Templar Connect » Inconsequential Prattle

MAGICAL TREASURES!

(241 posts)
  1. maecrab
    Member

    Bathsheba Sculpture
    This lady's so awesome. And you can download some of her designs!
    Three images of the same sculpture:

    The "Klein Bottle Opener"

    What is the central problem of beer? That it is contained in a bottle, which is to say a boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphic to the sphere. Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or "wild" spheres, but rather smooth manifolds, they separate all of 3-space into two unconnected regions, viz. the region inside the bottle, containing beer, and the region outside the bottle, containing you.

    What is to be done? Clearly, the elegant solution is to introduce a non-orientable manifold without distinct sides; indeed with only a single side. The Klein bottle pictured is an example of this class. When brought into proximity with the closed manifold described above, it acts at once to disrupt the closure of the bottle, obviating the outdated, dualistic paradigm of distinction between interior and exterior, thus enabling interaction between the beer and the self.

    In summary, we have here a Klein bottle that opens beers. If I do say so, this is fine art.

    Crystal engraved with an enzyme in the act of replicating DNA:

    Posted 11 months ago #
  2. That sculpture reminds me a bit of this, which is awesome.

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    Posted 11 months ago #
  3. birdtongue
    Member

    which of course reminds me of

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    mini-documentary/gallery promo

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    Posted 11 months ago #
  4. pencilears
    Member


    from these rubber duck collectors.

    this place [url=http://celebriducks.com/[/url] has some crazy bath ducks obviously aimed at the serious collector. as who on earth gives their kid an elvis duck?

    Posted 11 months ago #
  5. In my imagination that's the bathroom of the guy with the anime room, and every room of the house is similar

    Bathsheba Sculpture

    This is so goddamn dorky but it rulesssss

    Also I had no idea they had actually working metal prototypers yet, let alone ones cheap enough to sell product for that little, god damn

    Posted 11 months ago #
  6. pencilears
    Member

    [+] Embed the video | Video DownloadGet the Video Plugins

    so, I found these with the random button on encyclopedia dramatica.

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    is more epic

    Posted 11 months ago #
  7. fishcake
    Member

    Posted 11 months ago #
  8. Kodiak
    Member

    Do you have piles of money just lying around? Do you like collecting really weird stuff?
    Go here: http://www.madametalbot.com/sitemap.htm
    I wish I could afford that stuff.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  9. superheroes' Facebook updates :

    Yanked from here.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  10. Giovanna
    Member

    La donna e mobile...
    Posted 10 months ago #
  11. Keep it classy, Craigslist!

    Posted 10 months ago #
  12. Well that is probably the least awful thing someone on Craigslist might want to do with an amputee...

    Posted 10 months ago #
  13. maecrab
    Member

    Only if you don't realize the post is a total set-up...DUH duh DUUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!

    On a serious note, a friend of a friend got REALLY MAD at another friend of a friend and posted his picture and phone number in a personal saying he wanted to meet to give guys blow-jobs. The "meet-up" location was the starbucks he WORKED AT. And it took like 4 days for him to take the ad down, even though everyone knew about it immediately...

    Posted 10 months ago #
  14. Wow. Tyra Banks...stay classy...

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    Posted 10 months ago #
  15. Posted 10 months ago #
  16. Wow. Tyra Banks...stay classy...

    The only moment in that entire video I didn't loathe was when the one girl admits that she doesn't know anything about Tibet. This is the smartest thing any of them said, and she gets jumped all over for it. TYRA BANKS YOU ARE NOT A RESOURCE FOR INFORMATION ON TIBET.

    Jonathon Dalton
    A Mad Tea-Party
    Posted 10 months ago #
  17. birdtongue
    Member

    well, obviously any mixed person will "show their blood" -- can't pass for a paler-skinned ethnicity, nosiree. throw those models in blackface and photoshop to oblivion, because those exotic cultures best look foreign! that Erin girl looks far too much like "Splash"-era Daryl Hannah for comfort, though.

    and while i appreciate that the model was trying to present Indians of both flavors as poised, it's still mired in the damned noble savage notion -- all dignified and stoic. that and the concept of Indian nations just flying past. i'm a bit worked up about this because Saturday was the second time i'd seen this particularly ignorant hipster kid wearing feathers, upright, at the bar. after calmly explaining the symbology behind feathers and pointing out the context he was wearing them in, he was still arrogant or willfully oblivious. i'm a bit proud i ended the conversation before i smacked him; i figured he was drunk or stupid, and things will settle one way or another. anyway.

    there are some priceless quotes in the video. "i see this beautiful, interesting woman that i want to know, but it's not necessarily screaming 'model' to me."

