Friday, February the 11th, 2005
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So who are they, these people who live on the tetrahedron-earth millions of years hence? (See below, 8th February). I asked Glyn Webster to tell me. He says:
“You don't need me to tell you what sort of people will live on the tetrahedron! First, M C Escher himself made a woodcut of the tetrahedral world of the future, Tetrahedral Planetoid, 1954. According to the Chrysler Museum of Art, ”in this print Escher imagined a small planet in the shape of a tetrahedron, or pyramid. Two of the four surfaces are visible and show houses, gardens, trees, roads, and even people.“ Escher etched in immense detail, so if you were to get close enough to Tetrahedral Planetoid with a magnifying glass you should be able to see just the sort of people who will live on the tetrahedron. There's not enough detail in this reproduction for me to see the people too closely, but it is safe to assume they are able to survive their straitened circumstances by virtue of their very strong Bomba.
“Next, from Carlos A Furuti's excellent Cartographical Map Projections pages I read that the tetrahedral world of the future will be a very relaxed world for cartographers: ”Most cartographic problems would disappear if the Earth were a polyhedron“, says Furuti, and Tetrahedral ”globes“ are very easy to manufacture. Furuti provides simple paper models that can be printed and given to tots to cut out and fold up on rainy days.”
So now we know. Nothing there about rocket booster backpacks, though, which I had hoped would have appeared by about 1999. I'm still waiting.