Lrbever

submitted by flait111 [link] [9 comments]

Another addition to my line of sleeping ponies! I suppose I'll have to make Bon Bon (Sweetie Drops) next!

She is available on Etsy: www.etsy.com/listing/224350225…

You can also send me a note and buy her using paypal if you don't like Etsy

I will be restocking my etsy shop soon by the way, probably in a day or two, so if you see something was already sold, don't worry, it'll be back soon!

Guess what day it is in India. That’s right, it’s National Science Day! You can check out their Facebook page to see some of the events going on, and Wikipedia has a brief explanation here. Did you know it not only showcases current science, but honors Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman’s discovery of the Raman effect? To which I, as an ordained minister of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can only say, “R’amen!” Of course. Happy National Science Day, India!

Then, March 8th is International Women’s Day. And I had a brainwave: why not have a Women in the Geosciences Week? We can haz! Here at ETEV, I’ll be reprising our Pioneering Women in the Geosciences series. At Rosetta Stones, I’ll be introducing you to very many awesome women of the geoblogosphere. And on March 8th, thee shall have a brand new Pioneering Woman post.

Today, let’s celebrate science together! Tell me your favorite branch(es) of science in the comments (it’s geology, right?). Is there a particular scientist who got you interested in science? Was there an even or a discovery that hooked you?

Here’s another way to celebrate: donate to a science classroom so that our next generation of scientists has the materials they need to explore.

Science is one of humanity’s greatest endeavors, and it’s a big part of a better future. It’s also just plain awesome.

In case you haven’t heard of it before, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, also known as Pastafarianism (a cross between pasta and Rastafarian) is a movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion, and is generally viewed by the media as a satirical take on organized religion. But 63-year-old German retiree Rüdiger Weida takes his Pastafarianism quite seriously – he established his own church chapter in the town of Templin, in September of last year, and is now trying his best to get it legally recognized by the state!

Weekly noodle worship at Weida’s church begins at 10 a.m. every Friday. The basic mass format is somewhat similar to mainstream Christian churches – there’s an altar, a time for prayers, scripture readings, hymns and a Holy Communion. But the similarities end there. The wine and bread are replaced by beer and of course, cooked strands of spaghetti, and parishioners hey say “Ramen” instead of “Amen” and chant “Beer-alleluia” at the end of the service. As the leader of this unusual church, Weida, who goes by the alias“Bruder Spaghettus”, acts as the “Noodler”, which means he presides over the service wearing a long yellow robe and a pink stole.

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submitted by Vitaneon [link] [55 comments]

Why does this dress look white one moment, and blue the next? Your friends aren't crazy - there's some legitimately cool visual science happening behind the scenes.

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In true entrepreneurial spirit, Boston-based Kyle Waring is trying to make the best of a difficult situation. Boston has experienced one of the worst winters this year, receiving a record-breaking 8.3 feet of snow. Instead of complaining about it like most people, Kyle is actually attempting to make a profit by selling the excess snow.

The Massachusetts native created a start-up called ‘Ship Snow’, through which he’s delivering chunks of snow to people living in warmer areas of the US where snow rarely falls. “This snow is wicked,” the official website reads. “This is historic snow. Boston Snow. This is your chance to not only own a piece of history, but also help save Boston from #Snowmageddon 2015! Every order counts!” The packaging options include a 16.9 oz snow bottle for $19.99, a 6 lbs. box of packed snow for $89, and a 10-pound package for $119. The website promises to deliver snow to any destination in the U.S. in 20 hours flat. But there’s an exception: “We will not ship snow to any states in the northeast! We’re in the business of expunging snow!”

There have been more and more new reveals from the My Little Pony Trading Card Series 3, like the two foil puzzles above! The foil side of each card makes up a single larger image, while the backs differ: the Rainbow Power card backs feature each of the Mane Six in their rainbowfied form, while the backs of the Pinkie Pride puzzle are song cards for each of the six songs from the episode.

And besides cards, there have been reveals of some of the stickers, standees, and tattoos that are also inside card packs. Personal favorite? "You're a Princess Twilight" in the Harry Potter font. It's magical.

