How popular is Scientology in Los Angeles?

[Darth Wong]

I just discovered that there's a street called "L Ron Hubbard Way" in Los Angeles. Leaving aside the obvious cracks about celebrities, is Scientology more well thought-of there in general, or is this apathy, or is this a case of some councillor doing something when nobody's looking?

[Kaiser Caesar]

I just discovered that there's a street called "L Ron Hubbard Way" in Los Angeles. Leaving aside the obvious cracks about celebrities, is Scientology more well thought-of there in general, or is this apathy, or is this a case of some councillor doing something when nobody's looking?

According to this study there is only about 55,000 people who would openly claim to be Scientologists living in the United States (the Church claims 3.5 million, but this is likely a mixture of people who have lapsed, were interested but never committed, and simply bullshitting). Even if all of these people lived in L.A (unlikely) they would barely be a blip on the radar in terms of population.

I think its more likely he got the street named after him because he is the world's most published and translated author

[Kuja]

Apparently it's the site of one of the Church's larger bases. I snatched this off wiki:

Link

The organization owns a large complex on Fountain Avenue which was formerly Cedars of Lebanon hospital. It contains Scientology's West Coast headquarters, "Pacific Area Command Base," often referred to as "PAC Base". Adjacent buildings include headquarters of many of Scientology's internal divisions, including the "American Saint Hill Organization", the "Advanced Organization of Los Angeles" and the "Church of Scientology of Los Angeles", founded February 18, 1954. All these organizations are integrated within the corporation Church of Scientology Western United States. Also in this area are the offices of Bridge Publications, Scientology's publishing arm for the United States and Canada.

The Church of Scientology successfully campaigned to have the city of Los Angeles rename one block of a street running through this complex "L. Ron Hubbard Way." The street has been paved in brick.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Recently I was in LA visiting my sister and a few other friends. We got to drive by the actual Church of Scientology in downtown LA. It's a decent sized building in a decent part of town with a decent amount of self-advertising around it, so I'd assume they have at least a little sway to afford that land and ad-space.

[Uraniun235]

There's quite a few rich celebrities who profess to be Scientologists, so I could see someone like Tom Cruise flashing a smile (and maybe some money) in order to help get the street name changed.

[Erik von Nein]

Well, here is apparently the city clerk report about the name change, which happened in 1996: http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerk ... er=96-1338

There isn't much info there, except that it was requested and approved. But this was back in the mid-90s when Scientology wasn't quite as despised as it is today. There were likely more Scientologists living there, as well, and more rich celebrities who were less concerned about being known as Scientologists.

[Pablo Sanchez]

There's quite a few rich celebrities who profess to be Scientologists, so I could see someone like Tom Cruise flashing a smile (and maybe some money) in order to help get the street name changed.

It's also a matter of naming streets after stuff being so common and having such low civic priority that any organization capable of getting a few thousand signatures could probably get a street named after them as long as it was something reasonable. That is, as long as it wasn't changing the name of a street that was important for traffic, cultural, or political reasons (like Mulholland Drive or Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard), or changing the name to something blatantly offensive (like Adolf Hitler Boulevard). Simply put, if nobody cares what a street is named except for the Scientology members who sign a petition or otherwise put forward the proposal, why not change the name?

I think its more likely he got the street named after him because he is the world's most published and translated author

This is a highly questionable claim because of the common practice of bulk purchasing to drive up sales. Scientology has been accused of requiring members to buy large numbers of L. Ron Hubbard books to continually increase sales figures without actually representing any new sales. With other authors this is often done via bulk purchasing (e.g. Richard Melon Scaife will drop some money to buy crates of Ann Coulter books so it can claim to be a best-seller, and then just give them away) but best-seller lists are wise to this ploy and can mark such books with an asterisk to denote that the sales figures are fake. Scientology has enough control over its members to distribute bulk purchases over a large number of individuals to escape easy notice as faking bestsellers.

Another strike against your theory is that Hubbard's books aren't really remarkable by the standards of Science Fiction novels. Many, many authors are much better regarded, like Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, and so on.

[Molyneux]

Another strike against your theory is that Hubbard's books aren't really remarkable by the standards of Science Fiction novels. Many, many authors are much better regarded, like Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, and so on.

That's one way of saying it...
Another way is that Hubbard's fiction was awful. I read Battlefield Earth back in high school, and if it's typical of his work, I can't understand how anyone got through more than one or two of his books.

[Zed Snardbody]

Last time I was in LA I chickened out of their psychology museum. I was the only one in their that wasn't staff at the time. But there were a tone of staff in this building. They seem to employ a fair amount of people atleast.

