Things you learned by googling names on yr Slsk buddy list.

I learned that "scrimshaws" are bones and teeth of marine mammals carved into works of art, and that one of these artists is referred to as a "scrimshander".
http://www.antiquark.com/img/queequeg_scrimshaw.jpg

Also, the "Melek Taus" is a peacock angel revered by the Yazidi Kurds in Northern Iraq.
wiki says: "The Yazidis consider Tawûsê Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the Cosmic Egg. After he repented, he wept for 7000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell."
http://www.paulruckerart.com/images/g-fae-MelekTaus.jpg

i learned both of those two

things u learned by reading the ilx thread Things you learned by googling names on yr Slsk buddy list.

http://www.fetchboy.com/

http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF098-Sgt._Grumbles.jpg

The Maritime Museum in Hull has tons of scrimshaw. I like it.

Regarding Hassan-i Sabbah, leader of the Hashshashin (the origin of the word "assassin"):

"a future assassin was subjected to rites very similar to those of other mystery cults in which the subject was made to believe that he was in imminent danger of death. But the twist of the assassins was that they drugged the person to simulate a "dying" to later have them awaken in a garden flowing with wine and served a sumptuous feast by virgins. The supplicant was then convinced he was in Heaven and that Sabbah was a representative of the divinity and that all of his orders should be followed, even to death. This legend derives from Marco Polo...
...Other accounts of the indoctrination attest that the future assassins were brought to Alamut at a young age and, while they matured, inhabited the aforementioned paradisaical gardens and were kept drugged with hashish; as in the previous version, Hassan occupied this garden as a divine emissary. At a certain point (when their initiation could be said to have begun) the drug was withdrawn from them, and they were removed from the gardens and flung into a dungeon. There they were informed that, if they wished to return to the paradise they had so recently enjoyed it would be at Sabbah's discretion, and that they must therefore follow his directions exactly, up to and including murder and self-sacrifice."

Rapakivi is a crumbly kind of granite common in Finland.
http://weppi.gtk.fi/aineistot/stenguide/kuvat/L_rapakivi.jpg

nice thread

aw man, soulseek