East of the South Pole



If you stand at the South Pole and walk in any direction, you'd be walking north, wouldn't you? So how do people in Antarctica read a map or give directions? Minnesotastan looked it up, and the answer is: they throw out the directions from the globe and make up a system. The continent is labeled with "East Antarctica" and "West Antarctica" in this map, but of course you must go south to get to either. There are actually two conventions for mapping the continent, as you'll read in this post at TYWKIWDBI. Link

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When I was younger I thought it would be cool if you could stand on either the north or south axis of the earth and spin around and around. Then I realized it would take 24 hours for one turn. Bubble burst.
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@Cluck - I know what you're saying. Like me, you probably read it as "you must go south to get to either (from the South Pole.)"

I think what the writer meant, however, was "you must go south to get to either (from the other one.)"
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If we really wanted to improve the mapping systems, we should throw away 2d maps in favor of globe based maps, leaving the 'cardinal directions' as the relative statements they are. We would still have to content with having static points of reference from which to derive coordinates, but it would make 2d projections a lot more accurate. All this being via a computer, of course.
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