Toot

Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-08 at 00:27

I was also reminded of this list in my head of places with a reversed compass rose, so that East is counterclockwise of North:

1. The Land of Oz, according to published maps (Wikipedia recounts an anecdote that L. Frank Baum copied a paper map from a projection slide he'd made for the lecture circuit, but accidentally started drawing off the wrong side of the slide, and just ran with it presumably because it's a weird fantasy land)

2. The Moon, at the time of the Apollo missions (because in those days they were still using a coordinate system derived from astronomical East and West, projected up from the Earth onto the sky... but this usage has reversed now)

3. A table of mah jong players (this once puzzled me but it makes sense--"east, south, west, north" is a conventional ordering of compass directions in Chinese, and counterclockwise play is the typical game convention there, so if you want both, East has to be to North's right--it hardly needs to correspond to real geography)

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