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There’s lots of things at the mountains of madness... Finally, we can open it up for tourism.

ethical decisions first require a moral context to be formed.

Hmm.. I think you'll find there's less going on than you suspect. (Though you did bring up one very interesting point!)

One of the most popular rules of ethics is "do to others as you'd have them do to you," but that's less of an article of faith as it's a corollary of "people are likely to do to you as you have done to them" which is, in turn, a famous strategy in game theory. And game theory is as universal as any other mathematics. You could theoretically find common ground with interstellar aliens in this manner, without anyone ever bothering to think about "morals."

At least that's how I see it, and it lets me answer questions by simply putting myself in the shoes of the other guy:

For instance, if I provide you with drugs that prevent you from reproducing. Am I harming your reproductive system? What I force the drugs on you?>

"Provide" with my knowledge and consent? No harm and you shouldn't expect an adverse reaction from me. Force? That's harm, therefore I might retaliate somehow.

Most of your questions are easy to answer using that technique, except for the psychosis one. That one is interesting and fuck-if-I-know! ;-)

My friend Crawford Tillinghast temporarily cured my blindness, and in my psychosis I was unable to accept the reality of what I finally saw. The cops say I shot the machine, though, not him.

It's got to be some stupid script "helping" the editors.

Imagine you were serving content-contextual ads. You could show an Amazon ad here. So some idiot figured "if it's close enough for the advertising department, then it's close enough for the editorial department." The problem is that they never tested it, and nobody at Slashdot actually reads Slashdot so they're unaware how ridiculous it looks.

Let this be a lesson, folks: if you don't eat your own dog food, then you have to test your dog food in the lab. But FFS don't just throw it out into the world with nobody looking at it, or everyone's going to be staring at you.

Back to on-topic: I don't understand how there's even a question here. The entire point of Amazon's Echo is that it's a bug in your home, that you're wilfully giving up privacy to have someone else's computer constantly listening to you. If it weren't listening, it couldn't work.

This is like someone saying "I didn't have a flight but I forged a boarding pass, and then bribed the TSA worker with a hundred dollar bill, saying 'rectal exam, please.' His fingers were so cold! Anyway, the next day, I couldn't get anyone to tell me whether or not my privacy has been compromised. Why are they so suspiciously silent?"

This is opt-in surveillance. The only problem I have with opt-in surveillance is that The Truth (people are idiots) makes me feel uncomfortable. But knowledge is a good thing, whether I'm comfortable with it or not.

They're online for free at: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/

Nevertheless, if I were a billionaire intent on blowing money, I could think of worse ways to spend it than a dinosaur hunting expedition to Antarctica.

You may want to check the last time something like this was tried. There's always the possibility of a downside.

Seventh one down: http://www.hplovecraft.com/

One would be well advised to avoid accepting favors from the Fungi from Yuggoth.

Okay, I'm confused.

When HP Lovecraft wrote his work, IIRC, copyright was for 14 years, with a possible 14 year extension.

He died in 1937, meaning all of his work would have been public domain by 1965. Specifcally, The Reanimator in 1922 would have expired in 1950.

In 1976, the US extended copyright retroactively to the life of the artist plus 50 years. So, Lovecraft's work was then removed from public domain. All of his work would be copyrighted until 1987.

Then, in 1996 - thanks to Sonny Bono - copyright was again retroactively extended to life + 70 years. So Lovecraft's work is now copyrighted until 2007.

Even the supposed official HPL site says, "Please note that Lovecraft's fiction is still considered to be under copyright by Arkham House, and any texts presently available on the web without their consent are in violation of that copyright." ( http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/hwr.ht m )

So, what's up with that?

The common way is kuh-THOO-loo. Lovecraft himself told different things to different people about its pronunciation. See here.

Good thing there's an internet!

I like my Elder Gods like I like my women: Squamous and Gibbous.

The real reason they want to keep people out of there, is The Mountains of Madness, of course.

They're keeping us safe from ourselves.

In my neck of the woods (New England), the Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is well worth a visit. They have a bunch of unique MS collections ("manuscript," not "Microsoft"), including an unrivalled selection of H. P. Lovecraft. They also have a huge collection of comic books donated by a professor from my alma mater.

In Worcester, Massachusetts is the The Higgins Armory Museum, which features the collection of arms and armor accumulated by John Woodman Higgins. It is, as the curators will happily tell you, the only museum in the Western Hemisphere dedicated to arms and armor.

Also, probably not worth a visit, but interesting to note if you happen to be passing by, the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts was made by evacuating and flooding four towns. If you hear anyone talking about the Lost Towns, that's what they mean. Always creeps me out to drive past it.

-Carolyn

The parent post is an attempt at humor, not off-topic rambling. If you've ever anything be H. P. Lovecraft, you got the joke and probably were expecting to see some reference when you read the article. Cthulhu was a squiddy "god" that lived (so to speak) in the depths in Lovecraft's maltheist pantheon. HTH. HAND.

Because reptiles are cold-blooded and it's damn chilly down there in penguin-land.

Besides, isn't there fossil evidence in Antarctica as well? Hrm. Something lived there once (and no, I'm not talking about H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Things here), and it is already known that when climate and environment changes occur, life changes (and frequently dies off) in response.

Now, in the case of Mars, is there bacteria there? Beats me. NASA has been bolloxing missions for just a little while there, so it's hard to tell for certain. Is there a danger, if Martian bacteria does exist, of it getting back to Earth via a return trip from a manned expedition? Sure. There's also a danger of a giant comet smacking into the Earth and destroying all life as we know it. If that bothers you, pull the covers up over your tin-foil covered head and hide from the nasty bogeyman.

I prefer to have my science without quite so much panic, thank you.

Kierthos

H.P. Lovecraft was on to this a long time ago. Or maybe he was just on something. Either way, the man kicked ass.

Check out this new release of some of his work with a forward by Neil 'The Main Man' Gaiman.