterns in the data supplied by Weblogs.com, Mo Morgan found some disturbing patterns:

"[...] between midnight and five there had been over 60 pings to Weblogs.com from sites that contained the string "srichinmoy" in their URI."

At first it just looks like some idiot abusing the ping system. Or could this be something altogether more sinister?
posted on Aug 30, 2002 - View this thread

Was Enron a cult?
posted on Jan 24, 2002 - View this thread

Anthrax, its been done before. It just doesn't do the job: "the cult attempted to release anthrax spores from its mid-rise Tokyo office building laboratory. At that time, police and media reported foul smells, brown steam, some pet deaths, and stains on cars and sidewalks." 2, 3. "Many view the cult Aum Shinrikyo as a group seeking to bring on the end of the world." and "an estimated $1.5 billion in assets" (thats more than Usama). me=alarmist, today.
posted on Oct 17, 2001 - View this thread

Buddhism is a cult! ...says Representative Arlon Lindner, a member of the Minnesota Legislature. He's mad that the Dalai Lama is going to speak before that august body.
posted on May 1, 2001 - View this thread