The Off Topic Topic

[The Larch]

This is for Larchie:

http://youtu.be/RUSjhuRUDCg

I'm not scared, I've been to the Fallas twice.

[Syt]

Browsing the Steam forums for some info on a game I come across a Russian(?) thread, started by the charmingly named:

Boϟϟ N1gger =)

Yes. The smilie is part of the name.

[mongers]

It was surrounded by the magic red forcefield ?

[lustindarkness]

[Eddie Teach]

The arch is reinforced unobtainium.

[Ideologue]

It was surrounded by the magic red forcefield ?

[Josephus]

It's built of the same thing Stargate SG uses to travel through wormholes.

[Syt]

Turns out the arch, like the cake, is a lie.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/nagasaki-arch-hoax.shtml

http://message, which is circulating via email and social media, claims that two photographs taken many years apart show the miraculous survival of an "arch" in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. According to the message, the first photographs show the arch still standing after the city was all but destroyed by the atomic bomb blast of 1945 while the second photograph shows the same arch, again still standing, after Nagasaki was devastated by 2011's earthquake and tsunami.

The photographs themselves are genuine but, in fact, they do not depict the same "arch" or even the same city.

The type of structure referred to as an arch in the message is actually a torii a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or sometimes inside a Shinto shrine.

The first photograph does depict a torii at Nagasaki after an atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 9, 1945. The same photograph is included on numerous historical websites discussing the bombing. The photograph was taken by army staff photographer Yosuke Yamahata who began to record the devastation of the city on August 10, 1945, a day after the bomb was dropped.

However, the second photograph does not depict the torii at Nagasaki, but rather another torii leading to Kozuchi shrine at the town of Otsuchi, Iwate prefecture, Japan. Otsuchi was indeed devastated by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011.

Nagasaki is located some 1300 kilometers away from Otsuchi. Nagasaki was not directly affected by March's earthquake and tsunami.

[jimmy olsen]

Stars Wars as written by Shakespeare

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/low_concept/2013/07/excerpt_from_ian_doescher_s_blank_verse_william_shakespeare_s_star_wars.html

... I think a lot more people would have died.

[Kleves]

Well, here's a sobering, yet not surprising, information bomb you can absorb as you clean up breakfast eaten on your Ikea dishes at your Ikea table and then sit back in your Ikea chair and prop your feet up on your Ikea coffee table. In 2012, Ikea used 17.8 million cubic yards of wood while manufacturing the roughly 100 million products they sell each year, which comes out to roughly one percent of the world's commercial wood supply. That's enough wood to build a stairway to the moon and a corkscrew slide back to earth, with enough left over to build a three-season lunar gazebo. We think. Science is tricky.

[DGuller]

I would think that building stairway to the moon is a little more complicated than just lengthening the regular stairway.

[mongers]

I would think that building stairway to the moon is a little more complicated than just lengthening the regular stairway.

Yeah, you also need at least one twin-neck guitar and a monster drum-kit. 

[Josquius]

I did a Japanese test yesterday. In the room was only one other white guy, the rest were all Chinese and Thai.
I failed epicly. Was unsure of even taking it since I knew it was too hard for me (sign up error....) but the silly way in which I totally mis-remembered some things...ouch.
Oh well. Its practice for when I do it for real in December.

http://message, which is circulating via email and social media, claims that two photographs taken many years apart show the miraculous survival of an "arch" in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. According to the message, the first photographs show the arch still standing after the city was all but destroyed by the atomic bomb blast of 1945 while the second photograph shows the same arch, again still standing, after Nagasaki was devastated by 2011's earthquake and tsunami.

The photographs themselves are genuine but, in fact, they do not depict the same "arch" or even the same city.

The type of structure referred to as an arch in the message is actually a torii a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or sometimes inside a Shinto shrine.

The first photograph does depict a torii at Nagasaki after an atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 9, 1945. The same photograph is included on numerous historical websites discussing the bombing. The photograph was taken by army staff photographer Yosuke Yamahata who began to record the devastation of the city on August 10, 1945, a day after the bomb was dropped.

However, the second photograph does not depict the torii at Nagasaki, but rather another torii leading to Kozuchi shrine at the town of Otsuchi, Iwate prefecture, Japan. Otsuchi was indeed devastated by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011.

Nagasaki is located some 1300 kilometers away from Otsuchi. Nagasaki was not directly affected by March's earthquake and tsunam

Wait? what? And people believed this? Nagasaki is the complete opposite end of the country.

[Syt]

A thread about the upcoming German general elections this year has been locked by the mods, due to some people mentioning the Pirate Party (which is a highly banned topic on P'dox), with a threat to put German politics on the banned topics list.

[CountDeMoney]

Awww, how cute;  Paradox Forums thinks it's people.