The Knuckledragger 3rd Memorial Slow Forum Post

[archosman]

[Dusty Chalk]

Real World Studios:

 

I give you, head-case's new mascot:

Moar odd/eccentric/weird/interesting composer factoids here.

[Sherwood]

Oh and:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/replica-of-paris-in-china-becomes-ghost-town-1375720919-slideshow/

 

I've been to a few Chinese replica towns, though regrettably not this one, and they are fascinating to me.  I have a few possible explanations:

 

1) Travel is popular in China, but Chinese is not a world language and travel is expensive.  Real Chinese people frequently ravel by tour bus at a breakneck pace, getting as many sites in as possible in a short span of time.  They eat as a large group at Chinese restaurants, have a Chinese tour guide, and go to say they've been there.  It's not unlike travel was in America in the 1950s, or so I've been led to believe.  Of course, this does not describe all Chinese travel, but it's quite popular.  If you're already turning France into a little mini China, what's the harm in making a little France instead?

 

2) China's economy is supported primarily by housing and public works projects.  A fake Champs-Élysées punctuated by a big replica Eiffel Tower satisfies both.  I imagine they build these in the hopes of bringing in wedding photo tourists, holidaymakers, and people wanting a second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc) home somewhere outside of the city.  Hangzhou, the larger city of which this is a district, can support this kind of development.  If it's going broke, it is simply because it sucks.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Sherwood

[blessingx]

[Dusty Chalk]

Blanket octopus

 

Tremoctopus is a genus of pelagic cephalopods, containing four species that occupy surface to mid-waters in subtropical and tropical oceans.They are commonly known as blanket octopuses, in reference to the long transparent webs that connect the dorsal and dorsolateral arms of the adult females. The other arms are much shorter and lack webbing.These species exhibit an extreme degree of sexual dimorphism. Females may reach 2 metres (6.6 ft) in length, whereas the tiny males are at most a few centimeters long. The males have a specially modified third right arm which stores sperm, known as a hectocotylus.During mating, this arm detaches itself and crawls into the mantle of the female to fertilize her eggs. The male dies shortly after mating. The females carry over 100,000 tiny eggs attached to a sausage-shaped calcareous secretion held at the base of the dorsal arms and carried by the female until hatching.Blanket octopuses are immune to the poisonous Portuguese man o' war, whose tentacles the male and immature females rip off and use for defensive purposes. Like many other octopuses, the blanket octopuses uses ink to intimidate potential predators.Also, when threatened, the female unfurls her large net-like membranes that spread out and billow in the water, greatly increasing her apparent size.

[skullguise]

^^^ Cool.  I heard that internally in the pseudo Morgan Freeman voice

[Knuckledragger]

[blessingx]

[Dusty Chalk]

^^^ Cool.  I heard that internally in the pseudo Morgan Freeman voice

I hadn't thought of that, so I had to go back and reread it so that I could do the same.  's'awesome.

[swt61]

[Grahame]

For once it would appear the Germans don't have a word for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjx98gcDJ_A

The English terms just "pop".

[Knuckledragger]

Overly Attached Head-Fier.

[MoonShine]

 

 

 

This looks like it could be from a book that I am currently reading for my sci-fi book club:

 

 

Which would be weirdly coincidental since it's kind of an obscure book.

 

[grawk]

[Voltron]

Reading George Tekai's tweets, I see.

[The Monkey]

Unaltered photo:

 

[blessingx]

Edited August 15, 2013 by blessingx

[blessingx]

http://www.boootube.com/

[Dusty Chalk]

Those shorpy pics are not visible to me for some reason.

 

More random ballet dancers here.

 

IP carriers via Avian carriers RFC

[Dusty Chalk]

Anna Kendrick reacting to her song being in the Billboard top 10

[Grahame]

tinyurl.com/FunnyFakeAmazonReviews

[Knuckledragger]

Evil Dead Necronomicon bikini.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

tinyurl.com/FunnyFakeAmazonReviews

Oh, hey, that's George Takei!

[grawk]

I was wearing that mask 15 minutes ago

[Dusty Chalk]