Subject: (urth) Ansible Interview

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:50:02 +0000

I have been browsing the Ansible interview, and I notice what seems to 
be a simple, incontrovertible error on Wolfe's part:

8. /How is Silk able to see these valleys filled with shadows [in the 
skylands at night, at the opening of chapter 4, book 1] if the Whorl is 
a cylinder with the long sun running approximately down the centre?/ -- 
This one throws me completely. Where is the difficulty, unless all the 
valleys run parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. [DRL: I see 
a Wolfean trap here. The groundlings' references to the 'shade' of night 
strongly suggest a literal revolving shade around the sun. But there are 
later indications that night involves some sort of dark stuff sent in 
pulses along the axis to mask a certain length of the Long Sun.]

Thing is, the Whorl is the interior surface of a cylinder. Therefore, 
"up" is always toward the center.

Since the LS runs along the center from end to end, you can treat the 
issue of shadows with only 2 dimensions. It won't matter whether the 
valleys run along the Sun or the other way. Only if they are tilted or 
overhanging will they cast shadows.

Anyway, as Langford notes, there is a shade of some kind always blocking 
one side of the Sun.

So we should not assume Wolfe to be perfect in his physics. ;)

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 090121-0, 01/21/2009
Tested on: 1/21/2009 4:50:03 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:21:45 +0000

>
> Yeah, that befuddled me too.  And the interviewers aside about pulses of
> Darkness traveling the length of the sun to create darkness seems
> unsupported to me.  How would there be skylands lit up at night if there was
> a pulse of darkness covering an entire section of the Whorl in darkness,
> unless he is only seeing the lights from the cities, which doesn't seem to
> be the case from various descriptions (especially the above about shadows
> and what not).
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/508de236/attachment.htm>

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:22:47 +0000

Although, now that I think of it, the turning of the shade around the sun
might, at certain times be aligned just enough to cast shadows over some
areas, right?

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/7cc7c5c1/attachment.htm>

---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:31:59 +0000

well.......

the sun turns. It may be a cylinder or a plane, but the point is that half of it is shaded.
meaning, it's photon vectors are not omnidirectional.
At some points the sun is a sliver. it widens & narrows through the day.
and there IS a shade, that's why sunset is called Shadelow, I don't remember pulses of darkness and I just finished that book.
So as this light plane, or half cylinder rotates, it would have shadows.

And then there is ambient reflected light, and we're talking about Shadows in the skylands, where, conceivably, there would only be reflected light off of neighboring lands that aren't yet in darkness. Then the fact that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in the first place, so there would be additional reflected light.  I think all of that adds up to enough an uneven distribution of light, and thus shadows.

/my two cents.
~witz

>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Stockhoff [mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 01:50 PM
>To: urth at lists.urth.net
>Subject: (urth) Ansible Interview
>

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:55:17 +0000

Witz said:

"the fact that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in
the first place, so there would be additional reflected light."

Shade not opaque?  How do you figure that?  Maybe I don't understand you
completely.  My understanding would be a big rotating strip that circles the
beam of the sun so that when one half of the sun is completely covered, the
other half is in full light.  That way, the skylands are like seeing the
other half of the Whorl, above you, in full sunlight, but so far away, that
it doesn't completely reflect the light back to you making it day time.
It's obvious that there is way more ambient light in the Whorl than in our
normal earth during Nightside, but why do you say the shade is not opaque?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/bfa83bda/attachment.htm>

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:55:39 +0000

Some people seem to have a very different idea of what the long sun
and its shade are than I do.  To my mind, the questioner is correct to
ask how there could be shadows in the skylands.  There couldn't.  And
why should the shade need to be translucent in order to see skylands?
Aren't folks just looking *past* the shade?  What good is a
translucent shade?  If we're talking about *diffuse* light casting
*shadows*, then I'm completely lost.  Go stand directly under a long,
tubular fluorescent bulb, or better, a column of them.  Try casting a
coherent shadow.  It's real tough, huh?  You're gonna need a whole
shade.

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:59:52 +0000

Yeah, I can't see it as anything other than opaque.  However, now picture a
slowly revolving shade over that bulb.  There are points where the shade
isn't completely covering the bulb above you (for a short time).  During
that point, there might be some shadows as the shade passes over the bulb
above your head.

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com
> wrote:

> > and there IS a shade, that's why sunset is called Shadelow, I don't
> remember pulses of darkness and I just finished that book.
> > And then there is ambient reflected light, and we're talking about
> Shadows in the skylands, where, conceivably, there would only be reflected
> light off of neighboring lands that aren't yet in darkness. Then the fact
> that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in the first
> place, so there would be additional reflected light.  I think all of that
> adds up to enough an uneven distribution of light, and thus shadows.
> >
> > /my two cents.
> > ~witz
> >
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/17b332ff/attachment-0001.htm>

---

From: hammstu at sbcglobal.net <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:21:33 +0000

If someone asks "Penny for your thoughts" and you put in your 2 cents worth....
Who gets the extra penny???
Sent from my BlackBerry? smartphone with SprintSpeed

-----Original Message-----
From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:31:59 
To: The Urth Mailing List<urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview

well.......

/my two cents.
~witz

---

From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:33:57 +0000

> Who gets the extra penny???

The sled?

Maybe it's a coin-operated toilet.

Adam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/e3d7ad2b/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 4988 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090121/e3d7ad2b/attachment.bin>

---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:51:31 +0000

whoops.
that was stupid.
I had two conflicting perceptions of the thing, and clarified in my mind as I wrote, but forgot to cut the translucent bit.
It would have to be opaque.

>From: Jordon Flato [mailto:jordonflato at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 02:55 PM
>To: 'The Urth Mailing List'

---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:54:06 +0000

I'm sitting under tubular flourescent bulbs (complete with shade unit) all day long, right now in fact.  I guarantee there are shadows.  they're sort of diffuse, but they are definitely shadows.
~witz

>From: Matthew Groves [mailto:matthewalangroves at gmail.com]

---

From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:03:09 +0000

All this talk reminds me: I never can remember if the Whorl itself is actually cylindrical or if it's more oblong. As I recall, one of the inhumi calls it a "hollowed-out asteroid" at one point, and that made me try to remember if there were any descriptions of its exterior apart from the view from Blue/Green. If it is in fact an asteroid, I would imagine it would be more oblong. But if the entire thing was artificial, a more pure cylinder might be appropriate. I've always imagined the interior as looking like a pure cylinder, but the asteroid comment made me rethink that. (I'll try to find the inhumi quote when I get home...)

To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might be more probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be *directly* overhead, but at more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the interior curves along both axes...but I get the feeling that I'm starting to think too much.)

Craig

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:20:54 +0000

I was confusing the issues.  Point 1: In relation to the idea that the
shade might be pulses of dark along the axis of the long sun: This
would be insufficient to cast the shadow that is night in the Whorl.
The shadow would diffuse.  You need a whole shade.

Point 2:  It's always noon under the long sun. On the inner surface of
the whorl you can create a shadow, but only directly beneath the
opaque object, and hence shadows in the skylands would be invisible
from the ground, hiding beneath the object casting them.  You can see
shadows in your office because the objects casting them are close to
the surface they're casting on, and you are close enough to get your
line of sight at an angle to the direction of the light.  Silk could
see the shadow of his hand on the ground beneath him, buy no skyland
valleys full of shadow.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:27:14 +0000

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:20 PM, Matthew Groves

> see the shadow of his hand on the ground beneath him, buy no skyland

Actually...

