Ansible Interview

Tim Walters · 28 Jan 2009, 02:53 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: walters at doubtfulpalace.com (Tim Walters)
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:53:15 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Ansible Interview
In-Reply-To: <8B2EC916FB8F42869E239BA9CB43FFE5@GATEWAY>
References: <60016944C0A74B77B9BDFC5E98C39B25@GATEWAY><497CFDE6.2090104 at doubtfulpalace.com><D9DA56007C5846C9A0A33DA17DB4B3B0@GATEWAY><39ed084f0901252206n4b735e9ax284ba02febad5be2 at mail.gmail.com><497D9B92.5010708 at io.com><39ed084f0901260741k52c49b8csc93ef26cfed2dce9 at mail.gmail.com><273409710901270919g5b0e3156rb0990890a5723af7 at mail.gmail.com>
	<173801176.20090127204427 at poczta.fm>
	<8B2EC916FB8F42869E239BA9CB43FFE5@GATEWAY>
Message-ID: <61694.198.1233111195.squirrel at o2.hostbaby.com>

> 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
> viewable.

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.

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

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