Yeah, I don’t get that. How can you just feel that this way is north, that way is south, etc.? I need a sun in the sky or words on a sign, and somehow I managed to make it into my twenties before I figured out the sun thing. :smack:
People “not thinking in terms of maps” is what Hampshire wonders how his wife can get by without. Up being north isn’t arbitrary, either, at least in the northern hemisphere (where 99.9% of the people I’m giving/receiving directions to/from are in the northern hemisphere). Your other examples only work in localized situations, and the distances aren’t really long enough to justify up being north, as that’s for longer distances, usually between cities.
Count me as one of those who is a bit jaded by those who arbitrarily stick a thumb out to describe where something is relative to where we’re at. Hell, I’ve had discussions over a beer or two arguing the vector when we were pointing within 15 degrees of each other. Most of my buddies are engineers, but still, if you’re going to point, point to what you’re pointing at.
In a city, it’s pretty simple. A lot of towns have their streets running more or less north/south and east/west. So, if you’re in a house, the house is probably facing one of those directions. So no matter where you’re at in the house, you can use the front of the house as your bearing.
When you enter a town, you know what direction you’re coming from, so you know what side of town you’re entering on. You also know which way you’re going on what is presumably the main road, so you know the other roads are going, too. Then you can extrapolate. You don’t need to know that you’re going 97 degrees, east by south east, as long as you know you’re basically going east.
Why not?
Entering the phone # into the navigation system brings up turn by turn directions to your destination. It’s a pleasant ladies voice as well. O, the joys of modern technology.
Sorry! No offense intended. It came with the car. It’s only a Dodge Durango, It’s not a Maybach or anything.
Now I feel like an ass. :smack:
The only way you’ll find my home with technology is if I give you the exact GPS coordinates.
Mapquest has me living somewhere in town, I’ve never actually driven by to see my house but it says it’s there.
Put my address into Google Earth and it will show you a nice stand of trees. Yes, they do have current maps of my area. When I manually navigate to my house I can see my trampoline in the yard.
Garmin will actually eventually get you onto the correct road, but will insist that I live in the middle of a creek about three miles from the home. Eventually get you onto the correct road. After it has you drive through the middle of the rather large post office and IRS building.
Haven’t tried Tom-Tom or any of the others, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
My addendum to the OP would be a hearty piss-off to people that give directions relative to buildings and landmarks that were destroyed years ago.
Here’s what I can’t stand – I have a map of the area, but I don’t know where they are. I know the name of the masin street they live on, which is long, but bnot where on that street they live. So i ask "What;'s the name of the closest streeet crossing yours?
They NEVER KNOW IT!
They always insist on giving unclear directions, but they never know the names of streets in their immediate vicinity. So i end up having to slow down constantly to check nearly-invisible house numbers.
No matter where a person is in the northern hemisphere (NH), if they all pointed north, they’d be pointing to the same spot. That’s why it gets the huge arrow on the compass of old maps, and is often times the only direction labeled on modern maps.
If we take a step back and look at the earth in the solar system, we model a system of the solar system on a horizontal plane, because it’s easier to visualize if we pretend it’s on a table. The Earth rotates (mostly) perpendicular to that. Since we’re a pretty egocentric people, it makes more sense to have us orientate the entire solar system so that we’re on top of the Earth (in the NH, of course), so we don’t “fall off”.
Now, since north is not only an important direction, but also the top of the Earth when viewed by an outside observer, it’s only logical, and therefore not arbitrary, that it be given the honor of the top of the map.
Granted, there are plenty of maps that don’t have north at the top, however, these are mostly specialty maps, or those published before Galileo’s findings were shown factual. Here’s an example of some:
Unless it’s an argument of semantics, where one could argue that the Celsius scale was arbitrary, even though 0 and 100 represent the freezing and boiling of water, respectively. The Fahrenheit scale, on the other hand, would be considered arbitrary, as 0 and 100 originally represented a really cold day in Poland (Germany?) and the temperature of the human body. Or at least, that’s one theory… Fahrenheit - Wikipedia
You want to rethink what you just said.
-FrL-
I’ve found that figuring out basic directions (north, south, east, west) is much easier when I am at college, because the Lake Michigan shore is about half an hour away, and for some reason I always know where the lake is. This gets more difficult the further I am from the lake. On the other hand, it makes giving directions to people heading west much easier. “Now, if you end up at the lake, you’ve gone too far. Turn around.”
You may want to reread my post. Specifically the entire paragraph above the part you snipped out. Both previous paragraphs to that line were justification for being able to make the statement I made, which would have been ignorant had I not conveniently supplied the context for you. Which you ignored.
That’s one thing I forgot to add in my post last night about having a feel for the cardinal directions. Large natural landmarks can be very helpful. In every town I’ve lived in, there’s been a large mountain or mountain chain just outside of town. Towards the mountain, or towards the lake, IMHO, give a pretty strong ambiance, if you will, of being in their general direction, even if I can’t see them.
No, I understood all of that just fine. But you kept using words like “it’s logical” and “it makes sense to” and so on. You seemed to me to be justifying a view that the north really is the top of the Earth.
I cut out the single snippet to quote because I was using it as a sort of “reductio”–my implication was that if you’re argument leads you to that conclusion, there’s something wrong with your argument.
-FrL-
Where I live, the streets and avenues are numbered on a grid. The US border is Zero Avenue and every mile North adds 8. Going from West to East, likewise, going from, for example, 100th Street to 108th Street. So if you know the house number, as in 10880 - 8th Avenue, you know the house you’re looking for is just East of 108th Street and, since even numbers are on the South side of the avenue, the house is on the South side.
Yet people who have lived here all their lives stare at me dumbfounded when I tell them this. I don’t get it, myself. It’s so simple.
Mind you, you do have to know where North, South, East and West are. Which is even simpler, as the ocean is to the West, the US to the South, Mt. Baker is to the East, and the other mountains are North.