A person staring at "the skylands" will never be looking at the part
directly opposite him/herself; the LS and/or the Shade will be in the
way. So s/he will be looking at the ground at a greater or lesser
oblique angle, and the shadow of an object may be visible.

Nonetheless, a valley won't be full of shadow because, as you
note, in that valley the LS is directly overhead, or it's night.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com

I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a
restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand
Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce. -- T. Pratchett

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:37:37 +0000

I don't know if it had been revealed previously, but a Neighbor
confirms that the Whorl is a "hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's
Jungles 381).

---

From: Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:41:50 +0000

> To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might be more probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be *directly* overhead, but at more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the i…

I think it would look more or less cylindrical from the inside; the
various bumps and protrusions on the outside of the asteroid might be
hollowed out as well, but they might house parts of the Whorl's
"plumbing" - the reservoirs mentioned in the text, clone storage, etc.
You could also use some irregularities in the hollowed Whorl to create
valleys and lakes I suppose.

-Matt

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:25:22 +0000

It's true that ambient/reflected light would cast weak shadows---not so much "shadows," really. The bottoms of valleys would catch less of that light, since much of it comes from the sides.

Of course 

(1) this could not happen at all at "noon." I haven't read the book recently: does the shade have zones, so that daytime would feature something other than noon all day? I recall that the shade snaps up in the morning, so we know it is at least relatively swift. And 

(2) the shade would prevent daylight from directly overhead from illuminating at night, so this would be a nighttime phenomenon.

However

(1) when day recedes or approaches, there surely would be light reflected from adjacent lands, so there would be an after- and a foreglow. How long, I don't know, but I bet you'd see RELATIVELY brighter mountains and darker valleys at some point in the process. Perhaps this is what Wolfe/the text referred to. At least, this is ARTISTICALLY acceptable/plausible.

(2) It would have been so easy to introduce dawn and dusk, if Typhon's people had wanted to. Just create 2x 50% shades wider than 12 hours, and stagger/offset them. You'd have a transitional period: 1x 50%-dim hour on each side if you made each shade 1 hour wider. But it seems they didn't.

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:31:59 +0000
From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <W7671630349258991232577119 at webmail38>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

well.......

/my two cents.
~witz

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 090122-0, 01/22/2009
Tested on: 1/22/2009 7:25:23 AM
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:34:45 +0000

Of course, those are distinct multiple light sources, right? Here, we'd have a smooth curve of an infinite number of light sources. But the light sources would be close---closer than the SUN---so perhaps there would in fact be a significant shadow effect. 

I don't pretend to know, I just think we know enough to bring the observation into the realm of the artistically possible. Which still doesn't explain Wolfe's flat rejection of it.

I forgot the other possibility that you alluded to. If the LS is in fact not a narrow cylinder but 2 narrow, thin panels set back to back, then there would be some lessening of light output near dawn and dusk, at the very edges. This would lead to some dimming, but not to more shadows. Just stronger ones, perhaps---the overwhelming effect of permanent noon would be reduced. And dawn would still seem to snap up like a windowshade.

I suppose it would be risky to make your sun a single huge fluorescent tube. Where would you get a replacement if it broke? ;)

Message: 5
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:54:06 +0000
From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <W8194011263149441232582046 at webmail12>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 090122-0, 01/22/2009
Tested on: 1/22/2009 7:34:46 AM
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:32:24 +0000

> valleys and lakes I suppose.

Spin gravity would require all the local upward directions to point 
inward to the same axis where the long sun is to be found, preventing 
shadows of any appreciable size to be cast across valleys during the 
unshaded day. However, during the shaded night, those valleys would be 
lit from off-vertical overhead angles by their skylands, with lighter 
colors structures or ripened crops being brighter, and the closer (and 
therefore least vertical) longitudes being brighter as well.

This would allow a valley at Longitude 0? to be lit by 40 acres of flax 
at Long 45? of the same latitude as if by a rising moon, with lots of 
shadows to conceal skullduggery, but still enough ambient light to 
facilitate it.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:54:21 +0000

And yet ... the Whorl is "made" of "shipstone," I thought. That's what 
we are told early on in LS. Could the ambiguity of this term hide 
"asteroid matter," as well as perhaps "concrete made from asteroid 
dust"? I suppose it could. And if so, that means the hollowing was done 
much as we would blast and bulldoze a mountaintop, or with plasma 
energies. It also was probably done by robots, since we know Typhon had 
them. In that case, there may be room for fundamental irregularity in 
the base or foundation layer---so how would you ensure that all the 
mountains/hills point precisely "up"? By sighting on the LS, which 
presumably would have been installed ASAP? Or were the mountain ranges 
simply the remains of blasting? In that case, they would be irregular 
from the get-go. It would be extra work to grind the floor smooth only 
to introduce nice, neat perpendicular mountains again. Is Larry Niven 
available for a consult? ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: 
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:37:37 -0600 From: Matthew Groves 
<matthewalangroves at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To: 
The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: 
<39ed084f0901211637i62491c1br9459689411004710 at mail.gmail.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I don't know if it had been 
revealed previously, but a Neighbor confirms that the Whorl is a 
"hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's Jungles 381). On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 090122-0, 01/22/2009
Tested on: 1/22/2009 9:54:22 AM
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---

From: Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:13:18 +0000

It's hard to get "Rendevous with Rama" out of my head as I try to picture the Whorl..

Hey, I'm getting ready to tackle the Short Sun series agan, just finished the Borski book...can someone please point me in the direction of an article I read here once...about corn-silk genes and the theory about the plants on green...well you know, don't want to spoil it for witz

where do?I search for that article???
thanks
~S~

???? Mobile — (415) 786-3624
???? Skype? stuart.hamm
myspace.com/stuhamm
? ??? stuarthamm.net

--- On Thu, 1/22/09, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 6:54 AM

And yet ... the Whorl is "made" of "shipstone," I thought.
That's what we are told early on in LS. Could the ambiguity of this term
hide "asteroid matter," as well as perhaps "concrete made from
asteroid dust"? I suppose it could. And if so, that means the hollowing was
done much as we would blast and bulldoze a mountaintop, or with plasma energies.
It also was probably done by robots, since we know Typhon had them. In that
case, there may be room for fundamental irregularity in the base or foundation
layer---so how would you ensure that all the mountains/hills point precisely
"up"? By sighting on the LS, which presumably would have been
installed ASAP? Or were the mountain ranges simply the remains of blasting? In
that case, they would be irregular from the get-go. It would be extra work to
grind the floor smooth only to introduce nice, neat perpendicular mountains
again. Is Larry Niven available for a consult? ------------------------------
Message: 4 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:37:37 -0600 From: Matthew Groves
<matthewalangroves at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To:
The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID:
<39ed084f0901211637i62491c1br9459689411004710 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I don't know if it had been
revealed previously, but a Neighbor confirms that the Whorl is a
"hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's Jungles 381). On Wed, Jan 21,
2009 at 6:03 PM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > All this talk reminds me: I never can remember if the Whorl itself is
actually cylindrical or if it's more oblong. As I recall, one of the inhumi
calls it a "hollowed-out asteroid" at one point, and that made me try
to remember if there were any descriptions of its exterior apart from the view
from Blue/Green. If it is in fact an asteroid, I would imagine it would be more
oblong. But if the entire thing was artificial, a more pure cylinder might be
appropriate. I've always imagined the interior as looking like a pure
cylinder, but the asteroid comment made me rethink that. (I'll try to find
the inhumi quote when I get home...)
> >
> > To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might
be more probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be *directly* overhead,
but at more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the interior curves along
both axes...but I get the feeling that I'm starting to think too much.)

