(urth) Ansible Interview

[Matthew Groves]

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?