Stuff you just don't get.

[jokergirl]

I'm perfectly fine with pointing out north if I can see the stars (or the sun, with some sense of time) but it doesn't help me in the least while actually navigating. I navigate by sight. The SO, on the other hand, has absolute direction, unless he's underground.

[Jeff Root]

I was just thinking about my sense of direction-- which seems
to be quite good-- two days ago. What I was thinking was that
it is good when I'm paying attention to my surroundings. If I'm
on a road trip and not watching what the road does, I get as
mixed up as anyone. But if I'm paying attention, I apparently
keep track of directions unconsciously.

On the other hand, I always tended to interpret my grandparents'
house as facing south instead of east, and the angle of my
parent's apartment is confusing enough that I finally painted a
compass rose on their balcony.

http://www.freemars.org/jeff2/rose.jpg

The air was getting cold as I painted it (in October 2010) so I
rushed and didn't do as good a job as I might have. At the least,
it should have a third, central circle. And I was too cheap to buy
more than two cans of paint, resulting in the muddy color I mixed
for the darker circle. I never painted on concrete before, and it
has held up, so I'm not entirely unhappy with it. But somehow
I put it about six inches to one side of the balcony's center.
I don't understand how that happened.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

.

[Trebuchet]

My dad grew up in rural Kansas, where all the roads are on section lines and run due North, South, East, and West. Throughout his life, those remained the directions he used -- never any intermediates. His sense of direction was generally pretty good but he could be thrown off by any turn that wasn't 90 degrees. When we moved to Tacoma, Wa, he got it in his head that Pacific Avenue, the main drag downtown, ran E-W. It's N-S. It took us a while to convince him otherwise and if he didn't stop and think about it, he continued to get it wrong for forty years.

[Buttercup]

My dad grew up in rural Kansas, where all the roads are on section lines and run due North, South, East, and West. Throughout his life, those remained the directions he used -- never any intermediates. His sense of direction was generally pretty good but he could be thrown off by any turn that wasn't 90 degrees. When we moved to Tacoma, Wa, he got it in his head that Pacific Avenue, the main drag downtown, ran E-W. It's N-S. It took us a while to convince him otherwise and if he didn't stop and think about it, he continued to get it wrong for forty years.

Same here - originally from Iowa. I automatically WANT to think along strict directional lines, but have managed to adapt (mostly). My sister-in-law's house in El Paso still "throws" me, though; I keep thinking her house faces a particular direction...it doesn't. So it's "strange" seeing the sun setting "towards the east."

[KaiYeves]

I don't get why The Smithsonian Book of Air & Space Trivia has the syntactically ambiguous sentence “[The Messerschmitt Me262] flew 193 km (120 mi) per hour faster than a Mustang P-51…” (It flew 193 km, which WAS faster than the P-51, or, whatever the P-51's top speed was, the Me262 was 193 km faster?) rather than just giving the actual top speed of the Me262. (It's the later, at least according to Google. But giving the top speed would have cleared that up.)

[Trebuchet]

Or "120 km/hr faster than a P-51" would have done it simpler.

[SeanF]

I don't get why The Smithsonian Book of Air & Space Trivia has the syntactically ambiguous sentence “[The Messerschmitt Me262] flew 193 km (120 mi) per hour faster than a Mustang P-51…” (It flew 193 km, which WAS faster than the P-51, or, whatever the P-51's top speed was, the Me262 was 193 km faster?) rather than just giving the actual top speed of the Me262. (It's the later, at least according to Google. But giving the top speed would have cleared that up.)

That's not ambiguous, it clearly says the Me262 was 193kph faster.

If they meant the 193kph was the speed of the Me262, there would/should be a comma after "per hour."

[Hornblower]

My dad grew up in rural Kansas, where all the roads are on section lines and run due North, South, East, and West. Throughout his life, those remained the directions he used -- never any intermediates. His sense of direction was generally pretty good but he could be thrown off by any turn that wasn't 90 degrees. When we moved to Tacoma, Wa, he got it in his head that Pacific Avenue, the main drag downtown, ran E-W. It's N-S. It took us a while to convince him otherwise and if he didn't stop and think about it, he continued to get it wrong for forty years.