---

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090122/eb0a02e6/attachment.htm>

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:44:59 +0000

I think that must be Marc Arimini's essay:

http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/marc-aramini1.htm

Much to ponder there.  No peeking, Witz.

Also, I have compiled as many translations of the names in Short Sun
as I could find on the WolfeWiki site:

http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=TheBookOfTheShortSun.Names

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Hey, I'm getting ready to tackle the Short Sun series agan, just finished
> the Borski book...can someone please point me in the direction of an article
> I read here once...about corn-silk genes and the theory about the plants on
> green...well you know, don't want to spoil it for witz
>
> where do I search for that article???
> thanks
> ~S~
>
>      Mobile   (415) 786-3624
>      Skype   stuart.hamm
> myspace.com/stuhamm
>       stuarthamm.net
>
>

---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:31:29 +0000

>> green...well you know, don't want to spoil it for witz

Shucks.  you guys are the best.
thanks for watching out for me.
~witz

---

From: hammstu at sbcglobal.net <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:09:28 +0000

Fish Heads?

---

From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:05:04 +0000

Thanks for pointing to this! I can't believe I've never read it before -- I've looked at Wynn's site a number of times and always overlooked that link.

But the potential that Green is Urth starts to address an issue that's been bothering me: Where are the Hiero-folk (or Yesod in general) in Long/Short Sun? We had this huge cosmic conspiracy in New Sun that turned out to be the "real" story behind the surface narrative. But that "real" story apparently even disappears in the subtext of the sequel series.

However...given that the whole point of Yesod/Hiero-folk is to further human evolution for their own purposes, perhaps we actually are seeing evolution happen in what occurs with the Neighbor/inhumi/human evolution interactions on Blue/Green. I haven't worked out the details yet, but this idea at least ties the series together more tightly than I've felt that they were in the past.

I still wonder, however, if the Outsider is the same "God" that the Hiero-folk call the Increate. I know all the general signs would suggest that they are (one true creator god, etc.), but I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the Hiero's "God" wasn't the real deal.

---

From: John Smith <jsmith2627 at att.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:40:03 +0000

I think the Whorl has to be close to perfect cylinder. — If not, it would wobble as it spins.

Best wishes,

Jack

--- On Wed, 1/21/09, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Subject: (urth) Shape of the Whorl
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 7:03 PM

All this talk reminds me: I never can remember if the Whorl itself is actually
cylindrical or if it's more oblong. As I recall, one of the inhumi calls it
a "hollowed-out asteroid" at one point, and that made me try to
remember if there were any descriptions of its exterior apart from the view from
Blue/Green. If it is in fact an asteroid, I would imagine it would be more
oblong. But if the entire thing was artificial, a more pure cylinder might be
appropriate. I've always imagined the interior as looking like a pure
cylinder, but the asteroid comment made me rethink that. (I'll try to find
the inhumi quote when I get home...)

To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might be more
probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be *directly* overhead, but at
more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the interior curves along both
axes...but I get the feeling that I'm starting to think too much.)

Craig

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090123/d221508f/attachment.htm>

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:01:22 +0000

>I think the Whorl has to be close to perfect cylinder.
>If not, it would wobble as it spins.

Only if the asteroid were of uniform density on all sides which is unlikely. 
The engineering permutations to cause an asteroid of undefined dimensions 
and mass to spin uniformly are infinite.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:32:19 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> Only if the asteroid were of uniform density on all sides which is 
> unlikely. The engineering permutations to cause an asteroid of undefined 
> dimensions and mass to spin uniformly are infinite.

Relativity dictates any asymmetry will eventually lead to tumbling, so 
it needs to be pretty close to avoid instability over ages of travel.

---

From: aaron <aaronsingleton at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:33:02 +0000

Perhaps there is some unmentioned mechanism to simulate moonlight on the
Whorl... Just a thought.

Aaron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090124/e2ca6016/attachment.htm>

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:46:37 +0000

I don't understand the controversy here. 

>"up" is always toward the center.

Absolutely not true. The premise here seems to be that all the land in the Whorl is "flat" (relative to the LS), and the mountains all point perpendicular to the LS. Very simplistic idea, and difficult to acheive for an environment that is a hollowed out asteroid. Anything built using a plumb would be perpendicular to the LS. All else would not unless it was coincidentally tilting parallel with the LS.

When it is Nightside, the sky consists of the lighted lands and people overhead. 

J
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090124/3dca7757/attachment.htm>

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:40:21 +0000

Cerainly "up" is always toward the axis of the spin, regardless of
whether anything is tilted.  Presumably the long sun is aligned along
that axis, no?  But the point regarding shadows is that it's always
noon under the long sun, and so there wouldn't be any "valleys filled
with shadow."

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 3:46 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely not true. The premise here seems to be that all the land in the
> Whorl is "flat" (relative to the LS), and the mountains all point
> perpendicular to the LS. Very simplistic idea, and difficult to acheive for
> an environment that is a hollowed out asteroid. Anything built using a plumb
> would be perpendicular to the LS. All else would not unless it was
> coincidentally tilting parallel with the LS.
>

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:01:18 +0000

>But the point regarding shadows is that it's always

Unless they are always filled with shadow, right?
I'm just north of the 30th parallel. If it were noon on the summer solstice 
right now, I would cast a shadow.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:56:30 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> I'm just north of the 30th parallel. If it were noon on the summer 
> solstice right now, I would cast a shadow.

You're outside of a planet, not inside a spinning asteroid.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:50:12 +0000

>Matthew Groves wrote:

>> I wrote

> Jeff Wilson
So? Same difference. If the ground slopes non-perpendicular to the central 
light, object perpendicular to the ground will cast shadows. If a mountain 
is not perpendicular to the central light (remember that these mountains 
were not shaped by rain and geology) it could constantly overshadow an 
adjacent valley.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:53:53 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> So? Same difference. If the ground slopes non-perpendicular to the 
> central light, object perpendicular to the ground will cast shadows. If 
> a mountain is not perpendicular to the central light (remember that 
> these mountains were not shaped by rain and geology) it could constantly 
> overshadow an adjacent valley.

That would require some Dali-esque topology, with mountains hovering 
overhead between the solar tube and the valley floor.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:44:49 +0000

I wrote:
>> If the ground slopes non-perpendicular to the central light, object 
>> perpendicular to the ground will cast shadows. If a mountain is not 
>> perpendicular to the central light (remember that these mountains were 
>> not shaped by rain and geology) it could constantly overshadow an 
>> adjacent valley.

> overhead between the solar tube and the valley floor.

Well, the Whorl's topography *is* Dali-esque. And we know that it has 
mountains. That's how the Cargo is prevented from reaching the other 
portions of the ship.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:28:30 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
>>> perpendicular to the central light (remember that these mountains 
>>> were not shaped by rain and geology) it could constantly overshadow 
>>> an adjacent valley.
> 
> Jeff Wilson wrote:

What holds the mountains up?

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:06:01 +0000

> What holds the mountains up?

[sigh] Look. There's mountains in the Whorl are just like any other 
mountains. But the axis of mountains are not perpendicular to the Long Sun.

Imagine a mountain and a deep valley on a flat surface with a single light 
source directly overhead. No shadows. Now tip the base toward the valley. 
Suddenly the mountain does not point toward the light source anymore and the 
valley falls into shadow.

This does not take a CAD program to imagine.

J

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:19:12 +0000

> But the axis of mountains are not perpendicular to the Long
> Sun.

