Real-Life Weirdness

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yeah, I think when he wrote it, he actually meant it. Those things were supposed to be anomalous in all sorts of ways, and this is just one way to do a spatial anomaly.

There's another aspect to it as well. When he was writing, General Relativity was fairly new, and the idea that real space is curved was objected to by quite a few assorted intellectuals and even some mathematicians and physicists. The then president of Notre Dame university, a theologian, wrote a book "proving" by Catholic theology that the real universe is flat and Euclidian. Few of Lovecraft's readers would have been aware of this kind of controversy, but that doesn't stop authors putting things into stories.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Lovecraft hardly abused it the way people who mock his purple prose think he did.

I don't mock his rather few stories. I meant that common use and understanding of scientific terms are often very wrong scientifically.
I understand that Lovecraft had a bizarrely deep knowledge of quite a few esoteric fields, especially for his era.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There's another aspect to it as well. When he was writing, General Relativity was fairly new, and the idea that real space is curved was objected to by quite a few assorted intellectuals and even some mathematicians and physicists. The then president of Notre Dame university, a theologian, wrote a book "proving" by Catholic theology that the real universe is flat and Euclidian. Few of Lovecraft's readers would have been aware of this kind of controversy, but that doesn't stop authors putting things into stories.

Except that recent research has been unable to find any degree of curve to the universe as a whole. Curvature exists for localized material objects. But I doubt that neigh-sayers of the entire concept would or could differentiate between the two.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

smurf has mentioned it a few times, but I think it first came up incidentally in a brief-lived thread Abandoned Man-Made Structures.

Another bucket list item.

Ta, my bad, and yes verily.

[Anders]

10 mad royals.

[William]

Thanks to a tweet by Charles Stross, linked in a post on Pharyngula, Wikipedia is able to inform me about the existence of Julie d'Aubigny, who was walking, talking proof of the existence of player characters on Earth.

After running away from her marriage with a lover charged with killing a man in an illegal duel, she made her way on the road singing and giving fencing demonstrations. I shouldn't copy the whole article here, but for just one incident in her life:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Eventually, she grew bored of Sérannes and became involved with a young woman. When the girl's parents put her away in the Visitandines convent in Avignon, Maupin followed, entering the convent as a postulant. In order to run away with her new love, she stole the body of a dead nun, placed it in the bed of her lover, and set the room on fire to cover their escape.

And that's before her opera career.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by William

Thanks to a tweet by Charles Stross, linked in a post on Pharyngula, Wikipedia is able to inform me about the existence of Julie d'Aubigny, who was walking, talking proof of the existence of player characters on Earth.

After running away from her marriage with a lover charged with killing a man in an illegal duel, she made her way on the road singing and giving fencing demonstrations. I shouldn't copy the whole article here, but for just one incident in her life:



And that's before her opera career.

Yeah, rejectedprincesses.com has a few interesting real life women including her.

[Daigoro]

Not weird in a Fortean sense, but it's certainly strange to see that this kind of thing is a job.

Indonesian Volcanic Sulfur Miners
http://www.bbc.com/travel/slideshow/...volcano-miners

Could be good inspiration for a fantasy setting too.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Not weird in a Fortean sense, but it's certainly strange to see that this kind of thing is a job.

Indonesian Volcanic Sulfur Miners
http://www.bbc.com/travel/slideshow/...volcano-miners

Could be good inspiration for a fantasy setting too.

When local conditions render labor cheaper than dirt, the strangest of things become profitable.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by William

And that's before her opera career.

Does anyone know if her beloved was okay with all this?