Tuesday, 17 March 2009
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"East" & "West" Confusion
Did this ever make sense to you?
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Comments (33)
Not really. lol
We're just on the wrong side of the map. If we made it so america is all the way to the left it would be correct. I mean, think about it: Europe is west of Asia. lol Makes sense.
the world is round?
It's one of those three rights make a left things. In other words; the more east you keep going; you end up coming from the western side or something like that.
No.. this never bugged me because the east and west on the US part of the map is the east and west of north america, however in the world, we are west and asia is east.
I've never even thought about it.... but now I will...
thanks.
good old eurocentrism =) how about citing xkcd
even now, the Europeans think the world revolves around them.
xkcd ftw! =D
ahhhh, yes.The conundrum of hemispheres, time zones, and general geography bar bar bar. :Þ
I just consider us as part of the West. Basically, anything on our side of the Ural Mountains is in the West (up to the international date line), and anything on the other side is the East. At least, I think that's how they did it.
I suppose it makes sense that this is on mancouch.
tl;dr OUTDATED WORDS
I love the ambiguity of the east/west dichotomy nowadays. I read a book about Africa recently that lumped Japan in with 'the West,' but not Southeast Asia. (The author implicitly used development status as the criterion.)
If you use development or culture as a criterion (one would hardly refer to Australia as an 'Eastern' country [or in the even more archaic term, oriental as opposed to occidental], but it is of course southeast of China, or at least parts of it), then you get nonsense like Australia being part of the west while China, the Phillippines, etc are East. If you don't, then the associated cultural distinctions implied are nullified.
FAIL.
'Course, whenever I hear this I automatically assume the US is just lumped in with the West, so I never had a problem with it.
@vashts6583@xanga - nice use of the thorn in the smiley =)
That only bothered me when I was in second grade and younger.
It makes sense, but it`s amusing at the same time.
Maybe you should move to India.
It makes sense. (:
Ahhh Randall Munroe. I think he pretty much owns the internet now, but I remember when his comics used to be just crappy doodles on graph paper.
East and West are relative terms. A bit of a puzzle using this fact: you are traveling northwest, which direction does you antipode move?
Answer: Southwest. It will move in the opposite direction north/south because you are each moving towards different, but definable poles, but east and west are based on the relation from some arbitrary point (ex. your location, and the location of your antipode), not to another known point like each pole.
Eh get a map that isn't round and you'll probably get it.
of course it makes sense. There's these two "imaginary lines" that split up the world into eastern and western himspheres, the Prime Meridian and the International Date Line.
....we usually learn this stuff in like 1st grade....
I don't find this confusing or hard to understand.
My guess would have to be something having to do with the International Dateline.
stupid. and not citing your source? moronic.
Haha, a European map has Europe in the middle, which makes sense as then Asia doesn't have to be split in two. Anyway, the states genuinely is all to the west then. :D
hahaha
I never get confused cos I live in Italy but yeahhh... Move to Europe haha
The United States is part of the western world, therefore it's not really right putting it in the center.
Seriously? No one has answered this seriously yet? Well, this IS mancouch. [facepalm]
Someone mentioned eurocentrism, good job, you were almost there, you just didn't explain.
Back when the only civilized people that mattered lived in Europe, everything referring to Asia was considered the East, whereas everything considered Ancient Western Roman Empire and influenced by the culture of ancient Greece was the West. This line of thinking got its start from the split of the Roman Empire has been in place since the beginning of the exploratory period in the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras (and been compounded since; much to the dismay of many a historian... oi).
This is funny... but only cause I get it.
But anyone who doesn't get it needs a geography lesson + a politics lesson... maybe anthrolpology/sociology, too.