Please be strong and live every minute to the fullest.
But I do have one constructive comment perhaps someone can get to this author.
>The bottom line, now, I'm afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I'm expected to live for 'several months' and it’s extremely unlikely I'll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.
>As a result, I've withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry - but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we'll be married and on a short honeymoon.
As great as it will feel - I think this is a disgusting thing to do to a woman and this author should reconsider.
[EDIT: Let me rephrase this to: I think they both should reconsider. I think this is something that Adele will regret, regardless of whether she knows this now, for the reasons I cite below. I say this with some experience.]
What are the two possibilities? That this short marriage and honeymoon will be sad and awkard - or that it will be blissful and happy?
Both of those are terrible, horrible for her to live with for the rest of her life. [Edit: again, something she might not realize now.]
Giving someone a few months of happiness before widowing them is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Even the middle possibility (if the short marriage and honeymoon is neither blissful nor very sad and awkward, but just is) would then simply give someone Widow status.
I think this author should call this particular plan off.
There are a lot of great ways to enjoy life and do the most you can. Please make the best of them all.
I'm a woman. And I say, if Adele wants to end her time with Iain this way, let her. Wikipedia says they've been "together since 2006". In her position, I'd rather remember six years with a wild last year or so of doing all those crazy things that got put off than six years with a last year of just sitting there watching the man I love die.
Also it is quite possible that Adele would pretty much consider herself a widow for a good while whether or not she married Iain.
I mean, really. I don't think this is a thing being "done to her". I don't know anything about her, but if she's <em>anything</em> like the kinds of women Iain writes about, she's perfectly capable of making her own decisions, and is quite aware of what she's gotten herself into. And is, as you urge in your second sentence, trying to be strong and live life to the fullest.
One of Richard Feynman's books speaks to his wedding to Arline Greenbaum. They married partly because they thought she was dying much faster than she actually was. Pain isn't necessarily regret. I think you're wrong about this.
Protip: Don't tell adults what to do with their lives. Especially when it relates to love or death.
If you have some actual relevant experience that you would like someone to be aware of, go ahead and share it. Share your own thoughts and feelings about your personal experience as well.
And then STFU. Let them draw their own conclusions. People dying of cancer / watching their loved ones die of cancer really, really, really don't need your moralizing about their choices. They have a giant heap of shit to deal with, and they don't need you flinging a couple of turds on top.
You're talking about a first-person view, aren't you? But we don't start with that, we start with a third-person view of Earth and then "pan" across the sky...
So wouldn't panning across the sky from whatever vantage point actually produce that movement? Same as when you point a telescope and pan, the stars move against your view...?
You're right, we do start with a 3rd person view of Earth .. but I still interpreted the motion as translation rather than rotation.
By your interpretation, the camera lens is at a fixed point and then simply "swings" from pointing at Earth to point at Mars. But, from such a supposed point, both the Earth and Mars would be fixed points rather than objects with "multi-pixel" width.
So the fact that both the Earth & Mars are viewable as non-point objects implies translation rather than rotation... and so GP's gripe stands =)
1. Choose a position where the proportional sizes of the Earth, Moon and Mars are what they are on the page. This is likely far away above the ecliptic (the plane the planets are in).
2. Choose a telescope focal length to set the right scale for the planets. Ie magnification.
3. Pan and imagine there is an object in the ecliptic plane at the center of your field of view. Mention the calculated speed of the object.
If the camera lens is at a fixed point and then swings from pointing at Earth to pointing at Mars, and we imagine how fast something would have to travel leaving Earth to remain at the center of the camera sensor as it pans - isn't the obvious question "how far away are we??" So it doesn't really work.
It also doesn't work because at different camera locations the Earth and the Mars would have different relative sizes... I suppose we should state that this will be an equilateral triangle formed between the Earth, Mars, and the Camera, the "height" of the equilateral triangle is x, and that Earth will be so many pixels wide on that camera when zoomed 2000x (or whatever).
This interpretation might be specific enough and also match the experience.
Hmm, I see what you're saying, but that's not what the demo is trying to convey. At one point it says "You're now traveling at [1/5 the speed of light]" -- that would be nonsense if it was conceived as a panning motion.
e: Ah, but as someone else points out, the trip must actually exceed the speed of light, so the whole thing is nonsense. The author should recast things the way you describe them, and thus solve multiple problems at once.
Let's get to the bottom of this. It is a panning motion, this much is physically, visually true. Does it still make sense to talk about 'speed of motion'?
Now I'm confused. What happens when you pan from the moon to the sun (during a new moon, when they're ostensibly both visible)? If you do it quite quickly you are panning faster than the speed of light? (In the interpretatio: 'if a physical object remained at the center of your scope as you panned, and started at the moon, it would have to move faster than the speed of light, to follow your pan?)
So if you pan from one thing to another and they're 1 light-minute away and you take one minute to pan, does it make sense you are 'panning at the speed of light'? For something that leaves one object and goes toward another?
Any comparison to the speed of light immediately invokes other concepts that wouldn't apply to panning, so it's probably a bad idea.
There might be situations where it makes sense to map an angular speed to some sort of absolute speed, but it just doesn't work in this particular example.
The specific situation where it makes sense to map an angular speed to some sort of absolute speed is if you're told - or have some way of figuring out or knowing - the distance of the camera to the two objects (including if it is very highly zoomed, which it obviously is, from the perspective we are shown).
in this sense - if there is an intuitive sense of the distance of the camera and the high level of zoom - it makes sense to speak of an object leaving earth at the velocity that lets it stay in the center of the frame as we pan.
Please be strong and live every minute to the fullest.
But I do have one constructive comment perhaps someone can get to this author.
>The bottom line, now, I'm afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I'm expected to live for 'several months' and it’s extremely unlikely I'll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.
>As a result, I've withdrawn from all planned public engagements and I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry - but we find ghoulish humour helps). By the time this goes out we'll be married and on a short honeymoon.
As great as it will feel - I think this is a disgusting thing to do to a woman and this author should reconsider.
[EDIT: Let me rephrase this to: I think they both should reconsider. I think this is something that Adele will regret, regardless of whether she knows this now, for the reasons I cite below. I say this with some experience.]
What are the two possibilities? That this short marriage and honeymoon will be sad and awkard - or that it will be blissful and happy?
Both of those are terrible, horrible for her to live with for the rest of her life. [Edit: again, something she might not realize now.]
Giving someone a few months of happiness before widowing them is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Even the middle possibility (if the short marriage and honeymoon is neither blissful nor very sad and awkward, but just is) would then simply give someone Widow status.
I think this author should call this particular plan off.
There are a lot of great ways to enjoy life and do the most you can. Please make the best of them all.