U.S. Highway 29 here in Virginia would have him scratching his head. Though nominally southbound toward Florida, it is running almost due west where it crosses my street here in Falls Church. That's not all. A few miles beyond Culpeper it briefly runs west-northwest, and then around the south side of Lynchburg it curves sharply to the northwest before resuming its generally south bearing. Railroads are even more meandering in hilly terrain, taking roundabout paths to avoid prohibitively steep grades.

[Tog]

The city of Bountiful, Utah has a road called Orchard Drive that runs on an angle and crosses both east-west and north-south streets. Some of these are only a few yards long and branch into true cardinal directions. It also straddles city boundaries.
When traveling roughly north, the cross streets are:
100 North
150 North OR 4100 South, depending on whether you turn east or west.
775 West
725 West
225 North

[Tog]

That first angled section of road I mentioned above has a special feature. It needs a car infront of you on the same stretch of road, and it needs to be at night for it to work.

The bulding has large, tinted glass windows and sits on a cross street. As the car in front of you nears the building, those windows reflect the head and tail lights of that car. This reflection looks exactly like a car is speeding down the side street and lined up to hit your car when it blows through the stop-sign. one second before impact, it vanishes.

Good times.

[jokergirl]

On the other hand, I always tended to interpret my grandparents'
house as facing south instead of east, and the angle of my
parent's apartment is confusing enough that I finally painted a
compass rose on their balcony.

http://www.freemars.org/jeff2/rose.jpg

Nice! I love how it turned out. Want to come and paint things on our walls?

[Jim]

Houston has two highways that encircle it called the Loop and the Beltway. Since they are circles, sections are distinguished by the side of town they're on. So the East Loop is along the east side of town. To further distinguish, these are divided into sections, so you have the East Loop North as the northern section along the east side. Which gives us traffic reports like, "There is a stall on the southbound East Loop North."

Lake Jackson, about 30 miles south of Houston, started as a planned community. The streets were named in a pattern:
All "drives" run completely through town. (Oak Drive, Oyster Creek Drive)
All "ways" run into the downtown district. (Downtown has the intersection of This Way and That Way.)
All "places" are within the downtown district. (It also has North Parking Place and South Parking Place.)
All other streets are named for trees (E-W) or flowering plants (N-S). (I lived on Huisache - flowering tree, N-S - and later Live Oak - tree, E-W.)

[Tog]

Salt Lake took the complete opposite path fort names. Everything is a number unless the road is a major one. Main Street is 0 on the east west axis and South Temple is zero on the north south one. This gives addresses like 1532 West 1700 South. Because that's a mouthful at times, we say 1700 as "Seventeenth". People traveling from out of town hate this because they can't wrap their heads around the idea that 1700 South is just as much of a name as Elm Street.

That's the other thing. No one here considers the "west" in 700 West 5300 South to be part of the 5300 South name. This really confuses a lot of early GPS navigation systems, because we're not that picky about which goes first. 2100 south 619 East is the same address as 619 East 2100 South. Tom-Tom disagrees.

Where it really takes it's toll is the morning traffic reports. "Northbound fifteen is seeing delays from 53rd to 33rd. The 21st South offramp on 215 is stopped due to an accident at 22nd west. Officials are reporting a burst water main on Redwood Road (go ahead, try it out loud) that has both lanes stopped two lights either side of 48th South. They recommend you stick to Bangerter or State Street for at least the next hour."

What I like about is is that it's a grid. if I'm on 53rd and 7th west and I need to go to 39th and 13th East, I go north 14 blocks and east 20. Since there are 6 blocks to a mile, that's a total of 5.67 miles.

Ogden, on the other hand names the north-south streets after Presidents and not in any particular order. Washington is a major street. So is Harrison. Lincoln is a goat path. Finding 27th and Van Buren makes Phone navigation a virtual necessity.