How not? The pseudogravity gradient caused by the Whorl's rotation is
perpendicular to the Long Sun at all points.

-- 
Tim Walters | http://doubtfulpalace.com

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:29:42 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> Imagine a mountain and a deep valley on a flat surface with a single 
> light source directly overhead. No shadows. Now tip the base toward the 
> valley. Suddenly the mountain does not point toward the light source 
> anymore and the valley falls into shadow.
> 

That would require tipping the base at a greater than complimentary 
angle with the slope of the mountain, that is, a degree for every degree 
short of a sheer, vertical cliff, and then more according to how much 
shadow you want. Unless you begin with a cartoonishly steep mountain, 
your valley floor ends up tilted as much as a conventional mountain 
slope on earth, making it very unvalley-like. And you still have to 
answer, what's holding this mountain up?

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:33:37 +0000

> perpendicular to the Long Sun at all points.

I think he means that, for example, a symmetrical, conical mountain need 
not point straight up toward the solar tube.

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:43:48 +0000

They are big hunks of things, not piles of gravel.
This seems to be what he is getting at. I don't have an opinion as to what
is correct. What passage of the text talks about shadows?

.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:46:30 +0000

> perpendicular to the Long Sun at all points.

And why does that require that mountains which were not formed by natural 
forces (such as rain and wind) to be perpendicular to the Long Sun as well? 
Why assume that when much of the Whorl's topography was built, the Whorl had 
even been started spinning?

The mountains point generally "up". Since there are valleys in shadow, 
clearly no care was expended to ensure that they pointed precisely up...at 
least not in all cases. Large tracts of the Whorl --containing mountains, 
valleys, lakes, and cities-- were evened out, but not made "flat" relative 
to the curvature of the Whorl's spin or to other tracts in the Whorl. It 
would greatly increase the difficulty of the hollowing out process to make 
that a priority in the construction, and it would provide zero value-add.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:08:44 +0000

> They are big hunks of things, not piles of gravel.

Why don't we see more hunks overhead then?

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:12:24 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> And why does that require that mountains which were not formed by 
> natural forces (such as rain and wind) to be perpendicular to the Long 
> Sun as well? Why assume that when much of the Whorl's topography was 
> built, the Whorl had even been started spinning?
> 
> clearly no care was expended to ensure that they pointed precisely 
> up...at least not in all cases. Large tracts of the Whorl --containing 
> mountains, valleys, lakes, and cities-- were evened out, but not made 
> "flat" relative to the curvature of the Whorl's spin or to other tracts 
> in the Whorl. It would greatly increase the difficulty of the hollowing 
> out process to make that a priority in the construction, and it would 
> provide zero value-add.

Are you privy to the particular "hollowing-out" process used? There are 
several, even now.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:28:47 +0000

> not point straight up toward the solar tube.

But it must. If it doesn't point straight up, it can't be fully
symmetrical, as one side will be longer than the other.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:42:21 +0000

> It

There's no evidence that it would be any harder, and it would add a lot of
value: the landscape wouldn't turn to rubble when spin was applied.
Mountains made of rock can't exist at arbitrary angles to gravity.

Even if you were using some building material stronger than rock, you'd
probably still prefer an Earth-like rather than Dali-esque landscape (or
at least we'd be told if the latter were the case), and you wouldn't want
whole valleys that would never see daylight. (Anything that's ever in
shadow will always be in shadow.)

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:00:09 +0000

Remember that I am only trying to explain that Wolfe has not defied physics 
in having Silk see shadows in some valleys. I think I've got everyone to 
admit that it is possible so long one abandon's preconceptions about the way 
the Whorl looks.

>answer, what's holding this mountain up?

I imagine mountains that look like the peaks of the Alps. Perhaps the Alps 
are cartoonishly steep, but the mountains approaching the ships deck are 
intended to make passage difficult. On the other hand, you could have a 
mountain that is positively sheer only on one side that over-looks a valley. 
That would accomplish the same thing. Or a deep valley with steep sides as 
well.

>Are you privy to the particular "hollowing-out" process used? There are

Are you? I would guess it did not involve a circular cutting drill like they 
use to make subways. I presume they used lots of explosives and then 
smoothed things out as necessay with bull-dozing equipment. Various tracts 
would be assigned a project number and date for completion.

Tim:
> If it doesn't point straight up, it can't be fully

Is there something in the text that states the mountains are symetrical? On 
Earth, at the peaks of mountains it is not uncommon for onside to be sheer 
and the other side to slope.

J

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:37:21 +0000

> symmetrical, as one side will be longer than the other.

Make that an exposed section of a right circular cone, to be 
analytically and geometrically precise.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:53:13 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> I imagine mountains that look like the peaks of the Alps. Perhaps the 
> Alps are cartoonishly steep, but the mountains approaching the ships 
> deck are intended to make passage difficult. On the other hand, you 
> could have a mountain that is positively sheer only on one side that 
> over-looks a valley. That would accomplish the same thing. Or a deep 
> valley with steep sides as well.

Are you thinking that the valleys are past the end of the solar tube, so 
that the tube is not over head but to one side only?

> Are you? 

Yes; in addition to being a lifelong buff of space research, I'm also 
engaged as a fact checker and peer reviewer for a series of books 
including realistic space habitat construction.

> Is there something in the text that states the mountains are symetrical? 
> On Earth, at the peaks of mountains it is not uncommon for onside to be 
> sheer and the other side to slope.

such peaks however typically make up a rather small portion of the mtn's 
bulk, and the overall slope of the mountain from tip to base has to be 
overcome in order to cast a shadow onto a valley floor under vertical 
sunlight.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:25:34 +0000

> admit that it is possible so long one abandon's preconceptions about the

Not me...

> On the other hand, you could have a

Neither of these would put the valley into shadow. The sun is always
directly overhead, and only an impossible, cartoonish overhang can block
it from a significant portion of the surface.

> Is there something in the text that states the mountains are symetrical?

I doubt it. I was just responding to Jeff's remark.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:56:36 +0000

I wrote:

> The sun is always

And I should add that even in this unlikely scenario you wouldn't see 
the shadow from Nightside, you'd see the topside of the overhang.

-- 

Tim Walters | The Doubtful Palace | http://doubtfulpalace.com

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:01:06 +0000

> that the tube is not over head but to one side only?

Only that the valley's *plane* tilts, say, 15 degrees (perpendicular to the 
LS axis) into the *idealized* curve of the Whorl. Also that the  valley be 
somewhat deep and sides be somewhat sheer. It would not shade entire valley 
but it would put shade into it. To overshadow and entire valley you would 
need an adjacent mountain that looks like the peaks of the Alps.

>> Jeff:
>>> Are you privy to the PARTICULAR "hollowing-out" process used? There are
>>> several, even now.
[emphasis mine]

> including realistic space habitat construction.

Oh. Okay. So that's why Typhon made you a consultant in constructing the 
Whorl.

>>Jeff: Is there something in the text that states the mountains are 
>>symetrical? On Earth, at the peaks of mountains it is not uncommon for 
>>onside to be sheer and the other side to slope.
>

One. more. time. These are not natural formations. They are essentially 
*statues*. "Ship-rock" is the asteroid material. That's why it was said that 
it would "last until the end of the Whorl".

They are not composite piles of rock pushed up by geological pressures. They 
were blasted and carved into shape. Also, the gravitation pressure near 
their peaks is considerably less. Probably they will come down eventually, 
but it's only been 300 years.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:16:30 +0000

James Wynn wrote:

> Only that the valley's *plane* tilts, say, 15 degrees (perpendicular to 
> the LS axis) into the *idealized* curve of the Whorl. Also that the  
> valley be somewhat deep and sides be somewhat sheer. It would not shade 
> entire valley but it would put shade into it.