Series 3 hits shelves on March 6th! For now you can check out below the break for more cards, stickers, and a few brand new spoilers that haven't been seen yet...
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Desperate times call for desperate measures. 2015 is shaping up to be a great year for games no matter what platform you play games on. There’ll to be a ton of games to buy, and not everyone’s budget (not to mention living space) allows for hoarding.

A few games will have to go, and outfits like Amazon, Best Buy, GameFly and GameStop are happy to take on our used games (here in the US). Some games, however, we can’t imagine selling.

Some we go back to over and over again, while others hold some kind of significant value for us. Maybe we just have an emotional attachment to them. These are the games you’ll have to bury us with.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Animal Crossing has always been a unique gaming franchise for me. I assume I play it in the same way a lot of other gamers do. It’s a relaxing escape, really, and it’s a game I visit and revisit again and again over the span of years.

I have Animal Crossing: New Leaf near my Nintendo 3DS at home and whenever I go on trips. I wish I had it digitally, actually, and there have been times when I’ve considered re-buying the title simple for the sake of convenience. It’s the best in the franchise, it offers constant fresh content and I don’t think any other game has the ability to de-stress me quite like this one.

-Joey

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BioShock

Often, even our favorite narrative games suffer from a disconnect between the story they’re trying to tell and the game mechanics through which the player can advance that story. Uncharted 2 puts us in the shoes of a treasure hunter with a charming wit and a devil-may-care outlook, and then asks us to murder literally hundreds of people while he quips about it. Grand Theft Auto IV has us take on the role of a guy who wants to get away from his past, but who also seems to take glee in plowing through civilians while he breaks just about every traffic law in the book.

BioShock, then, is remarkable for doing just the opposite.

What appears to be a straightforward shooter with a pretty good narrative and stellar art design turns out to be a commentary on free will and unquestioning obedience. The game and its story are interlocked together, and it was refreshing to play a game that seemed to have so much respect for the player. It didn’t hurt that it also had one of the coolest collector’s editions out there. The ceramic Big Daddy statue still sits on my shelf years later.

-Eric

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

There aren’t very many games out there that provide the sheer amount of content and discovery that Bethesda was able to cram into Skyrim. The title is massive. I own two separate versions of it, and I don’t want to get rid of either because of the actual save progress I have on both the 360 and PC. Of course, my PC stuff isn’t going anywhere, but I played the game on the 360 first. It happened to come out right before I built a new gaming computer.

I digress. Skyrim is a beautiful game in a wonderful world packed with an unending amount of quests, characters and encounters. Heck, if there’s one game that I can recommend to anyone on a budget, it’s this one. Sure, it’s getting a little old, but the title keeps giving thanks to its core design. No one should get rid of it.

-Joey

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Halo 2

As far as I’m concerned, Halo 2 stands as the best entry in the Halo franchise. Its story is wonderful, it offers some of the best level design in shooter history and its online package was monumental.

I have the original for my Xbox, and that’s playable on the 360. I also have it in the ill-faited Master Chief Collection. That’s the caveat here. I need 343 Industries to get its anniversary edition of Halo 2’s multiplayer working flawlessly. It’s some of the best shooter multiplayer ever, and it’s a huge reason why I picked up Halo: The Master Chief Collection to begin with.

-Joey

Katamari Damacy

Here’s something you might not know about Katamari Damacy… Namco originally released the game as a budget tite. It sold for the PlayStation 2 at $19.99 right out of the gates, and I genuinely believe it’s the best 20 bucks I’ve ever spent in gaming.

I didn’t know it then, but Katamari slowly rolled into one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises. Sure, there was a bad period, and we played some really garbage offerings like Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360, but, for the most part, the charm in this franchise has been consistent.

Katamari Damacy holds a special spot in my collection of games. I love it. I just hope Sony gives me a way to play it forever through digital means. The PS2s tend to break over time, and I really don’t want this disc to turn useless.

-Joey

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

When it comes to Zelda games, people’s opinions tend to vary regarding which are the best and worst. Some adore Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, while others point towards Ocarina of Time as the pinnacle of the franchise. For me? It’s Wind Waker.

