(urth) Ansible Interview

[Jordon Flato]

Lol!  That last bit about what I was thinking is pretty much exactly what I
was thinking!  When I picture that (and I was able to with your fine
description) the thing that first popped into my head was "no way would I
call something like that, if I saw it above me, a valley!  I'd have to come
up with some other frakked up word, because it wouldn't look like any valley
I could imagine!

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Matthew Groves <
matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can make a drawing, but I'm afraid I don't have the means to create
> and post a digital image.  (I'm posting this email using some rocks
> and coke bottle I found.)  If there's genuine interest, I'll be happy
> to post an image in a day or so.  But someone will probably have to
> tell me how and where best to do that.  (Seriously, I'm not good at
> computers.)  Hang on, let me go draw something and then see if I can
> describe it...
>
> First, you have to give up the idea that the topography of the inner
> surface of the whorl is all relatively flat in relation to the spin
> Whorl's spin gravity, with habitat and cities everywhere.  Imagine
> that it's as eccentrically craggy and pitted as the exterior of a
> small asteroid.
>
> Imagine a roughly circular cross-section of the whorl, with the long
> sun as a point light source in the center.  Put a little stick-figure
> Silk down at 6:00.  Draw a cross-section of a bowl resting on with its
> bottom on the surface of the Whorl at, say, 1:00.  Sunlight shines
> into the valley at all times except shadelow.  Now, draw another bowl
> at 2:00, but tilt the bowl counterclockwise until the rim begins to
> eclipse the sun.  Now you've got shadow in your bowl.  If you draw an
> arrow indicating Silk's line of sight, you should find that he can see
> the shadow in the bowl.
>
> Now, if you can picture that, you're probably thinking, "Well, that's
> fine for bowls, and maybe for the exterior surface some very
> fracked-up asteroid, but no such geological formation would stand up
> under gravity.  Pas did some stupid shit when he built the Whorl, but
> surely he didn't build useless geographical features out of magical
> shiprock."  And I have no answer for you on that point.
>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:19 AM, Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to
> have
> > to arrange for a duel?
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