Which shade would be invisible from almost anywhere in the Whorl, even 
if shiprock is strong enough to enable such cliffs.

--

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:43:33 +0000

> the shadow from Nightside, you'd see the topside of the overhang.
<snip>
>Which shade would be invisible from almost anywhere in the Whorl, even if 
>shiprock is strong enough to enable such cliffs.

This premise is only true for areas directly on the other side of the Long 
Sun. In the cases of areas just on the edge of Nightside (from Silk's 
perspective, deep in Nightside) the shaded areas would be perfectly visible.

If you use a compass and ruler you will see that everything I say is so.

J

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:05:16 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> This premise is only true for areas directly on the other side of the 
> Long Sun. In the cases of areas just on the edge of Nightside (from 
> Silk's perspective, deep in Nightside) the shaded areas would be 
> perfectly visible.

You're assuming that he's at the same "latitude", and that the overhang 
is pointed directly at him. And even in that case he won't be able to 
see much of the latter scenario (a valley with two steep sides and no 
overhanging mountain).

The real problem, even if you're right, is that your theory involves 
Wolfe making a much bigger aesthetic mistake than getting the geometry 
wrong.

"Hmmm... lessee... by default, nothing in the Whorl will cast a shadow. 
Maybe I could use that as a subtle part of the description, to enhance 
the atmosphere of being in a artificial world different from the earth. 
Nah... there's a really convoluted way in which it's theoretically 
possible for shadows to exist. I'll just write as if I'd forgotten the 
whole thing, and let people construct the epicycles to rationalize it."

--

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:30:11 +0000

> Maybe I could use that as a subtle part of the description, to enhance the 
> atmosphere of being in a artificial world different from the earth. Nah... 
> there's a really convoluted way in which it's theoretically possible for 
> shadows to exist. I'll just write as if I'd forgotten the whole thing, and 
> let people construct the epicycles to rationalize it."

You are assuming he thought it all strange that the Whorl would cast 
shadows. If he made a rough model of his Whorl, he would have seen shadows 
and just recorded what he saw.

J

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:34:51 +0000

> and just recorded what he saw.

P.S. Trust me. There are far more important plot elements in The Book of the 
Long Sun that are far, far more subtly presented.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:03:50 +0000

James Wynn wrote:

>> shadows. If he made a rough model of his Whorl, he would have seen 
>> shadows and just recorded what he saw.

You're assuming that Wolfe thought of the Whorl as a goofy cartoon 
landscape, and didn't bother to mention it in the text. With Earth-style 
  mountains and valleys, there would be no shadows, so yes, it would be 
strange if it did, and no, he wouldn't have seen them.

> P.S. Trust me. There are far more important plot elements in The Book of 
> the Long Sun that are far, far more subtly presented.

Of course. It's precisely because they're important that they *can* be 
subtly presented. That way the reader has both motivation and reward for 
figuring them out, and when he does, things snap into place instead of 
becoming more mysterious and needlessly complex.

Who knows, maybe the shadows are caused by demons that sit on Silk's 
retinas with the Whorl equivalent of a GPS unit and make complicated 
hand shadows based on where he's standing and the direction he's 
looking. That has as much textual support as overhanging mountains and 
inverted-slope cliffs, i.e., none that I'm aware of. (I'm assuming that 
if there's direct textual evidence of such features you would have 
reminded me of it by now--it's been a while since I read the books.)

--

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:39:24 +0000

> If you use a compass and ruler you will see that everything I say is so.

Why don't you use a compass and a rule to draw this situation, and 
upload a scan of your drawing so we can literally see what you mean?

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:54:38 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> Jeff:
>> Are you thinking that the valleys are past the end of the solar tube, 
>> so that the tube is not over head but to one side only?
> 
> entire valley but it would put shade into it. To overshadow and entire 
> valley you would need an adjacent mountain that looks like the peaks of 
> the Alps.
> 
>>> Jeff:

I mean, I have reviewed the same body of work on spin-gravity space 
stations available to the author when he wrote the books. Typhon's bits 
of anti-gravity technology left over from wherever would allow some very 
useful shortcuts in the process, but the fact that he had to make it a 
spin-gravity, STL habitat mean that certain constraints on the final 
configuration still apply.

> *statues*. "Ship-rock" is the asteroid material. That's why it was said 
> that it would "last until the end of the Whorl".
> 
> They are not composite piles of rock pushed up by geological pressures. 
> They were blasted and carved into shape. Also, the gravitation pressure 
> near their peaks is considerably less. Probably they will come down 
> eventually, but it's only been 300 years.

Granted, but by writing about their peaks, you imply they at least 
grossly resemble earthly mountains in overall shape, and there's only so 
much that can geometrically happen with that class of shapes. And that's 
true regardless of how the mountainous pile of material came to be.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:38:57 +0000

>retinas with the Whorl equivalent of a GPS unit and make complicated hand 
>shadows based on where he's standing and the direction he's looking.

Jeff
>Why don't you use a compass and a rule to draw this situation, and upload a 
>scan of your drawing so we can literally see what you mean?

Mostly because I don't think it will matter. I've essentially re-stated 
(former engineer) Wolfe's answer to this question half-a-dozen ways and the 
only response I'm getting is that "it's impossible because 
spin-gravitational forces wouldn't allow it" or "mountain shapes wouldn't 
allow that" -- even though no one here knows what materials made the 
mountains or engineering principles were employed to carve/build them or 
what the shape was of the mountains and valley's in question. It's crazy. I 
got into this thread with the misguided assumption that I was dealing with 
people who were willing to be persuaded.

If you truly don't think its possible for a body to cast a shadow in a 
carved out hollow shape with a centrally located light source then you are 
not bothering to use your brain. It can. And, in The Book of the Long Sun, 
Silk saw it happen. Deal with it.

J

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:06:49 +0000

The text in question is:
"Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as bright
as Silk [...] had ever seen them[...].  Here were nameless mountains
filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows."

Here's how it would have to happen.  Imagine a big bowl.  Imagine a
long sun extending to the east and west above it.  To fill that bowl
with shadow, you've got to tilt the whole thing so that it faces north
or south.  (Everything spills out of your bowl, but never mind that.)
Tilt it to the east or west and there's still long sunlight shining
into it from the further eastern or western segment of the long sun.
So tilt it to the north or south and you can get shadow.  If the bowl
is located north of "up" from Silk's perspective, and the bowl is
tilted to face north, then Silk can see the shadow in the bowl.
Likewise if the bowl is located south of "up" and the bowl is tilted
to face south.

The trouble comes with imagining this bowl as a valley with vegetation
and habitats and people living in it.  Problems with gravity and lack
of sunlight would prevent this, which is why these would truly be
"inviolate" valleys.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:38 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why don't you use a compass and a rule to draw this situation, and upload
>> a scan of your drawing so we can literally see what you mean?
>

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:59:45 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
>> hand shadows based on where he's standing and the direction he's looking.
> 
> Jeff
> (former engineer) Wolfe's answer to this question half-a-dozen ways and 
> the only response I'm getting is that "it's impossible because 
> spin-gravitational forces wouldn't allow it" or "mountain shapes 
> wouldn't allow that" -- even though no one here knows what materials 
> made the mountains or engineering principles were employed to 
> carve/build them or what the shape was of the mountains and valley's in 
> question. It's crazy. I got into this thread with the misguided 
> assumption that I was dealing with people who were willing to be persuaded.

