Physicist Explains Cthulhu's "Non-Euclidean Geometry" 179
An anonymous reader writes "Mathematician Benjamin K. Tippett has written a fascinating and deadpan paper (Pdf) giving insights into Cthulhu. A 'Bubble' of warped Space-Time makes alarmingly consistent sense of the dead God's cyclopean city under the sea. From the paper: 'We calculate the type of matter which would be required to generate such exotic spacetime curvature. Unfortunately, we determine that the required matter is quite unphysical, and possess a nature which is entirely alien to all of the experiences of human science. Indeed, any civilization with mastery over such matter would be able to construct warp drives, cloaking devices, and other exotic geometries required to conveniently travel through the cosmos.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Gods with pitchforks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck would any self-respecting god need technology? I was always under the impression technology was humanity's attempts at mitigating our shortcomings as NON-Gods.
Not the kind of technology you are used to (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wondering about the tags.. (Score:4, Insightful)
..but HP?
Is the new printer lineup Lovecraftian? Has Meg Whitman been conducting dark rituals? Is Itanium powered by the souls of the innocent?
Wouldn't MS be more appropriate? I'm pretty sure IE is *actually* powered by the souls of the innocent, and there certainly is something evil about the entire OS lineup.
Re:Fitted Sheets (Score:4, Insightful)
It's even worse when you try to figure out how to fold them.......
Re:Mathematician or parapsychologist? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a sad day when there's two people in the world who don't recognize a Ghostbusters quote :(
Re:Mathematician or parapsychologist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to miss the Ghostbusters quote dumbass.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry it's all public domain.
And since when has that stopped Disney from claiming "ownership" of something?
Re:A still mainly unexplored genre (Score:5, Insightful)
The Endochronic Properties of Resublimted Thiotimoline [wikipedia.org] by Isaac Asimov.
A spoof chemistry paper which he told Campbell to publish pseudonymously in case it prejudice his upcoming thesis examination. Campbell used his real name, his examiners asked about it, and still gave him his doctorate.
Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.
Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.
So Lovecraft was a racist. So were many of his era, to the point where not holding those views was unusual at best. Does that really invalidate the literary merit of his work?
No person is defined by a single aspect of their personality, we are far too complex for that. If that were the case, people would not be able to learn and adjust to new viewpoints of any kind, much less moral viewpoints.
We do not change reality by changing the law, says your sig. It's true, we don't. We also don't change the past by denying it. And we can't change the future without learning from our past.
Finally - and this is intended to be thought provoking rather than insulting - how is your prejudice against people because of the views they hold any different from the prejudice against people because of the colour of their skin? You are placing them in a box labelled "arsehole", purely because of the views they hold, in spite of the fact that their racism was culturally normal and was only a single aspect of their humanity, much like a black man's skin. I'd be uncomfortable with that myself.
Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? (Score:5, Insightful)
agree completely.
We live in an 'enlightened' age where we realise that racism is a bad thing. But we subscribe to plenty of other virulent irrational hatreds (according to another age's moral viewpoint). How would we feel if the best and brightest of our generation were discarded from future history books for being religious, or disagreeing with homosexual marriage, or eating meat, or supporting climate alarmism, or driving cars, or any one of a hundred other things that we consider normal now?
Our current views are incomprehensible to an educated person of 200 years ago. An educated person of 200 year's time will probably find our current worldview primitive beyond belief.
Hesitate to judge, lest ye be judged in turn. Appreciate the genius of Lovecraft's writing and ignore his irrational prejudices.