The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

António Pedro Marques · 02 Jul 2010, 18:47 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:47:46 +0100
Subject: (urth) The mystery of the image of	an astronaut
	cleaned	by	Rudesind
In-Reply-To: <4C2E1EE2.6000006 at io.com>
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Jeff Wilson wrote (02-07-2010 18:16):
> On 7/2/2010 12:00 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> David Stockhoff wrote (02-07-2010 17:24):
>>> Yeah, except it's not rising over anyone's shoulder.
>>
>> You draw a vertical line, it *is* over the shoulder. If you then picture
>> the planet rising in an arc, clockwise, it doesn't sound far off. But
>> here my understanding of english may be just deficient.
>
> The image of the earth begins about 820 pixel columns from the left
> border and extends to the 910th or so; the helmet begins about 740 and
> and extends to 1260. If the image is rotated to align local vertical
> with the y-axis, it's even closer to directly above his head.

But it's far above enough that I think it can be described as being rising 
over his shoulder 
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3012885/Var/AS17-134-20387HR-crop.png). The photo 
is taken sideways anyway. Why mention the shoulder rather than the head? I 
think saying it was rising over his head would be strange, as it would give 
no hint of directionality, either 3D or 2D wise. It doesn't say which 
shoulder, but that's a matter of leaving off irrelevant information 
(irrelevant for them, who were looking at the picture).

And what do you make of that 'again'? Will someone now suggest they were 
looking at a video (or an animated gif! or flash animation! or 
silverlight...) in which the earth rose and set in a loop? Or that they had 
been watching other pictures of the earth as seen from space? (Aha... we're 
on to something... that 'again' certainly is a clue that they had been 
discussing a whole lot of pictures prior to that one... and Severian doesn't 
mention it... I wonder why...)

Of course, if one allows for rotation, all bets are off. Or on.

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