I have played through this Zelda game more than any other, and that includes the originally terribly tedious Tri-force fetch quest. Wind Waker HD on the Wii U is the original game nearly perfected. I’ll never get rid of it. Ever. I have it digitally on my console, and I have the special edition with the Ganondorf statue on a shelf in its box. I won’t sell this thing back. Ever. It’s currently moving for close to $150 on eBay, too. No thanks.

-Joey

Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption isn’t exactly a tough game to find. It sold well on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, to the tune of over 12 million copies. It’s not like I couldn’t find another copy or ten.

Even so, I still remember the first time I played through the game. It was one of the first times I felt like a game studio had truly captured natural beauty in a video game. It was one the first times I remember thinking something like, “Oh, that looks pretty. I’ll go over there,” instead of heading for the next quest.

This spring, it became simultaneously a sort of comfort food as I worked through a tough time in my life and also a reminder of what open world games can be as I suffered through the disappointment of Watch Dogs. I’ve gotten more out of Rockstar’s first foray into the old west than just about any other game in my collection.

-Eric

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Resident Evil 4

I’ve purchased Resident Evil at least four times. There may be more I can’t remember. I bought it on release day on GameCube, and eventually picked it up on PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox 360. It’s rare that I’ll play a game more than once, let alone buy it more than once. Resident Evil 4, though, I’ve completed more times than I have fingers. Even now, I still enjoy the precise shooting and the stop-and-pop style of combat.

Even the terrible quick timer knife fight late in the game can’t keep me from loving this title.

I own four copies of Resident Evil 4, one of them is digital, and they’re all mine.

-Eric

REZ

Rez had me in the first minute. It was love at first sight. It was a whole new way to look at games.

The debate about whether games are art is pretty well done with, but Rez for me was the one of the big sparks that set me down the path. The combination of music and movement was unlike anything I’d seen in a game before that. I’m not even sure I’ve seen anything quite like it since. Even the way the game used controller vibration was something new.

I was in college when I first played the game, and on a pretty tight budget. Most of my gaming was in the form of rentals from the rental store I lived across the street from. I played straight through the game on my first sitting and then marched pretty much straight to the store to buy a copy.

I didn’t know how lucky I was, though, when I found a copy at the first place I set foot in. The game didn’t exactly get a huge print run, and copies were already becoming scarce at the time. The availability of a digital version has made its scarceness a non-issue at this point, but it’ll always be one of those games for me that feels irreplaceable.

-Eric

Silent Hill 2

The first Silent Hill game captured my imagination with its unique take on horror. The completely deserted world had me paralyzed with fear and at the same time compelled to keep going back.

Silent Hill 2 took us back to the same place, but did something very different. The game told a mature story of misdirected love, guilt, and sex. Things were hinted at, but very rarely outright explained. Much the same way the town of Silent Hill uses your own psychoses against you, the game let the player make their own conclusions about many of the events, about the reality of the situation of protagonist James Sunderland.

Unlike many games on this list, Silent Hill 2 has never gotten a digital release. It was part of a high-def re-release a couple years back, but Konami botched that one with some mistakes that affected the look of the game in some pretty major ways. I’m not sure if I even have a PlayStation 2 anymore, but this game will always be part of my collection.

-Eric

Christy Perry (below) is an Idaho Republican State Representative who champions her support for the sanctity-of-life on her website, where she lists it as a pressing issue. So, presumably, if such a self-styled champion of life heard that parents were allowing their children to die of easily treatable illnesses by withholding medical treatment, her pro-life commitment would ensure that she was at the forefront of the movement to protect the lives of those children. Right?

Not so much. According to a report from Al-Jazeera America‘s Leah Sottile, Perry suggests that faith-healing parents

… are more comfortable confronting death. “Children do die,” Perry said. “And I’m not trying to sound callous, but [people calling for reform] want to act as if death is an anomaly. But it’s not. It’s a way of life.”

Which might have been Perry’s first clue that something was wrong — because death should not be just a “way of life” for children.

But, you see, when it comes to being “pro-life,” you really need to read the terms and conditions, because limitations certainly apply. If you’re a zygote, embryo, or fetus, the pro-life community has got your back. But if you’re, say, a pregnant woman who will die without an abortion? Sorry, lady, we’re too “pro-life” for that. And what about kids dying from treatable ailments? Death just becomes “a way of life.”

