Scribal Terror

Texas-size spider web

Imagine what the spider looks like. Via Neatorama

Name that stuff

What is it? Rock snot, for your wading enjoyment.

Belarus police car

I long to see a high-speed chase with this baby.

A hard-working, excrement-hiding model of excellence

Canadian Liberal Party deputy leader, Michael Ignatieff, wants the puffin to symbolize his party. Why?

"They lay one egg (each year). They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement. ... They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell.

"This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be.''

Thanks, Diana. I needed that.

Diamond encrusted fruit cake

I don't understand it either.

Building up

WAY up:

The XSEED 4000 is currently on the drawing board for construction and if it receives the green light, will be the world's tallest populated structure at a whopping 13,000 feet. Just to put that into perspective, the current reigning champ is Taipei 101 at a mere 1,671 feet.

Not only is it destined to be the tallest but also the largest self-sustaining structure. Designed to look like Mount Doom Mount Fuji, the XSEED 4000 represents the Japanese view of a utopian society. The building will be powered by solar energy and can house up to 1 million inhabitants.

Via Electro-Plankton

Paracelsus (1493-1541) on making babies

Let the semen of a man putrefy by itself in a sealed cucurbit with the highest putrefaction of venter equinus for forty days, or until it begins at last to live, move, and be agitated . . .at this time it will be in some degree like a human being, but, nevertheless, transparent and without a body. . . if now, after this, it be every day nourished and fed cautiously with the arcanum of human blood, and kept for forty weeks. . .in perpetual heat . . . it becomes thencefold a true living infant, having all the members of a child that is born from a woman, but much smaller. . . should be afterwards educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and starts to display intelligence."
From Frankenstein Factors by Bill Ectric

Paracelsus was just his street name, by the way. His real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Chinese mountain cat

Cuter than the iriomote? You decide.

Pimpin his ride

Via Kamangir

The golem of Prague

Curious Expeditions has come across the grave of Rabbi Judah Lew ben Bezalel, called the "Maharal," creator of the golem of Prague:

In 1580 the Jewish community was under attack, and was about to be accused of a ritual child murder, a common way a arousing public hatred against Jews and inciting a mob to anti-Jewish violence. It was also an excuse often used to expel the entire Jewish community from a city. Worried, the Maharal asked God what to do. That night in his dreams he was given instructions on how to create a Golem: a creature made of clay.

Even for the holiest of men creating life is forbidden by Jewish law, but in this case an exception was to be made. The task would be a dangerous one. He was to use the "Shem Hameforash", the true name of God, a word so powerful that it could easily kill its speaker. After purifying himself, the Maharal went to the river, and by torchlight sculpted a giant body out of the river clay. After performing the complicated rituals from his dream, he wrote the word Emet, meaning God's truth, across the muddy forehead. The Golem's fiery eyes snapped opened to his master.

The Golem is soulless and unintelligent, a brute enforcer. It is said the Golem successfully defended the Jewish community against its aggressors, but that as it grew larger and larger it began attacking Gentiles and terrifying Prague. In some tales the Golem turns even on the Jews and its own creator. Eventually the Maharal was forced to destroy the creature by wiping off the first letter written on its forehead, changing the word from Emet, or God's truth, to the word Met or death. However the body of the Golem was to be stored in the attic of the Synagogue in Prague. Perhaps the Golem still resides there today, waiting for the word, waiting to be summoned.

The illustration is from  Zwoje Scrolls