Don’t feel bad; it’s not a contest. No one’s trying to get ahead here.
that’s really cool… I love how some of them look so amused, like being dead is just a little bit funny.
I misspoke a bit in that post. Some of them are life masks, e.g. Ben Franklin. So maybe some were amused. OTOH what’s the phemonemon called, the “death grimace” or something like that? Makes corpses look like they’re smiling?
no, I know- I noticed some are labeled as “life masks” and went back again after I noticed that so see if the ones I thought looked amused were actually dead, which they are. I’m sure there is a scientific reason they look like they’re smiling, but it’s still interesting. Especially because for some, it isn’t so much their mouths that make them look amused (to me) as something around the eyes I guess. Like none of them look outright joyful, like they’re seeing angels or anything, but some look like they have a secret joke. Like they just pulled a coin out of a little kid’s ear and have just finished telling the kid that they did it using magic.
And more interesting is that I’ve seen dead people and none of them look amused to me. I think the “death mask” thing is interesting because on the actual corpse, there’s the whole weirdness of that person being a person, but not. Like people shouldn’t be still like that and it’s kind of creepy. But a cast of a face removed from the person, so there’s not the rest of the body and they don’t look so cold or pale and aren’t wearing weird makeup… it’s just a face. It’s like a drawing. It’s not creepy at all to me and it’s interesting to have a way to remove some of the uncomfortableness surrounding a corpse and just see their faces.
Interesting!
No, wait, the other thing.
One of the things I love about The Dope is the fact that someone can mention Jeremy Bentham with no pictures and a few minutes later someone provides picture goodness.
I’ve known about Jeremy Benthem since reading about him when I was in high school, before Al Gore invented the Internet and people were forced to read books to get bits of obscure information to amaze their friends with instead of nipping over to Wiki on their iphone. (now, thanks to Wiki, I can actually learn more about this incredible thinker more than what he wanted done with is body after he died.)
Eventually, I started using the line, " Oh, I get out now and again, like Jeremy Bentham." or " Well, he contributed as much to that (meeting/party/whatever) as Jeremy Bentham." and no.one.ever.got.it.
Nothing is obscure here.