I'm willing to be persuaded, but not by repeated assertion. If you can 
imagine a scenario where a valley inside a spinning, hollow asteroid can 
have a line of sight to an observer elsewhere on the inner surface, but 
not to the central axis, you ought to be able to construct a diagram of 
it, like one would in high school physics or geometry.  It doesn't have 
to be fancy or artistic, just demonstrative. I am also willing to do 
one, if you like.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:16:34 +0000

> tilted to face north, then Silk can see the shadow in the bowl.

In this scenario, does "to the rim" mean the valleys are each filled to 
their respective rim, or does it refer to some larger container, like 
the Whorl itself perhaps?

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:41:22 +0000

No, each valley -- each bowl would be filled with shadow.  The
topography of the inner surface of the Whorl would have to be much
more eccentric than I had ever pictured it.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 5:16 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> their respective rim, or does it refer to some larger container, like the
> Whorl itself perhaps?

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:19:14 +0000

Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to have
to arrange for a duel?

Myself, I'd much rather see some drawings.

I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the
Whorl.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090127/d5511250/attachment.htm>

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:25:07 +0000

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.

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:04:52 +0000

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 <

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090127/c006bf2c/attachment.htm>

---

From: Stanisław Bocian <sbocian at poczta.fm>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:44:27 +0000

Hello!

On 27 stycznia 2009, Jordon Flato wrote:

Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to have to arrange for a duel?

I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the Whorl.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:

I am afraid you both start with a mistaken presupposition in regard to the Long Sun. Let's see some quotes from the books: 

"Exodus from the Long Sun"

"It's like the skylands," Horn ventured, "except we're a little closer and it's daytime." 
"A great deal closer, and the sun has already begun to narrow. We haven't much time left in which to look at this. A few hours at most." 

...
The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night. 
Horn gestured. "See, Cald? We don't have to sit on the edge, but we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It's kind of blue at first, then so bright you can't be sure." 
Nettle emerged from the hatch. "I still don't understand what Mainframe is, Cald?. Just all those things with the lights running over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can't rain? How would they get the rain to come down?" 
"This is Mainframe," Silk told her. "You are seeing it." 
....

Nettle said, "Cald?, you never did answer my question about the roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade's so close here, and we can't see the sun." 
"The Pylon makes it," Horn declared, "or anyhow it shoots it into the sky. Isn't that right, Cald? Then the sun burns it but instead of smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn't shoot out more, the shade would burn up and there'd be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe would fry, because it's so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon and goes all the way to the West Pole." 

"Nightside of the Long Sun"

It had been late already when they had left the city. Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as clear and as bright as Silk (who normally retired early and rose at shadeup) had ever seen them; he stared at them as he rode, his thoughts drowned in wonder. Here were nameless mountains filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows. Here were savannah and steppe, and a coastal plain ringing a lake that he judged must certainly be larger than Lake Limna all these doming the gloomy sky of night while they themselves were bathed in sunlight.

...

"I don't agree, though I won't argue with you now. What I wanted to say was that there is really nothing strange at all about what I'm doing, or about your helping me to do it. Does the sun ever go out, Auk? Does it ever wink out as you or I might snuff out a lamp?"

"I don't know, Patera. I never thought about it. Does it?"

Silk had not replied, continuing in silence down the muddy street, matching Auk stride for stride.

"I guess it don't. You couldn't see them skylands up there nightside, if it did."

...

The sky was empty or seemed so, the skylands invisible behind the endless, straight glare of the sun. Fliers, if there were any, were invisible too. Above the tops of the trees on the other side of the wall, distant fields curved upward, vanishing in a blue haze as they mounted the air. Lake Limna seemed a fragment of mirror set into the whorl, like a gaud into a cheap picture frame.

"Calde of the Long Sun"

Every god claimed that final line, even Tartaros, the god of night, and Scylla, the goddess of water. While he heaved the bull's head onto the altar and positioned it securely, he reflected that "by fire set us free" must once have belonged to Pas alone. Or perhaps to Kypris love was a fire, and Kypris had possessed Chenille, whose hair was dyed flaming red. What of the fires that dotted the skylands beneath the barren stone plain that was the belly of the Whorl? 

(the following happens during the night, but the skylands are shadowy)

There were fires, as she could see easily from the peak, one just a few streets away. Saddle Street or String Street, she decided, probably Saddle Street, because that was where the pawnbrokers were. More fires beyond it, right up to the market and on the other side, as was to be expected. Darkness except for a few lighted windows up on Palatine Hill.
Which meant, more surely than any rumor or announcement, that Maytera Mint had not won. Hadn't won yet. Because the Hill would burn, would be looted and burned as predictably as the sixth term in a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole. With the Civil Guard beaten, nothing?
Before she could complete the thought, she caught sight of it, way to the south. She had been looking west toward the market and north to the Palatine, but it was over the Orilla... No, leagues south of that, way over the lake. Hanging low in the southern sky and, yes, opposing the wind in some fashion, because the wind was in the north, was blowing cold out of the north where night was new, because the wind must have come up, now that she came to think of it, only a few minutes before while she had been in the palaestra cutting up the last of the meat and carrying it down to the root cellar. She had come upstairs again and found her hoarded wrapping papers blown all over the kitchen, and shut the window.
So this thing this huge thing, whatever it might be had been over the city or nearly over it when she had glimpsed it above the back wall of the ball court. And it wasn't being blown south any more, as a real cloud would be; if anything, it was creeping north toward the city again, was creeping ever so slowly down the sky.
She watched for a full three minutes to make sure.
Was creeping north like a beetle exploring a bowl, losing heart at times and retreating, then inching forward again. It had been here, had been over the city, before. Or almost over it, when the wind had risen had been taken unawares, as it seemed, and blown away over the lake; and now it had collected its strength to return, wind or no wind.
So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had squeezed an igniter. 

The sparkling path divided. He hesitated, then turned to his right. A few steps more, and there was no light save that from the skylands floating above the whorl. "His Cognizance would like this as much as we do, I believe, Oreb. I've been in his garden at the Palace, and this reminds me of it, though that's an open-air garden, and this can't be nearly as large." 

When he opened his eyes again, she was back with an old man whose name he had forgotten, the waiter who had offered him wine in the sellaria, the one who had told him of Remora, the footman who had opened the door, and others. They rolled him onto something and picked him up, so that he seemed to float somewhere below the level of their waists, looking up at the belly of the vast dark thing that had come between the bright skylands and the glass roof. His hand found hers. She smiled down at him and he smiled too, so that they journeyed together, as they had on the deadcoach in his dream, in the companionable silence of two who have overcome obstacles to be together, and have no need of noisy words, but rest each in the other. 

Grease the steps now, and scrub them, too; then it would be light out and time to hang the wash, the first thin thread of the long sun cutting the skylands in two. 

...

And now let's again see the interview:
http://www.ansible.co.uk/cc/cc77.html#wolfe

8. How is Silk able to see these valleys filled with shadows [in the skylands at night, at the opening of chapter 4, book 1] if the Whorl is a cylinder with the long sun running approximately down the centre?  -- This one throws me completely. Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. [DRL: I see a Wolfean trap here. The groundlings' references to the 'shade' of night strongly suggest a literal revolving shade around the sun. But there are later indications that night involves some sort of dark stuff sent in pulses along the axis to mask a certain length of the Long Sun.]

Now, look again at the 3rd quote, that about the shade being created by Pylon.

