Well if we're all just sharing our favorite world map projections:
This map is not upside down
91–100 of 540 posts
Re: This map is not upside down
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading the "Divine Comedy" led me to a realization (or at least a shower thought) the other day: It makes perfect sense for someone living in the northern hemisphere to think of "north" as "up." Why? Because when you look up, you see the stars, all rotating around a fixed point at the very top of the heavens. (In our current epoch, this fixed point is close to the star Polaris.) If you journey on foot in the directi…
I doubt that is a thought on anyone's mind... I find people orient themselves by the direction their house / street faces, to a lesser extent the position of the sun, and north at the top is a completely arbitrary thing imposed on us. As evidence, see GPS navigation, which shows "forward" at the top.
Agree. It's also often that Upwards has a literal meaning, where the Upper place is literally geographically higher than the Lower place. Think of Lower Saxony, which is in the northern part of Germany, for example.
Re: This map is not upside down
#93There's a Map Men video on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70
Re: This map is not upside down
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Writing top to bottom, and even left to right has/had advantages for mostly right-handed writers to avoid moving your hand over and smudging previously written text.
How would top-to-bottom benefit right-handed writers any more than left-handed ones?
Top to bottom advantages everyone. Left to right advantages the right-handed. Right handed being the majority, top to bottom and left to right wins in almost every writing system.
Re: This map is not upside down
#95North is not up. That would make left west.
When standing in front of a building, with map in hand, and asking people to go start going to the street in the south, then left, I mean left, which is east.
In school, everyone learns that north is not up, and south is not down. Only us dumb grown-ups use that. ALL. THE. TIME. ALL. OF. THEM.
Re: This map is not upside down
#96Well if we're all just sharing our favorite world map projections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map
Butterfly for me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterman_butterfly_projection
Re: This map is not upside down
#97> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This, of course, is the point of the article. It was so predictable that it made me wonder: who is telling me that top is good and lower is bad? The articles themselves.
Heaven and hell, not hell and heaven. The stock market goes up as spirits rise.
Re: This map is not upside down
#9890% of the world's population and 68% of the land mass being in the northen hemisphere is probably a good enough reason to put north up top on a map.
…why? Why is it better for it to be in the upper half of the map than the lower half?
Re: This map is not upside down
#99The moralizing that always accompanies (not) upside down maps is so tedious. It's a genuinely interesting example of how something can look so wrong and yet not be wrong at all. To try to extend that "wrong" feeling to some kind of moral failure on the viewers part is just silly. You (or society) are not a bad or prejudiced person for thinking this way, it's just that nearly all maps produced have chosen a different…
For clarity, you cannot call north up:
North is not up. That would make left west. When standing in front of a building, with map in hand, and asking people to go start going to the street in the south, then left, I mean left in direction of travel, which is east.
Not left in direction of map conventions, which for people who cannot read a compass is probably west.
Re: This map is not upside down
#100Putting the north at the top was an artifact of the need to select a standard orientation when the printing press enabled mass production of maps. It was going to be north or south, thanks to the widespread existence of the magnetic compass at the time, and the printing press was invented by people in the north.
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