Important Flatland Research

I have long had a hard time picturing what day, night and the shape of the terminator would look like on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map. Well yesterday I wrote some code and now I know! It sort-of feels like two weird spirals turning in opposite directions. Video here.

Skip ahead about half way to see it with satellite imagery instead of flat coloring. That version is a little dark, so you'll want to full-screen it.

Anyway, Planet Flatland has a very strange sun, is what I'm saying.

This update will be in the next release of XScreenSaver but I figured I'd post the video now anyway, because it's neat.

Oh yeah, also,

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1970

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

6 Responses:

  1. I'm sure you've answered this before, but damned if I can find it, so: where is the sample of the olde-timey hard drive spinning up and seeking from?

  2. Lloyd says:

    The nightside is dark, isn't it? The terminator is basically saying "I'll be black."

  3. Andrew says:

    Ahem, my job is to inspect the machines that other people use to help yet other people show ads to people for things that they don't need (or possibly to sway elections). It's very important, thank you very much.

  • Previously