It's quite true that one could place the prime meridian anywhere: but once it's placed, Eastern and Western hemispheres are defined against it.

Oh, Slate...

*facepalm*

I don't even care if it's dire; I'm going to see it anyway, because of Samuel West. Considering the crap-fests friends have sat through on account of Jeremy Renner, I think I'm justified.

The "limited release" part is annoying me, though. I can't get Google to tell me today whether Boston is part of that. (I'm not counting on the Hartford area.) Much as I want to sit and enjoy a couple of hours of fangirling, traveling to New York for it seems a little excessive.

If you're planning to navigate, or use Zone Time, the border between east and west runs through Greenwich, England on one side, and 180° on the other (which more-or-less coincides with the International Date Line).

Yes, the location was arbitrary, but once chosen it's also defined.

And, for that matter, the U.S. Department of Stage, whose Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs does not appear to deal with western Europe.

Even the OED admits that the definition based on the Prime Meridian is not the only common usage (or at least that's how I would interpret "specifically" in the definition); they define it as "the half of the earth, divided longitudinally, which contains the Americas; spec. the half of the earth that is west of the prime meridian."

It seems that the self-centred ignorance extends beyond geography and into history and politics as well. Not really a surprise, I suppose.

Fucking East-West, how do they work?

No wonder an Irishman tried to shoot the Queen's son when he visited Sydney in 1868. It's enough to make Fenians of us all.

HM the Queen is English and monarch of England. So, like the use of Western Hemisphere - sure, maybe, but sloppy.

As a matter of preference I'd use "reigning" rather than "sitting" because, again, the slight chance of misunderstanding.

Emma in Sydney @17

To be fair, since 1931, or maybe 1942, or possibly 1986 they've been your monarchs, as you claim.

She is, yes, but calling her that is about as useful and accurate as calling Obama the President of Wisconsin or Hollande President of Provence. Given the number of people who think England is synonymous with the United Kingdom, and that Scotland, for instance, is a town in England ...

Take me somewheres west o' Greenwich, where the best is like the worst,
Where they scorns all the Beatitudes, an' a fool can raise a thirst.

The whole of South America is east of the line of 90 degrees west, though North America is well to the west of South America. It's hard to tell from a quick glance at a bad map on a small screen, which is all I have just now, but you could run an argument that the western hemisphere comes out in pretty much the same place on both definitions.

To get a western hemisphere which cleared the coast of Africa, you have to start a little over 17W (or 25 if you want to lose Cape Verde too). But that means round the other side you get New Zealand, New Caledonia and a chunk of Siberia - none of which are particularly American. The only way of defining a western hemisphere consisting only of the Americas is for it to be not a hemisphere.

So we can add basic geometry to the list of failed subjects.

England is very proud of having the Greenwich or Prime meridian, so you'd think they'd know what was east or west of it.

"What amounteth al this wit?
What shul we speke alday of hooly writ?
The devel made a reve for to preche,
And of a soutere a shipman, or a leche.
Sey forth thy tale, and tarie nat the tyme.
Lo Depeford, and it is half-wey pryme.
Lo Grenewych, ther many a shrewe is inne!
It were al tyme thy tale to bigynne."

I can't stand idiots like that. After all, it's a county, isn't it? ( or a duchy, or barony, or a knigthsteadtwainwiddershinsfortnight holding, right?).

On re-thinking, not only are you right, but the occasional correct use of English Monarch in an historical or UK constitutional context means that uses such as this are, at best, a problem. In fact it is less correct than, for example, "the first time a sitting English Australian monarch had ever been to the Western Hemisphere Americas."

A tomato is a berry, but I do not get upset when I find them with the vegetables in the grocery store rather than the fruits.

Likewise I do not worry about "less" versus" fewer" since no one has ever provided an example where the choice changes the meaning.

The joke about the man who goes into a bar and asks for a pint of less would be even more strained.

marek points out that the whole definition is fairly stupid anyway. I think it's talking about a political hemisphere, not a geographical one; in that light it makes more sense, and it makes no sense at all to talk about the hemisphere line dividing any one country.

Still, I feel really stupid now for using it that way. I did know that Greenwich was 0°, but somehow that didn't translate into dividing the hemispheres there.

In Michigan dialect you could have him walk in and order a pint of "worse" and the minority who even understand the phrase 'a pint of bitter' would laugh.

Tried? Alfred was shot. In the back. He got better.

Attention is called to a fortuitous typo:

"The U.S. Department of Stage"

A cabinet-level Secretary of Theater?

The line between north and south goes at the equator for sound physical reasons; east and west is more than a little arbitrary. It doesn't help that meridians are defined as going through fixed points on land (because fixing a point in the ocean is non-trivial): whether you use Greenwich, Paris, Beijing, Buenos Aires, or Honolulu, you're going to have land areas that are divided between the eastern and western hemispheres by that definition.

