Canadian denial

Copied from comp.risks, the first time it has ever made me snort coffee. I've put the bit that amused me in italics

( Planes, Trains, wait, did that sign say what I think it just said? )

Awesome...

Flatland waves

Just so you know I haven't stopped working on it, here's one of the illustrations I'm using for the "how light waves work in Flatland" thing. This is going to be one column wide on a two-column page.




Any better suggestions for his dialogue? Think I might change it to "Dashed", more of a Victorian feel. And I think the perspective on the waves and the septagon needs more work.

Optimism? Stupidity? Script writers?

Okay, the episode's only just started... and this isn't really a spoiler per se... but the opening reminded me of one of the perpetual Who-verse questions.

Given that the TARDIS usually ends up in the wrong time and/or place, why in the name of Elvis do the Doctor and Rose repeatedly assume that they are in the right time and/or place, and act on that assumption, without checking?

Eyes yet again

I've been reading through Flatland again to make sure I'm getting things right, and finally found the bit I thought I remembered. Annoyingly it's only in chapter 4:

when the end containing her eye or mouth--for with us these two organs are identical--is the part that meets our eye, then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point

So in other words I was right to say that Flatlanders have a single mouth / eye organ; there really are all sorts of evolutionary snags, but if Abbott actually says it I suppose I have to go with it. I should have checked it the first time it came up.

Fortunately I haven't said much about this yet, so it won't be too hard to change things. There can still be specialised parts of the mouth for different purposes - transparent jaws, optical sensors around the perimeter, and some sort of vacuole system to get the food out of the way. I know it sounds a bit icky, and I'll try not to get too gross, but it looks like I'm stuck with it.