Fictional detective Nero Wolfe started his career in a Brownstone at 327 West 35th Street in New York. As the series went on, the house migrated west. The problem is, 327 West 35th Street is between 8th Ave and 9th Ave. This is why tourists have to ask for directions.

[cjackson]

Laid.

[Extravoice]

Laid.

Um....congratulations?

[Noclevername]

Um....congratulations?

[Trebuchet]

Salt Lake took the complete opposite path fort names. Everything is a number unless the road is a major one. Main Street is 0 on the east west axis and South Temple is zero on the north south one. This gives addresses like 1532 West 1700 South. Because that's a mouthful at times, we say 1700 as "Seventeenth". People traveling from out of town hate this because they can't wrap their heads around the idea that 1700 South is just as much of a name as Elm Street.

Then there are the the ones that run past Temple Square. They are called North Temple, South Temple, East Temple, and West Temple. So you get stuff like "West North Temple" and "North West Temple". It makes a certain amount of sense but sounds really weird.

[Tog]

Actually, "East Temple" is Main Street and it stopped being a street and started being a park about 10 years ago. But just for that one block.

Other than that, yes. It's possible to be directed to go North on West Temple to 50 South West Temple. Which makes East feel very isolated.

It's also hard to get across that I understand that you need to go to to 54th south and 1800 west, and that this street I'm pointing at is only 5300 south, but it drifts. By the time you get there it will be 54th.

[Trebuchet]

Wow! No wonder I always got lost there when on genealogy trips.

[DonM435]

Atlanta avoids this by naming all the streets "Peachtree."

[Gillianren]

Olympia's streets are listed by quadrant; I live on Evergreen Park Drive Southwest. Which is distinct from Evergreen Parkway Northwest, about fifteen minutes away. (That's a trick; all of Olympia is about fifteen minutes away from anywhere else in Olympia.) In order to get from Southwest to Northwest, you cross Division Street.

[Buttercup]

Aaron Hernandez.

Apparently he still doesn't "get" what he lost out on. A big tattoo on his neck, about being a lifer in prison?? Beyond dumb.

[demeter]

(That's a trick; all of Olympia is about fifteen minutes away from anywhere else in Olympia.)

I guess the taxis don't need metres then.

[pzkpfw]

I guess the taxis don't need metres then.

Well, it is in the U.S.

[Jeff Root]

That was the one real advantage in having different spellings:
Distinguishing measuring devices from units of measure.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Delvo]

I don't get why the so much of the text in these forum pages (fortunately not the contents of people's posts) sometimes is white, especially given that the equivalent text on other forum pages at this same site is black.

...and when I get a bunch of white text on a page, reloading the page turns it black!

[Extravoice]

I'm reading an article about "The New Science of Marijuana" in National Geographic when I come across a photo of a woman at a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary inspecting her products. The varieties of marijuana include "Kamakazi", "Poison," and "Ebola."

I can't imagine that such names help foster a sense that the medical marijuana industry is legitimate.

[Gillianren]

A couple of my friends use medical marijuana, and at least one of them finds the whole thing pretty frustrating. She even looks for the products that don't have recreational effects, but even though she's in a state that legalized it a while back, there's still a risk of losing/not being able to get a job over the issue. And, yes, part of the issue from what I can tell is that the medical people are overshadowed by the recreational people--and the recreational people have been doing most of the breeding, I suspect.

[ToSeek]

My dad grew up in rural Kansas, where all the roads are on section lines and run due North, South, East, and West. Throughout his life, those remained the directions he used -- never any intermediates. His sense of direction was generally pretty good but he could be thrown off by any turn that wasn't 90 degrees. When we moved to Tacoma, Wa, he got it in his head that Pacific Avenue, the main drag downtown, ran E-W. It's N-S. It took us a while to convince him otherwise and if he didn't stop and think about it, he continued to get it wrong for forty years.

A friend of mine says she has zero sense of direction because she's lived almost all of her life in Denver, where the only thing you need to know is that Rocky Mountains = west.

[Jim]

... the medical people are overshadowed by the recreational people--and the recreational people have been doing most of the breeding, I suspect.

This raises so many questions.