V2nd - chapter 11 - more examples - Step function vs snake

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut  wrote:
> MK wrote:
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinusoidal_projection
> 'There is no distortion on the equator"........"
>

wait, would you be willing to elaborate?  I'd do it myself if I knew
what you were driving at here.

My mental display of step function versus sinusoidal didn't feature
anything about the equator.

what I pictured was:

step function - straight lines (the simplest step function, sez
w'pedia, is x = k, k being a constant) - discontinuities - no curves,
no calculus
-- this maps to the inanimate, perhaps?

sinusoidal curve - tempting to get into sinus and adenoidal
considerations, but I'll reserve that for a sillier mood -
"sine curve" is continuous and differentiable, regular and repeating,
and you can see change coming...
it's snake-shaped (hence suggesting the animate)(also the Biblical serpent)
also (as mentioned in Fausto's quote) like a series of hills and
valleys, rolling country, and dotted with freakshows

-- applying the sine curve to a landscape is a purely local function, though.
If you are going to run around the entire equator with it, what does
that do to the metaphor? And how is it least distorted there?  This is
a Riemannian consideration, nicht wahr?

 And is there a cognate amongst the settings a step function might
appear in - a place where its movement is least distorted?  Hey, maybe
that x = k is the mack daddy of step functions?  (or not...)



>
> okay, I'll follow-up on myself, plist narcissism at work, with this, perhaps
> controversial, remark:
>
> North, cold, fun emotions frozen, etc. = bad shit in P's fictional world.....
> South, warm, easier (even lazier due to heat), fun...
>
> So, P "favors" a world [history] with less "Weberian protestant ethics" needed
> to work hard
> to grow food, to make clothes, to build heavier houses, to develop logging
> industries for all
> those buildings, etc.......
>
> His vision favors an edenic history in countries around the equator, so to
> speak.
>

if you let x = k along a line of latitude, you think you're making a
straight line but you're really making a circle...

here's the thing, now in Sudwest, there's the strand where the wind
blows and the wolf howls and nothing grows.  and then there's
white-man's-hope or whatever that city is called which the railroad
line extends towards and the Foppls and Bondels of the world march
along it in exultation at the cruelty of it all...

driven by the kindless greed of the faraway bankers and their factotem
poles the generals and kaiser rolls to inflict this horror at their
thoughtless behest, to recapitulate the vision of the dance of death

so, is the south completely beneficent?

also, in the frozen north the Vormance Expedition actually has a
fairly decent time, visiting the archives of sapient ice

(reminding me of the online anecdote somewhere about where the
redoubtable Mr Pynchon is described as having spent an entire cocktail
party watching raptly the ice in his drink?)

...and it is only the monstrous greed of Vibe and his prior marching
orders, the pretense that for some odd reason all of them believe -
that it's his expedition and he can tell them what to do -  that
induces them to load up their doom and ship it to the city...

so, hmm, for me it isn't north south, it's robber baron vampire
enslavers, versus normal lovable people...