'Less fish' should be used when you're discussing how much fish (as a substance) there is. "You cooked 45 pounds of fish for Kwanzaa last year, and we ended up eating fish until the Vernal Equinox! Cook less fish this year!"

OTOH, "My cat got into the aquarium today, and now it appears I have 4 or 5 fewer fish than I had yesterday."

I suspect I could construct a situation where someone might say "I have less chance" when they mean "I have fewer chances" or vice versa, and it would be meaningful, but I think I'll wait until real life or a maths problem throws that up before insisting on it.

Anyway, Slate is part of our journalistic elites?

That's the cleanest way to say it I can come up with. ("Great circle (A circle drawn on a sphere whose radius is equal to the radius of the sphere)" and "normal (at 90 degrees to)" are slightly jargony, but I think they're reasonable concepts.

Likely kin to my sense that dogs speak English. . . .

Looking at the map, the de facto grouping seems to be "Arctic and north temperate zones," which would probably confuse more people than those few of us who stumble across a mention of the fact that this organization includes the United States. "North temperate" is my inference; I suspect that it started out being an actual European organization, picked up the U.S. and Canada along the way, and got a bunch of Central Asian republics because they stayed in when the USSR dissolved.

And then there's NATO.

The same reason there are North and South poles, but no East or West pole. The earth rotates around an axis; the places where that axis intersect the surface of the globe are the poles, and the midway point between them is the equator. You can define an arbitrary number of longitudinal meridians that intersect the equator at 90 degrees, but there's no good reason to pick one over another as "zero".

From the Preface: "History is now at an end (see p. 123); this History is therefore final."

From page 123:
"Chapter LXII
A Bad Thing

America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a ."

On a tide-locked world, where one side continually faces the body it's orbiting-- our Moon, Io, and Europa are examples-- there is another natural division into hemispheres. Between the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon and the hemisphere that never sees Earth lies a great circle.

At the two points where this circle meets the lunar equator, one might say, lie the West Pole and the East Pole of the Moon. (But I've never been sure how to assign which name to which "pole.") *

Doug Burbidge, #58:

Nice cameo of Bill Heterodyne at the bottom of that page. Handsome guy.

The Heterodyne Boys and the Cast-Iron Glacier and The Heterodyne Boys and the Race to the West Pole were two of the earliest titles that appeared when making up new titles in the series was just a parlor game among Phil Foglio's friends, before he actually drew a story about them. My own favorite: The Heterodyne Boys in Shipwreck Canyon.

Eventually, Steven Savage automated this game.

*I know that nutation complicates this explanation, but it's approximately true.

Except during the summer.

Wouldn't it make more sense to define the poles as being in the center of their respective hemispheres? Thus the "earthward" pole would be the point closest to the Earth (or where the Earth is always exactly overhead) and the "spaceward" (for lack of a better term) would be its antipodes.

Even with a tide-locked world, that doesn't quite work, because of libration. You could define Nearside and Farside as hemispheres, but parts of the Farside hemisphere are visible from Earth at times, and people or instruments in those locations can sometimes see the Earth.

The Bruce Pole.

Wouldn't it make more sense to define the poles as being in the center of their respective hemispheres?

Your argument is perfectly sensible-- but now we're up to six poles.

The "earthward" and "spaceward" hemispheres have their uses, but sometimes planetary scientists also consider the "leading" and "trailing" hemispheres. The Moon's leading pole, vaguely near the crater Schlüter and north of Mare Orientale, is at the center of the hemisphere that faces frontward in the Moon's orbital movement around the Earth. The trailing pole, in Mare Smythii, faces backward.

That astronomers have assigned the name "Mare Orientale" suggests that I should call the leading pole the East Pole.

On Europa, on average, the trailing hemisphere is a slightly darker color than the leading hemisphere, probably because it gets more radiation damage from Jupiter's intense Van Allen belt. Saturn's Iapetus has an even more dramatic leading/trailing contrast, probably for different reasons.

Turns out Wikipedia has an article on "Poles of astronomical bodies."

Vicki writes in #65:

Even with a tide-locked world, that doesn't quite work, because of libration. You could define Nearside and Farside as hemispheres, but parts of the Farside hemisphere are visible from Earth at times, and people or instruments in those locations can sometimes see the Earth.

Yes; I was trying to avoid discussing libration in last night's message, because it was late and I was sleepy. This means the leading pole and the trailing pole, as I have defined them, are not fixed, but wander around somewhat.

(Earlier I typed "nutation" when I should have written "libration." Forgive me. Even Jove nods.)

This line pretty well sums up one of the reasons I love Making Light. The fact that it's just an aside makes it even better.

Mary Aileen, #69: IAWTC.

What's that you said, regarding the effects of libation?
("LiBRation.")
Oh.
Nevermind.

--Dave, will make saves for food

It would be a cute pun, except that he's a (German) Jewish Holocaust survivor. They're very different things.