You all presuppose that the shade is a kind of stiff lampshade revolving around the Long Sun, so that if at midnight you were standing on the inner surface of the Whorl and looking lengthwise (east-west), towards the Mainframe (East Pole) or the West Pole, there would midnight at all points of that imaginary line. 

But that is not true. The shade is launched from the Pylon near Mainframe as a kind of spiral or helix, which is gradually burning down. It is not a stiff construct, and it does not cover the whole length of Long Sun in a straight line. So, if you look east towards Mainframe, there will be alternate zones of night and day before you. 

Now, if the Shadeup (morning) comes from the East, the light will fall parallel to the Long sun, but not from straight up, from the Zenith - since above you the Shade is still covering the long sun. In fact, even when the sun is wholly covered, there will be some diffused light from the east.

Similarly, at Shadelow (evening) the light will come from the West.

And so, since, as Wolfe said, not all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun, those which are not parallel will be filled with shadow at their shadeup and shadelow. 

-- 
Best regards,
Stanislaus B.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Promocja w Speak Up. Kwartal angielskiego za darmo. 
3 miesiace nauki gratis. Sprawdz teraz! >> http://link.interia.pl/f2019

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:20:34 +0000

I've heard that shade-as-pulse along the Sun theory before, but had written
it off, because I'd assumed it meant that an entire chunk of the Whorl (in
cross section) would be in darkness at the same time (i.e. an entire section
of the length of the Long Sun would be in darkness while farther west/east a
portion would be in sunlight), and the fact that the brightness of the
skylands overhead is mentioned repeatedly meant this could not be the case.
The area above viron is in bright sunlight (albiet very very far away) when
it's night for Viron.

However, the idea of the shade being a spiral sent along the length could
resolve that.  It would have to be a revolving spiral though, because of all
of the talk about the crack of sun left from the shade rising or setting
(occluding) the shade.  So, we could have a sort of spinning spiral of shad
constantly being sent down the pole of the sun, like a barbers pole?

Certainly though the shade is not sent out in discreet chunks which cover
the entirety of a section of the suns length at any time.  If that were the
case, you would see nothing above you at all but the lights from distant
cities, not rivers, valley's mountains and whatnot....
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090127/27899b18/attachment.htm>

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:30:40 +0000

I'm having trouble seeing how the excerpts quoted indicate that the
shade is a spiral, and trouble envisioning how a spiral shade would
ever provide night anywhere in the Whorl, since there would always be
sunlight coming from the east or west.

The last excerpt, for example ("...the first thin thread of the long
sun cutting the skylands in two") seems to me to indicate that the
shade moves from north to south over the width of the long sun, not
east to west along its length.  Same with "the sun has already begun
to narrow."  And when Silk is looking at the skylands and seeing
valleys, it's late at night, and they're "as clear and bright as
Silk...had ever seen them."  So it's full light, i.e. noon, in the
skylands.  The light is coming straight down on the skylands, not
obliquely from the east or west.  Yet Silk sees valleys filled with
shadow.

Can you point to anywhere in the text that refers to sunlight coming
from the east or west but not from overhead?

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:42:25 +0000

That is still pretty much how I see it too.  I could imagine the spiral if
it was a reaaaaaaaaly long spiral so that for any siginficant portion of the
Whirl, it seemed much like the lampshade paradigm that seems supported very
often by the text (these thin strips of sun appearing, etc.)

I don't think there can be any doubt, from the evidence, that the shade
rotates (or the Whorl rotates round it!!!) north south.  But if the
East/West spiral was long enough, you might get the lampshade effect but
still have some distant 'time zone' effect.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090127/49134816/attachment.htm>

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:34:30 +0000

> I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the 

Always the best time for a duel!

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:42:51 +0000

Matthew Groves wrote:
> computers.)

Anyone can snail mail a drawing to me at

Jeff Wilson
21 Big Oak Ln
Texarkana TX 75503

and I'll be happy to scan it, upload the image to my website, and post 
the URL here.

---

From: Stanisław Bocian <sbocian at poczta.fm>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:17:59 +0000

Hello!

> from the east or west but not from overhead?

Here is a quote from "Calde of the Long Sun"
"Thank you," Silk repeated. "Thank you very much indeed, Doctor." He grasped the operator's shoulder. "You said we were getting a vector. Exactly what does that mean?"
"It's a message you get if you float too fast, My Cald?, either north or south. You're supposed to slow down. The monitor's supposed to make you if you don't, but that doesn't work any more on this floater."
"I see." Silk nodded, encouragingly he hoped. "Why are you supposed to slow down?"
Oosik put in, "Going too fast north makes you feel as if someone were shoveling sand on you. It is not good for you, and makes everyone in the floater slow to react. Going south too fast makes you giddy. It feels like swimming." 

As can be easily seen, the Whorl rotates from south to north. If you stand at the Mainframe - the East Pole - and look West, the Whorl - and you- turn towards your right hand, that is north.

And now look again at those quotes from the Exodus:

...
"The big square things?"
"With what underlies its meadows and lawns; Mainframe is dispersed among them all. Imagine millions of millions of tiny circuits like those in a card billions of billions, actually. The warmth of each is less than the twinkle of a firefly; but there are so many that if they were packed together their own heat would destroy them. They would become a second sun. As things are it is always summer here, thanks to those circuits." 
....

And another quote from the "Nightside"

"So it is with the gods, Auk. They speak to us all the time, exactly as the sun shines all the time. When the dark cloud that we call the shade gets between us and the sun, we say it's night, or nightside, a term I never heard until I came to Sun Street."

Pylon is vertical, that is, it grows from the Mainframe towards the Long Sun. It produces the Shade so that it permanently shadows the Mainframe. Notice that Mainframe is flat, not concave, and it certainly doesn't go around the Long Sun - it is only on one side of it. If the shade was a fixed construction parallel to the Long Sun, it could not at the same time keep the mainframe in the permanent shade.

But it is not fixed - it is, in fact, a cloud.

The most easy way to keep the shade in place would be to have it not rotate. (If the shade rotated it would have to be fixed to the Sun or it would be driven into the inner surface of the Whorl by the centrifugal force). Since the Pylon, which produces it, rotates around the Long Sun, and the shade is created always above Mainframe, as the result you would get a coil moving along the Long Sun. 

Interestingly, the shade must be produced at uneven speed - shot out in pulses. Otherwise it would shade always the same places.

As regards the first quote from the Nightside,  you give only a part of it:

"It had been late already when they had left the city. Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as clear and as bright as Silk (who normally retired early and rose at shadeup) had ever seen them; he stared at them as he rode, his thoughts drowned in wonder. Here were nameless mountains filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows. Here were savannah and steppe, and a coastal plain ringing a lake that he judged must certainly be larger than Lake Limna all these doming the gloomy sky of night while they themselves were bathed in sunlight."

The skylands are rather far; my suggestion is that their different parts are in different time-zones, so those that are near shadeup (morning) or shadelow (evening) would have shadows. Note that in one quote from the "Calde of the Long Sun" there are mentioned shadowy skylands visible during night. There are fairly low south.

"So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had squeezed an igniter. "

> from the east or west but not from overhead?

Why, the names East and West themselves. Why does the Whorl have East and West poles - a bit unusual convention? Because the light starts in the East.

Also the names shadeup-morning and shadelow -evening. Shadeup means the shade rises up in the East showing the first thin line of the sun; shadelow means the shade cames down in the West obscuring the last light of the sun. But since the shade is a helix, not a round band moving along the sun, the long sun appears first as a thin line and then grows wider.