[Rye]

Last time I was in LA I chickened out of their psychology museum. I was the only one in their that wasn't staff at the time. But there were a tone of staff in this building. They seem to employ a fair amount of people atleast.

I doubt they were all paid. They were probably volunteers for the most part.

[Darth Wong]

Another strike against your theory is that Hubbard's books aren't really remarkable by the standards of Science Fiction novels. Many, many authors are much better regarded, like Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, and so on.

That's one way of saying it...
Another way is that Hubbard's fiction was awful. I read Battlefield Earth back in high school, and if it's typical of his work, I can't understand how anyone got through more than one or two of his books.

Ah, so L. Ron Hubbard's work actually is like the Christian Bible.

[Serafina]

Another strike against your theory is that Hubbard's books aren't really remarkable by the standards of Science Fiction novels. Many, many authors are much better regarded, like Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, and so on.

That's one way of saying it...
Another way is that Hubbard's fiction was awful. I read Battlefield Earth back in high school, and if it's typical of his work, I can't understand how anyone got through more than one or two of his books.

Ah, so L. Ron Hubbard's work actually is like the Christian Bible.

Perhaps religious scritpure needs to be horribly tough to read.

You see, religious can't possibly be something that everyone can read and understand easily. If that was the case, there would be no need for a hierarchical structure within that religion.
Also, if it is easy to understand, the writer of that book (be it god or whoever) can not possibly that enlightened.
True revelations allways have to surpass the understanding of a mere human.
Truly wise men always speak in riddles.

Basically, its one giant justification to an appeal to authority.

[Gil Hamilton]

Ah, so L. Ron Hubbard's work actually is like the Christian Bible.

I read half of Battlefield Earth. I say "half" because the plot of the story actually ends about halfway through.

The plot is:

"So there are some aliens that conquered all the universe, right? And they decided to stripmine the Earth because in all the universe, gold is, like really rare. So they gas the human race and do so. But they missed some spots because there were some nuclear explosions and radiation makes the aliens explode, so they couldn't get all the humans. Yes, you heard me.

So one alien administrator find out that there are some inbred humans still around and decides that they can be enslaved for labor, because he doesn't want to be stuck on Earth and needs some free labor on the sly to fill up some transports with gold so he can leave. So he captures a bunch of them and zaps them with an Education Ray to make them smart, so they can use alien machines. Unfortunately, the humans, despite being a handful of supremely inbred cavemen, many of them Scottish, turn around and use the alien machines to fight off the aliens, then send a big pile of uranium to the alien homeworld.

This causes their homeworld to explode, which had all that alien races females on it. Oh yeah, and every time any of the aliens try to open a portal to the Homeworld, they blow up too. So the triumph of the human spirit prevails and all the bad aliens everywhere die."

That is a summary of 500 pages of the book. That is the first HALF of the book. The second half of the book, even though I never finished it, was the human race conquering the universe, despite being a handful of inbred cavemen. This is because after all the one alien race got exploded, a whole bunch of other showed up, including the interstellar version of Sallie Mae, to beat up humans. The humans win though, cause we are fucking awesome.

It is a bunch of time I'll never get back.

Mysteriously, "Battlefield Earth" is said to be former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's favorite book. I'm sure that proves something, but I don't know what.

[Frank Hipper]

Nothing summarises Battlefield Earth better than L.Ron's term for the alien atmosphere that explodes in the presence of radiation:

Breathe Gas

[CaptainChewbacca]

I actually LIKED Battlefield Earth as a story. It read like old-fashioned pulp scifi, and I found it to be quite fun and imaginative.

Of course, it had some obvious scientologist overtones. Scientologists hate psychiatry. The bad-guy aliens? They're called 'Psychlos'. OOOH... subtle.

[Gil Hamilton]

I actually LIKED Battlefield Earth as a story. It read like old-fashioned pulp scifi, and I found it to be quite fun and imaginative.

Of course, it had some obvious scientologist overtones. Scientologists hate psychiatry. The bad-guy aliens? They're called 'Psychlos'. OOOH... subtle.

Really, Chewie? Why? It's one of the more terribly written stories in science fiction. It can literally be summed up as "Inbred cavemen conquer the universe because humans are awesome. Aliens are stupid and they explode at the slightest provocation."

[CaptainChewbacca]

I actually LIKED Battlefield Earth as a story. It read like old-fashioned pulp scifi, and I found it to be quite fun and imaginative.

Of course, it had some obvious scientologist overtones. Scientologists hate psychiatry. The bad-guy aliens? They're called 'Psychlos'. OOOH... subtle.

