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[Karlito]

Does this count as an English martial art?

It does look potentially lethal if you have high blood pressure.

A true English martial art is Gloucestershire Shin Kicking.

And now we have come full circle.

[SirAaronIII]

I was reading the Denko story earlier.


It would have been really scary, but the face... The face kind of killed it for me.

[Phantom of The Library]

Disregard post.

[Bauglir]

Never thought I'd start the day by saying to my closest friend, "Okay so your boyfriend has instructed me to link you to some hardcore pornography". And she expected this, and was, indeed, impatient.

Now in fairness, it was so that we could all poke fun at how terrible it was, but even so.

[zombie urist]

Did you link her to some hardcore pornography as her boyfriend instructed?

[Bauglir]

Well, yes. It'd be impolite to keep a lady (or anyone else, for that matter) waiting. There was a specific terrible picture this whole thing was about, and I'll say no more because I tread dangerously close to violating the ToS.

[Lord Dullard]

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/americas-coolest-houses/16

Made from 1,100 tons of limestone boulders—bigger than those at Stonehenge—this strange structure, located just south of Miami, was built from 1923 to 1951 by a single man, a tiny Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin, as his home and an homage to the love of his life who left him the night before their wedding. How did he do it? The jilted man claimed he knew the secret to the pyramids’ construction. Other details—no mortar, precise seams, physics-defying balancing acts—have also stumped scientists for decades. —Adrien Glover

I have been forced to come to the conclusion that this man was actually a dorf.

[kaijyuu]

He builds a house for her, defying physics to do so, and she runs away the night before the wedding? Ouch.

(unless I'm reading that wrong and her "leaving" him was a euphemism for her death)

[MonkeyHead]

Maybe she left him as he was obsessed with building houses out of limestone slabs...

[miauw62]

We should move there and claim it as a church to our new religion, armokism.

[Trapezohedron]

Randomly typed gibberish in the URL bar in Safari for Iphone, got a Phishing warning.

O.o

[Lord Dullard]

Huh. Did some research, and that tiny Latvian guy was even more perplexing than I initially thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle

Spoiler: How you do dat? (click to show/hide)

According to the Coral Castle's own promotional material, Edward Leedskalnin was jilted by his 16-year-old fiancée Agnes Scuffs in Latvia, just one day before the wedding. Leaving for America, he came down with allegedly terminal tuberculosis, but spontaneously healed, stating that magnets had some effect on his disease.

Edward spent over 28 years building the Coral Castle, refusing to allow anyone to view him while he worked. A few teenagers claimed to have witnessed his work, reporting that he had caused the blocks of coral to move like hydrogen balloons. The only tool that Leedskalnin spoke of using was a "perpetual motion holder."

Leedskalnin originally built the castle, which he named Rock Gate Park, in Florida City, Florida around 1923. He purchased the land from Ruben Moser whose wife helped assist him when he had a very bad bout with tuberculosis.[4] Florida City, which borders the Everglades, is the southernmost city in the United States that is not on an island. It was an extremely remote location with very little development at the time. The castle remained in Florida City until about 1936 when Leedskalnin decided to move and take the castle with him. The Coral Castle website states that he chose to move in order to protect his privacy when discussion about developing land in the area of the castle started.[5] He spent three years moving the Coral Castle structures 10 miles (16 km) north from Florida City to its current location in Homestead, Florida.

Leedskalnin continued to work on the castle up until his death in 1951. The coral pieces that are part of the newer castle, not among those transported from the original location, were quarried on the property only a few feet away from the southern wall.

Leedskalnin charged visitors ten cents a head to tour the castle grounds. There are signs carved into rocks at the front gate to "Ring Bell Twice" and a second sign just inside the property that says "Adm. 10c Drop Below". He would come down from his living quarters in the second story of the castle tower close to the gate and conduct the tour. Leedskalnin never told anyone who asked him how he made the castle. He would simply answer "It's not difficult if you know how."

WTF?

Edit: Also, check out the top of that structure. You can't tell me that's not a damned Dwarf Fortress ramp. I'm seriously starting to think this man was possessed by the spirit of Urist.

[Dutchling]

It would be awesome if it actually looked good. I do wonder how he did it though, perhaps magma?

[alway]

That guy was a massive troll by the sounds of it.
"Hey, mister, how did you lift such a big stone?"
*man thinks to himself: damn kids, don't they know what a pulley is?* "I levitated them using ancient Egyptian magicks!"
"Oh wow, mister!" *goes to tell parents of magic levitating rocks*

The structure is considered mysterious by some who have claimed that Leedskalnin constructed the castle using some unknown form of science, however, these claims have not been rigorously analyzed by either engineers or scientists, and[14] such theories seem to be discounted by evidence, such as photographs showing Leedskalnin working, apparently using traditional methods like block and tackle.[15] [3]
The Coral Castle site states that "if anyone ever questioned Ed about how he moved the blocks of coral, Ed would only reply that he understood the laws of weight and leverage well." [5] He also stated that he had "discovered the secrets of the pyramids",[14] which of course could be interpreted in either esoteric or engineering terms.

[kaijyuu]

Hey, if you could sell tours by playing up the mysticism people made up about you, why would you deny it?