But only after birth, of course, when the human brain is developed and can actually process thought and fear and pain. Before birth, it’s a tragedy, regardless of circumstance.

As Rep. Perry notes, people concerned with the lives of children are just misguided on this front. It’s vitally important to stop women from having abortions. But to stop parents from forcing dangerous religious rituals upon their children? That’s an assault on freedom. And probably one motivated by a hatred of religion.

“As you move out West, we tend to be much more independent people, and Idaho is a lot like that,” she said, adding that the independent streak is probably stronger in certain parts of the state, like Canyon County.

“They do not look to the government to help them at all,” said Perry, speaking about Followers of Christ. “They’re very self-sufficient and know how to take care of themselves. In Canyon County, people hunt to feed their families. They fish. They grow their own food.”

Faith healers, she said, are not uncaring parents. They simply trust God above doctors and have faith that God will do what’s right.

“They are comforted by the fact that they know their child is in heaven,” Perry said. “If I want to let my child be with God, why is that wrong?”

Furthermore, she said, she’s unsure of the motives of those who want to see faith-healing protections removed.

“Is it really because these children are dying more so than other children? Or is this really about an attack on a religion you don’t agree with?”

If I got this right, you’re pro-life if you think a woman has to be pregnant whether she wants to be or not, and sometimes even if it will kill her to be. On the other hand, you’re not pro-life if you think that a parent should provide life-saving medical care for their child — then, you’re anti-freedom, and you’re intent on persecuting religious minorities.

Andrea Yates could have used a champion of life like Rep. Perry on her side. She wouldn’t have had to plead insanity if she could have simply reminded the court that they were infringing on her religious liberties and persecuting her for her decision to let her children be with God. After all, “why is that wrong?”

(Via Raw Story. Thanks to Terry for the link)

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Remember Jessica Tidwell? She’s the Christian missionary who was disappointed that Kenya wasn’t the hellhole she hoped it would be because, presumably, it deprived her from having an ideal photo-op.

In her latest dispatch from Africa, she tells the story of how she “saved” someone… who was simply the wrong kind of Christian:

He began to pray over her in Swahili and I have no idea what he said but I know a few words and there was a whole lot of “Baba” {Father} and “Mungu” {God} and “Jesu Christo {Jesus} so I figured if he said Father, God and Jesus a whole bunch, we did pretty good.

And he started to pray over that woman and explain the blessing and privilege.

See, she had on her wall a whole bunch of fragmented pages of outdated calendars with pictures of the pope and she was wearing prayer beads with a crucifix on it. Because, somewhere in her was a hunger for truth. She grabbed on to whatever represented God closest to her. And she was hanging on to that!

How dare that poor African woman believe in Jesus the wrong way?

As one commenter on her site even tells her:

You said, “She grabbed on to whatever represented God closest to her. And she was hanging on to that!” That’s exactly what you were to her: whatever represented God closest to her. Last week is was rosary beads, this week it was you, next week it will be someone or something else.

So… congratulations, Jessica. You successfully converted a Catholic to “proper” Christianity. You introduced God to someone who already believed in your God. Even by Christian standards, that seems pretty weak.

Have fun patting yourself on the back for that one as you continue on the vacation you dub a mission trip.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Mario Diaz, the legal counsel for the Christian right group Concerned Women for America, was on the radio show of Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committee member, and said that if the Supreme Court strikes down state bans on same-sex marriage, that will mean the criminalization of Christianity.

Scott, who is also a Republican National Committee member, told Diaz that LGBT rights advocates, “the group that exploits the term ‘tolerant’ as their poster,” are actually “so incredibly intolerant to anyone with an opposing view.”

Diaz agreed that a collision between LGBT rights and religious liberty is “inevitable,” and that a Supreme Court marriage equality victory would lead to the “criminalization of religious beliefs.”

“And it is one of the great tragedies that I think I put now at the feet of the Supreme Court, if they are considering finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution, they must consider, and I hope they are, that they will be effectively opening the door for the criminalization of religious beliefs, especially Christian beliefs.”

I know, right? Just like striking down state laws against interracial marriage opened the door to the criminalization of Christianity because of all those Christians who were against miscegenation and could no longer force their beliefs into law. Wait, that didn’t happen at all. Fascinating.