Originally published at: For sale: Odd and fantastic San Francisco octagonal home designed by phrenologist | Boing Boing
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Well, silly and racist.
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Smithers: Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago.
Mr. Burns: Of course you’d say that… you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!
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It’s a lovely home, although I’d like to strangle the staging company who put items on the bookcase that look like books ripped out of their covers, placed backward. Hulk Smash!
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I was going to comment the same thing. I think they confused “silly” with “terribly racist”
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Follow any discussion on the so-called “alt-right” and inevitably you hit two things: phrenology and anti-Semitism.
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The weird, lurching camerawork in that walkthrough video is exceptionally offputting.
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Kind of reminds me of the OA house:
I recently visited NY state’s largest living history museum, the Genesee Country Village Museum in Mumford NY (Near Jell-O birthplace Leroy and Rochester). They have 80+ buildings, most of which were brought there from around western and central NY. They have an Octagon house. As the docent mentioned, Octagon houses tended to go up VERY quickly in a fire, courtesy of their design 
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It’s far too ridiculous to even be called a “pseudoscience.”
Here’s one based on a hexagon instead of an octagon, built by a locomotive inventor.
I wonder if there are any pentagon houses out there? Good design for Satanists.
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for sale odd and fantastic san francisco octagonal home designed by phrenologist
I’m disappoint that it doesn’t have this sign over the front door.
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Pseudoscience indeed. The only way that’s possible is to build the house inside the arctic or antarctic circles, and even then, it only happens for part of the year. Oh, and the shape of the house will be irrelevant.
Or giant mirrors might work. But the shape is still irrelevant.
Mind you, the shape of people’s skulls is also irrelevant, so at least they’re consistent.
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And it looks like someone left all the burners lit on the gas stove. The house probably won’t be standing for much longer.
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Oh. Oh my.
When I was a kid, there was a time when I discovered the secrets of floor plans and wanted to be an architect. One of my strongest memories of that time was that I planned many different houses, and decided my best work, the one I really wanted to build, was a grass-roofed octagonal house, with an octagonal library inside, which for some reason needed to have an octagonal fireplace in the centre.
I have no clear idea when and why I gave up on that, but I did. And I didn’t want to become an architect, because I realised I can’t really draw without making a mess of the paper.
But from time to time, when I think about building a house, I come back to the idea as a kind of ideal which can never be fulfilled, and hence all house-building must be futile.
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Did they mention any reason(s) why?
Prepare to be delighted and/or terrified:
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