    Posted 10 months ago #
  18. Let's have another look at that list, shall we? First let's remove all the countries that the US had absolutely no direct role in "freeing" from anyone:
    Finland
    Poland
    Latvia
    Estonia
    Lithuania
    Romania
    Serbia
    Bulgaria
    Czechoslovakia (also, not a country anymore)
    Montenegro
    Russia
    Ukraine
    Albania
    Hungary

    Then let's remove the countries that, even by the very low bar set by comparison to Iraq and Afghanistan, can't really be said to be "free" at the present time:
    Libya

    And quid pro quo, countries that have participated in liberating the US in the past can't be on the list:
    France

    While we're at it we might as well remove countries for whom the US was not the largest factor in any "liberation":
    Norway
    Algeria
    Morocco
    Denmark
    Tunisia
    Thailand

    Which leaves us with:
    Germany
    Panama
    Croatia
    Netherlands
    Luxemburg
    Afghanistan
    Kuwait
    Egypt
    Papua New Guinea
    Indonesia
    Greece
    Belgium
    Austria
    South Korea
    Japan
    Italy
    Iraq

    It's an okay list I guess. Though if we confine the list to the ones the US gets sole credit for, we get:
    Panama (I guess? When was this exactly?)
    Egypt (Suez crisis, yo)
    Japan

    Posted 10 months ago #
  19. [+] Embed the video | Video DownloadGet the Video Plugins

    That's...sad.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  20. I want to get angry at that model video but I can't figure out what the hell is going on. There's a guy with shoulderpads and girls arguing over who can affect the same blank expression most or something (are they the same as the ones in the picture? Those might be mannequins), and it all seems like it's kinda racist but I really can't tell. Possibly I am not the target audience? Maybe it's Dada?

    We "freed" the Panama Canal from the iron grip of the tyrant Panamanians who dug it. Stuff like Finland I just don't get at all, we didn't even kill anybody there. Maybe they threw it in to troll leftists. Sure would be a sweet sticker to slap on your MOAB, though!

    So that this doesn't turn into Banana Thread Lite here's an actually kinda cool thing. I've got a giant dorkass hardon for deep worldbuilding stuff (and pseudoscience).
    This one's even better, if partly broken. Speculative biology based on a world where the cretaceous extinction event never happened. Rad.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  21. pencilears
    Member

    well, obviously any mixed person will "show their blood" -- can't pass for a paler-skinned ethnicity, nosiree. throw those models in blackface and photoshop to oblivion, because those exotic cultures best look foreign!

    I'm assuming you're being sarcastic as I keep meeting Indians around here and I assume they are white before noticing the telltale giveaway of the "Lummi Nation" wind breaker or "Native Pride" hat.
    I feel like the worst anthropology student ever.

    speaking of Indians and cool things, http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/08/10/090810fi_fiction_alexie this is a reasonably good story from Sherman Alexie that was in the new yorker

    Posted 10 months ago #
  22. http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/10/mattel_has_lost_their_minds.php
    "Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken."

    He has a tiny dog and a jacquard smoking jacket and white pants.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  23. I feel like the worst anthropology student ever.

    I work with a lot of Native and Metis kids. A lot of times you really can't tell. That's because, generally speaking, the Native definition of who's in and who's out is based on whether or not you're owed a share of the cultural inheritance rather than what you look like. It's probably a much more egalitarian way of looking at things than the traditional European method of relying on pseudo-Darwin.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  24. I work with a lot of Native and Metis kids. A lot of times you really can't tell. That's because, generally speaking, the Native definition of who's in and who's out is based on whether or not you're owed a share of the cultural inheritance rather than what you look like. It's probably a much more egalitarian way of looking at things than the traditional European method of relying on pseudo-Darwin.

    I agree, it's more flexible and it's a good idea to take culture into account. I mean, these things are already arbitrary, but why not try to bring a dose of reality to them?

    Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken is both inappropriate and creepy. And for some reason I want one. To go in a pair with Thrice-Divorced Cougar Barbie, which is only the logical extension of this.

    Seriously. What the flying Christ.

    Flee thee, icy Lucifer.
    Posted 10 months ago #
  25. Well you know as the original Barbie market demographic slowly ages into awful, awful adults they've got to adjust to keep their interest. Like Transformers, sorta.

