Why you might see flying boats

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/25/why-you-might-see-flying-boats.html

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Are you telling me that this isn’t possible on a flat earth? It’s an illusion, so the round earth is an illusion as well.

/extreme sarcasm

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or…

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Is it a Fata Morgana or:

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I was thinking more along the lines of…

The Flying Dutchman

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Au contraire

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Or if you want a bit more than “light bends different ways in warm and cold air”, read Richard Feynman’s QED.

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Checkmate, flatearthers! The earth isn’t flat - it’s bowl-shaped!

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Treasure Planet, obvs…

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I’m seeing flying boats right now. Ships, even.

I’ve read some years ago that there’s a consensus among cryptozoologists that if some sightings of Nessie can be considered sincere and credible, they are probably due to wandering seals magnified by some fata morgana happening over the waters of Loch Ness.

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Jon Anderson’s excellent ‘Olias of Sunhillow’ album.

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I remember there being some AD&D add-on (maybe early 90s?) that was all about awesome flying airships that looked an awful lot like that. Does anybody remember what I’m talking about?

well I don’t know about the rest of you but I see them because I am an immortal pirate cursed to wander the world, with my only sustenance a barnacle encrusted endless flask of whisky.

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Wait, what? Since when is Nessie supposed to fly? And do seals really make it that far inland?

Eberron as well.

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The MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons Online features Eberron as its home world, and the airships are your guild base of operations. I’ve been playing for ten years.

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what makes these mummified seals so mysterious is the fact that some of them have been found up to 41 miles inland and as high as 5,900 feet above sea level.

Loch Ness is about 10km from the ocean, up a stream.

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it’s just mirage

https://goo.gl/images/p2o6mp

I only just now made the connection that “Fata” here refers not to fate, but to fae. That’s not an association with The Fates that happened in English (at least, so directly), but it did in Itialian (and Spanish, which is how I finally recognized it).

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