Really, Chewie? Why? It's one of the more terribly written stories in science fiction. It can literally be summed up as "Inbred cavemen conquer the universe because humans are awesome. Aliens are stupid and they explode at the slightest provocation."

Nah, it was 'Inbred Cavemen get absurdly lucky in retaking earth, then keep getting accidentally lucky'. They didn't 'conquer' the universe, they used a legal loophole to take over the entire financial holdings of the Psychlo empire, which left them with all the money. The 2nd half of the book has really no fighting whatsoever, after they send the nukes back through the teleporter and nuke planet psychlo. I just thought it was fun and different and a bit cheesey.

[Gil Hamilton]

Nah, it was 'Inbred Cavemen get absurdly lucky in retaking earth, then keep getting accidentally lucky'. They didn't 'conquer' the universe, they used a legal loophole to take over the entire financial holdings of the Psychlo empire, which left them with all the money. The 2nd half of the book has really no fighting whatsoever, after they send the nukes back through the teleporter and nuke planet psychlo. I just thought it was fun and different and a bit cheesey.

Absurdly lucky? You mean the book contriving to have the entire Psychlo empire, which is supposed to span the entire universe, depending on one planet where they keep their entire female breeding population and, oh yeah, just HAPPENS to explode into a radioactive star if exposed to ANY "radiation", allowing John to blow up ALL the Psychlos EVERYWHERE in the entire UNIVERSE with a magic silver bullet? Or that they managed to retake the Earth because what's his puss the Psychlo administrator zapped them with a magic education ray that happened to let them use all the Psychlos military equipment with equal competancy as the Psychlos themselves and even though there were at best a few thousand in their TOTAL population, still beat the Psychlos, who had previously conquered everything? Or that the same inbred cavemen managed to reverse engineer Psychlo teleporters, uh, somehow?

No fighting in the second half? A whole bunch of aliens in the second half of the book invade Earth, including the interstellar equivalent of a loan agency, and the cavemen end up beating them.

[CaptainChewbacca]

No fighting in the second half? A whole bunch of aliens in the second half of the book invade Earth, including the interstellar equivalent of a loan agency, and the cavemen end up beating them.

No, the aliens bomb empty earth-cities from orbit until the humans force them to the table and make their big economic deal. There is no alien army on earth, and no humans fighting aliens.

[Gil Hamilton]

No, the aliens bomb empty earth-cities from orbit until the humans force them to the table and make their big economic deal. There is no alien army on earth, and no humans fighting aliens.

I didn't finish all 1200 or so pages of the damn thing, but I distinctly remember Johnny blowing up the one aliens Secret Military Base with his magic bomb and also some of the Scottish cavemen capturing some aliens who landed a raiding party. If you don't count blowing up one of the alien race's moons as "fighting", I'm not sure how to talk to you.

Further, I noticed you completely didn't respond to the first part of my post. Why is that? I would expect since you seem to think that Battlefield Earth is a good book that you don't think that such things are the result of the book being so horribly written that it literally jams in ridiculous plot contrivances and holes you could drive a truck through in order to let the cavemen win against a universe spanning evil alien empire.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I didn't finish all 1200 or so pages of the damn thing, but I distinctly remember Johnny blowing up the one aliens Secret Military Base with his magic bomb and also some of the Scottish cavemen capturing some aliens who landed a raiding party. If you don't count blowing up one of the alien race's moons as "fighting", I'm not sure how to talk to you.

Blowing up the alien moon was done with all the stress and drama of dropping off a package at the post office. There was no rush, no 'down to the wire', just four buttons. I'm pretty sure the 'raiding party' you remember was when the scottsmen went to Africa to find the decendants of a UN Mercenary force who didn't know the war was over.

Further, I noticed you completely didn't respond to the first part of my post. Why is that? I would expect since you seem to think that Battlefield Earth is a good book that you don't think that such things are the result of the book being so horribly written that it literally jams in ridiculous plot contrivances and holes you could drive a truck through in order to let the cavemen win against a universe spanning evil alien empire.

For me it was the little things that made it entertaining, like the childlike approach to democracy the surviving humans adopted, or the fact that the banker-aliens-that-i-swear-aren't-jews loved chinese food. The whole book was a Refuge in Audacity, and while I don't think its well-written, I found it entertaining enough to be disappointed in the movie.

There are ALWAYS plot contrivances where the little guy wins. If you'll recall, the rebel alliance blew up the Empire's super-ultimate-invincible-battle-station TWICE.

I guess basically, for me Battlefield Earth fell into the 'so bad it's awesome' category.