Missionary impossible.

L Ron Hubbard was a moderately successful sci-fi writer. He said he was a World War II hero. History says the US Navy sacked him for incompetence. L Ron also 'invented' Scientology. This dianetics-based cult with 'applied religious philosophy' has always held a strange fascination for me. Its eccentric, sci-fi like, totalitarian theology does not appeal to me. What intrigues me is the list of its adherents. It reads like a high-achiever Who's Who. (Tom Cruise and John Travolta are two examples. No business like show business, what?) I read on the Web how the 'Church' used the much criticised and much feared Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) forcing Google to expunge from its database URLs of several Norway-based Xenu.net's pages [xenu.net] containing "mirrored excerpts from sacred texts which the cult guards jealously as its intellectual capital." (Thomas C Greene in 'Scientologists gag Google'.) theregister.co.uk. Also read a related Reuters report ('Google revives Scientology Web page') at news.com.com.

Bonfire of the Vanities. Thank you, Google.

This happened some time in last June, if memory serves. At the prompting of a friend (and my vanity), I finally ventured to query Googlism http://www.googlism.com/. ("By the way, it’s a wicked site good stuff." is how Andrew Thompson describes it. “Thanks for the total roxority that is googlism," Greg Pallis adds his two bit’s worth.) about Deepak Mankar. And got a “Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about deepak mankar yet.” rebuff for my trouble. So I queried Googlism about Dr. Manmohan Singh. Same result. Never mind. Because when I checked what Google thought of such worthies as Sonia Gandhi, MK Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar, quite a few Googlisms I found were incoherent and incomplete. For instance: “mahatma gandhi is”; “mahatma gandhi is not known”; “mahatma gandhi is no more a person”; “mahatma gandhi is one of them”; “mahatma gandhi is a similar feature”; “mahatma gandhi is spot”; and so forth. Maybe Google doesn’t give a damn about Indians, hmmm? Here are the gems on Andrew Thompson from Google: “andrew thompson is an m”; “andrew thompson is a small but steadily growing company and the only way we can continue to grow is to offer our customers the highest quality and the best”; “andrew thompson is currently completing a doctorate on foreign policy in britain and hanover in the first half of the eighteenth century”; “andrew thompson is a 22 year old ultra”; “andrew thompson is a 25”; et cetra, et cetra and so forth. If you can make sense of it, please let me know. Now I know what the tern “flawed technology” means. (‘GOOGLE = PROOF POSITIVE? Even judges think so.’) http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_787572,00030007.htm. Maybe, what Gail D'Almaine – whoever she is – is right about Googlism when she wrote (via email): "Haven't had such a laugh in ages, brilliant tool, amazing results - and poetry isn't dead after all.” Or, Waldopepper of FilePile opined: "Its like a zany-madcap humour generator.” One last thought: Not much seems to have changed at Googlism after nearly a year, though, except probably the collection of laudatory quotes. Read about the first bonfire of the vanities held in Florence on sinful, vanity objects like mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, musical instruments, immoral books, manuscripts of secular songs and pictures including several original paintings on classical mythological subjects by Sandro Botticelli, under the baton of Father Girolamo Savonarola: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_of_the_Vanities.