Rhumb lines are what gave us the Mercator Projection and for that reason, I'm opposed. (Rhumb lines are straight on the Mercator Projection. Shortest paths (great circles that planes like to fly on) are curved. But on a globe, rhumb lines are spirals, while great circles are as "straight" as anything can be on a spherical(ish) surface.) This has no bearing to your point, of course.
Well now you've sent me down a rabbit hole. I knew the "constant bearing" part, but I didn't realize that on a globe they become spirals toward the poles. Apparently, my metaphor was built on only a partial understanding of nautical navigation. That's very on brand for me.
Good thing I wasn't really writing so much about cartography as the idea of choosing a direction and continuing to adjust as the world curves underneath you.
And thanks for reading closely enough to point it out!
I love this! I’m married to an engineer. He can’t help but problem solve and optimize everything, and his favorite tools to use are tech based. It’s just how he’s wired, and he has done amazing things in our household and his career with those abilities. I, on the other hand, am a slow-adopting Luddite. I rarely optimize anything and will cling to old ways as long as I can. I think we balance each other out a little with those opposite mentalities, and we find our own family rhumb line (new vocab, thanks!).
Your piece made me reflect on how much of our modern world is built by people like unto my husband. It has given us incredible convenience and ability, but maybe we need a little balancing out with the older ways of doing things sometimes too because we are barreling into some great unknowns with tech and my Luddite spidey senses are tingling!
I love this and honestly, I think every engineer should come with a factory-installed Luddite. Not b/c optimization is bad, but cuz it's really good at getting us somewhere faster. It doesn't tell us whether that's where we wanted to go in the first place. Maybe that's part of finding a family rhumb line. You gotta have one person ask, "how can we do this better?" and another ask, "are we sure we want to?"
Rhumb lines are what gave us the Mercator Projection and for that reason, I'm opposed. (Rhumb lines are straight on the Mercator Projection. Shortest paths (great circles that planes like to fly on) are curved. But on a globe, rhumb lines are spirals, while great circles are as "straight" as anything can be on a spherical(ish) surface.) This has no bearing to your point, of course.
Well now you've sent me down a rabbit hole. I knew the "constant bearing" part, but I didn't realize that on a globe they become spirals toward the poles. Apparently, my metaphor was built on only a partial understanding of nautical navigation. That's very on brand for me.
Good thing I wasn't really writing so much about cartography as the idea of choosing a direction and continuing to adjust as the world curves underneath you.
And thanks for reading closely enough to point it out!
I love this! I’m married to an engineer. He can’t help but problem solve and optimize everything, and his favorite tools to use are tech based. It’s just how he’s wired, and he has done amazing things in our household and his career with those abilities. I, on the other hand, am a slow-adopting Luddite. I rarely optimize anything and will cling to old ways as long as I can. I think we balance each other out a little with those opposite mentalities, and we find our own family rhumb line (new vocab, thanks!).
Your piece made me reflect on how much of our modern world is built by people like unto my husband. It has given us incredible convenience and ability, but maybe we need a little balancing out with the older ways of doing things sometimes too because we are barreling into some great unknowns with tech and my Luddite spidey senses are tingling!
I love this and honestly, I think every engineer should come with a factory-installed Luddite. Not b/c optimization is bad, but cuz it's really good at getting us somewhere faster. It doesn't tell us whether that's where we wanted to go in the first place. Maybe that's part of finding a family rhumb line. You gotta have one person ask, "how can we do this better?" and another ask, "are we sure we want to?"