-- 
Best regards,
Stanislaus B.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Konkurs Walentynkowy! Wybierz nagrode i wygraj!
Sprawdz >>  http://link.interia.pl/f2039

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:32:21 +0000

I didin't receive anything posted on the list since noon until just now. I 
sent Jordan some pictures that are apparently in line with the Whorl as 
Matthew envisioned it. But now I see that (I think) he has at last conceded 
that shaded areas are possible in the Whorl and that they are widely 
viewable.

As for Stanislaw's description, I'm not sure I understand how Silk's 
conversation with Auk fits with it (as I understand it):
"Does the sun ever go out, Auk? Does it ever wink out as you or I might 
snuff out a lamp?"
<snip>
"I guess it don't. You couldn't see them skylands up there nightside, if it 
did."

This exchange seems to suggest that during Nightside, Auk sees darkness 
looking East and West, but only sees the skylands lit.

J

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:06:12 +0000

> that shaded areas are possible in the Whorl and that they are widely

Yes, under the circumstances I laid out.  The trouble is, a bowl isn't
really the same thing as a valley.  It's more like a crater.  Wolfe
says in the interview, "Where is the difficulty, unless all the
valleys run parallel to the Long Sun?"  He doesn't seem to be thinking
about bowls or craters, much less craters in a plane at an extravagant
angle to spin gravity.  In Wolfe's vision, it seems to be the case
that valleys running at an angle to the long sun can somehow, at least
sometimes, be filled with "vast black shadows" during the day.  That
is, if the long dimension of the valley, where the river would be,
runs north-south, then it can be dark in the valley.  I have to admit
I'm still having trouble seeing how that is possible.

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:53:15 +0000

> But now I see that (I think) he has at last
> conceded
> that shaded areas are possible in the Whorl

When has anyone not agreed that, given miracle shiprock capable of
assuming any shape without structural penalty, shaded areas would be
possible?

> and that they are widely

The quote says "[b]eyond the black streak of the shade," which is exactly
where such a shadow would be least visible. Nor would it "fill[ an]
inviolate valley[] to the rim," unless you call something
near-perpendicular to the ground a "valley."

But ultimately our difference is not geometrical. It is epistemic, and
possibly aesthetic. I find the handwaving (as I see it) required to save
the shadow quote less plausible in terms of author intention, and more of
an artistic failure, than making a mistake about shadows. You don't, which
is fine. But I wish you'd address, or at least acknowledge, my actual
argument instead of claiming that I'm not using my brain.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:55:51 +0000

Wolfe said:
"Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run
parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. "

>In Wolfe's vision, it seems to be the case

It never occurred to me to read this as a river valley, probably because it 
would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice would 
look like a valley from the other side of Whorl. I have always understood 
"run parallel" to mean "on a plane that is in congruence with the line Long 
Sun" such that it was perpendicular to the light coming from the Long 
Sun...which is the only way there could be shadows.

But there definitely *could* be shadows, and my experience with the 
imperfections human constructions in extreme topography tells me there would 
be: for the same reason that there are few straightaways in highways through 
mountains.

J

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:07:21 +0000

> be: for the same reason that there are few straightaways in highways

Maybe we do have a geometric disagreement after all, because this makes no
sense to me. As crooked as the valleys/highways may be, areas where the
sun is invisible when directly overhead are rare and small (barring
tunnels, of course).

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:36:10 +0000

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:55 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have always understood

I agree that this is the only way there could be shadows, but I think
it's pretty clear that when Wolfe talks about "valleys [that] run
parallel to the long sun," he's imagining a valley whose long
dimension aligns with the east-west axis of the whorl, implying that
he believes that a valley whose long dimension runs at an angle to the
east-west axis would somehow be in shadow.  I don't see how that's
possible without Stanis?aw somehow being right about light coming from
the east or west but not overhead, but I think that's contradicted by
the text at several points, though I admit I don't fully understand
Horn's and Silk's conversation about the Pylon and how it generates
the shade.

All of this is admittedly of very little importance, but there's snow
and bitter cold here in the Midwest, and nothing to do but sit inside
and think about the geometry of the Whorl.  What I wouldn't give for
even a long sun on a day like today!

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:24:37 +0000

> arrow indicating Silk's line of sight, you should find that he can see

I suppose that counts as "beyond the shade" in that the bowls are 
farther away than the shade is, though the direction is off about 30 
degrees.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:57:49 +0000

> obliquely from the east or west.  Yet Silk sees valleys filled with

It's possible that the Silk is opposite from the middle of a long day 
section, so it is high noon as well as in the middle of the day 
overhead, but that the valleys are in the dawn or dusk far to the east 
or west, suggesting that the Whorl is several "days" long.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:46:43 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> It never occurred to me to read this as a river valley, probably because 
> it would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice 
> would look like a valley from the other side of Whorl. I have always 
> understood "run parallel" to mean "on a plane that is in congruence with 
> the line Long Sun" such that it was perpendicular to the light coming 
> from the Long Sun...which is the only way there could be shadows.

Planes and lines can't be congruent, by the definition of congruence.

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:53:52 +0000

Here are James pictures, which give an idea of what he is getting at.

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9717/longsunix8.jpg

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7344/longsunpittedfb3.jpg

http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/5654/longsunzoombh4.jpg

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

>> it would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice would
> < http://www.io.com/~jwilson <http://www.io.com/%7Ejwilson> >
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090128/1570c36a/attachment.htm>

---

From: Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:04:39 +0000

They wouldn't open for me...anyone else have this problem or is it...shudder...me???

--- On Wed, 1/28/09, Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 9:53 AM

#yiv348268152 <!--
  
#yiv348268152 p.MsoNormal, #yiv348268152 li.MsoNormal, #yiv348268152 div.MsoNormal
	{margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}
#yiv348268152 a:link, #yiv348268152 span.MsoHyperlink
	{color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}
#yiv348268152 a:visited, #yiv348268152 span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
	{color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}
 _filtered #yiv348268152 {margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;}
#yiv348268152 div.Section1
	{}
#yiv348268152 

James Wynn wrote:

It never occurred to me to read this as a river valley, probably because it would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice would look like a valley from the other side of Whorl. I have always understood "run parallel" to mean "on a plane that is in congruence with the line Long Sun" such that it was perpendicular to the light coming from the Long Sun...which is the only way there could be shadows.

-- 

Urth Mailing List

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090128/c0ceeaf6/attachment-0001.htm>

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:20:55 +0000

They opened fine for me. Some of them took a little time.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:29:33 +0000

I guess that means it's just you Stuart.

My Anti-Hamm blocker appears to be functioning.

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> --- On *Wed, 1/28/09, Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090128/87b0b64c/attachment.htm>

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:14:09 +0000

>problem or is it...shudder...me???

Try using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. I don't know why but sometimes that makes a difference for graphics.

J
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090128/d975e622/attachment.htm>

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:17:45 +0000

>Planes and lines can't be congruent, by the definition of congruence.

Oh no! Pointy-headed pedantry! can't....stay..awaaaaake....<clunk>

---

From: Tim Walters <walters at doubtfulpalace.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:26:27 +0000

Firefox didn't work for me, but Safari did.

Your drawings exactly match my visualization of shadow-generating
topography, so we are not in disagreement about geometry.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:31:00 +0000

> Oh no! Pointy-headed pedantry! can't....stay..awaaaaake....<clunk>

Outsider forbid we use technically accurate geometric terms when 
discussing geometry.

Lest I seem too much of a grinch, I want to thank everyone who provided 
visual aids for their efforts. I sincerely respect your willingness to 
engage the issue in earnest, if not your conclusions.