    Scroll down and check out the longassed Hitler-invoking comments on how iiiit's not faaaaair to post something like that and not allow queerbashing hate posts.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  26. maecrab
    Member

    Been meaning to post this for a while: Africa's Magnificent PredatorsIt's a refreshingly unsentimental essay on lion behavior in the wild, with some really awesome photos. Here are my favorites:



    Puts me in mind of Spike's "Gazelle"

    I'm assuming you're being sarcastic as I keep meeting Indians around here and I assume they are white before noticing the telltale giveaway of the "Lummi Nation" wind breaker or "Native Pride" hat.
    I feel like the worst anthropology student ever.
    When I moved to Albuquerque from Texas, I kept on (and continue) mixing up Hispanic and Native American people. The Indian population here is huge, and so's the Hispanic, but in Texas it's all Hispanic people (European Texans killed most of the Indian tribes there a looooong while back). And when you think about it, that's not really strange, since people we call Hispanic are really Native Americans, too. Except now, of course, indigenous peoples are "illegal immigrants." Whoops, my bad! The difference, I guess, is just that Americans descended from Central and South American peoples got their cultures destroyed much earlier on, so who cares, right? Sorry if I sound a little bitter, but it also makes me angry the extent of the glorification of modern Native American society, in which a huge number of people are forced into abject poverty, alcoholism, dependence on government assistance and a lack of education by a completely broken system.
    http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->
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    Posted 10 months ago #
  27. When I moved to Albuquerque from Texas, I kept on (and continue) mixing up Hispanic and Native American people. The Indian population here is huge, and so's the Hispanic, but in Texas it's all Hispanic people (European Texans killed most of the Indian tribes there a looooong while back). And when you think about it, that's not really strange, since people we call Hispanic are really Native Americans, too. Except now, of course, indigenous peoples are "illegal immigrants." Whoops, my bad! The difference, I guess, is just that Americans descended from Central and South American peoples got their cultures destroyed much earlier on, so who cares, right? Sorry if I sound a little bitter, but it also makes me angry the extent of the glorification of modern Native American society, in which a huge number of people are forced into abject poverty, alcoholism, dependence on government assistance and a lack of education by a completely broken system.
    http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->
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    I think my absolute favorite, where "favorite" means "makes me want to pull off my head and throw it at someone" is some people in Texas who want to evict ALL Hispanic peoples from a neighborhood, which includes families that predate the USA as a country. Even though the brown-skinned people have been living there longer than the white-skinned people who are offended by their presence, as in hundreds (thousands?) of years longer; even though they are all legal citizens and have been for generations (originally either against their will or without their knowledge, I'd imagine); they are obviously dang furriners out to steal 'merican jobs and pollute their white purity or some bullshit. Some more rational folks have tried to explain that, no, the Hispanic population that lives there is, in fact, there legally. It makes no effect whatsoever; there's still bitching about them "not speaking the language of the land" and efforts to get them deported.

    Stay classy, America.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  28. I think my absolute favorite, where "favorite" means "makes me want to pull off my head and throw it at someone" is some people in Texas who want to evict ALL Hispanic peoples from a neighborhood, which includes families that predate the USA as a country. Even though the brown-skinned people have been living there longer than the white-skinned people who are offended by their presence, as in hundreds (thousands?) of years longer; even though they are all legal citizens and have been for generations (originally either against their will or without their knowledge, I'd imagine); they are obviously dang furriners out to steal 'merican jobs and pollute their white purity or some bullshit. Some more rational folks have tried to explain that, no, the Hispanic population that lives there is, in fact, there legally. It makes no effect whatsoever; there's still bitching about them "not speaking the language of the land" and efforts to get them deported.
    Stay classy, America.

    So basically they're staying faithful to their own cultural heritage.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  29. My favorite part about the Crying Indian commercial is that the guy playing him is Sicilian. Good old Iron Eyes.

    Posted 10 months ago #
  30. birdtongue
    Member

    i'm not sure i could be more sarcastic in that first paragraph -- except for the bit about Daryl Hannah. i'm utterly serious about that.

    i'm a card-carrying indian, but i don't think it's blatant -- possibly except for my cheekbones, or if you know a lot of my tribe. i've been told i look unidentifiably, vaguely exotic, though i'm a mutt at best (of course, given my genetic heritage as "Native", being told i look exotic invokes the gods of irony.) my father and his sister had some little difficulty passing for white, but my grandfather would never have been able to do so. i make jokes about passing -- though i roast nicely given any sun, i am inescapably pale from lurking the internet -- but it's partly to remind myself that i'm lucky for being born when i was.

    the assumption of many is that anyone of mixed-white heritage, no matter the degree, will skew darker than "non-mixed", "pure" individuals; it's just the dominant ideology / cultural hegemony -- if you have pale skin, you must be white. definitions of what makes "Indian" varies among the nations. color and the blood quantum are normally less of a factor than respect for and advocacy of the culture, but on the other hand, there's the weeaboo factor.

    i'm a bit piqued that the producers of the Twilight sequel were making noises to hire Natives to play the Indian roles, and they still had to be painted darker. sigh.

    anyway, let's put aside this wall of text and lookit this, which maintains its hold on me as a superbly magical thing.

    [+] Embed the video | Video DownloadGet the Video Plugins
    early footage because it's more mysterious. i keep forgetting about this game, which is fortunate -- otherwise i'd be keening to play it. i know i'm going to cry, and it will be worth it.

    Posted 10 months ago #

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