Something You Should Know
Posted on November 16, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
The sunset wasn’t nearly this sinister when it went into the camera. Camera sensor =/= human eye. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
Posted on November 16, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
The sunset wasn’t nearly this sinister when it went into the camera. Camera sensor =/= human eye. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
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This photo looks exactly like the sky in Gone With The Wind when Scarlett and Rhett were smooching. Atlanta’s burning; Melanie is postpartum; the South is dying and they’re sharing a moment.
Are you sure your town isn’t burning to the ground?
Apparently, all the sailors in your neck of the woods should be delighted this evening.
@2: I’ll take a break from Ark-building then.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Well, you know, that is Indiana you’re looking toward.
This is getting weird. I saw this same sunset today and I thought, “Hmm, I wonder if John saw this.”
Sunsets are awe-inspiring, belittling, and romantic. They aren’t the kind of thing that I want to associate with Science Fiction writers from Bradford. But alas, now I do.
Dude, why were you taking pictures in Mordor!?
So, John, you live down the road from Hell?
really love it. and i think it’s not creepy, it is rather romantic. but maybe i’ve seen too much zombie movies lately.
Us folks in Ohio really need to ask the one in Indiana why the keep setting their state on fire. Nice sunsets for us but to keep doing it indicates a problem.
Maybe it’s Illinois, and it carries.
Looks rather too much as the sunsets/rises did during the most recent fires here in SoCal. Sorry, but not enough time’s passed to employ my usual level of pithy humor.
@Kelsey – Doesn’t your town have its own sun to set?
Uh-oh. Looks like God isn’t happy with your take on the Creationism Museum…
Patrick M – At what distance apart do two people not share a sunset? Or for that matter (I’m about to get all zen), can two people standing next to each other really see the same sunset at all?
eee…my head hurts.
John: funny – for me it’s always the other way around: I see an amazing sunset, take a picture and the inanimate camera refuses to be poetic about what it spits back. Maybe I’m just a poor photographer.
Kelsey, the esoteric answer to your question is that since we are all everywhere at once, and are moreover fundamentally psychically entwined, we all share the sunset when you see it. time and space being ways to describe the interaction of a wholistic system, our daily delusion of being alone is revealed for what it truly is: bunk. (thats also why you are experiencing coincidences a lot more sharply lately – re seeing the same sunset as John S.)
The practical western realist answer to your question probably depends on the terrain in question, since you can see a pretty significantly different sunset from one side of a mountain and another… but then theres the whole can of worms you mention about whether you and I see the same theing when we think of “red”. Like maybe my red is your green. That train of thought leads to serious slopes of nihilism unless you keep the other, “we are one” paradigm. That usually tends to sort through most problems in western philisophy like a bottle of Cocacola clearing through a rusty drain. If you try to sort it out by thinking in terms of dualities, you’re in for a headache allright.