The Dish

Nick Danforth explains how north ended up at the top of maps:

There is nothing inevitable or intrinsically correct — not in geographic, cartographic or even philosophical terms — about the north being represented as up, because up on a map is a human construction, not a natural one. Some of the very earliest Egyptian maps show the south as up, presumably equating the Nile’s northward flow with the force of gravity. And there was a long stretch in the medieval era when most European maps were drawn with the east on the top. … In the same period, Arab map makers often drew maps with the south facing up, possibly because this was how the Chinese did it.

So who was primarily responsible for the flip?

The north’s position was ultimately secured by the beginning of the 16th century, thanks to Ptolemy, with another European discovery that, like the New World, others had known about for quite some time. Ptolemy was a Hellenic cartographer from Egypt whose work in the second century A.D. laid out a systematic approach to mapping the world, complete with intersecting lines of longitude and latitude on a half-eaten-doughnut-shaped projection that reflected the curvature of the earth. The cartographers who made the first big, beautiful maps of the entire world, Old and New — men like Gerardus Mercator, Henricus Martellus Germanus and Martin Waldseemuller — were obsessed with Ptolemy. They turned out copies of Ptolemy’s Geography on the newly invented printing press, put his portrait in the corners of their maps and used his writings to fill in places they had never been, even as their own discoveries were revealing the limitations of his work. For reasons that have been lost to history, Ptolemy put the north up.

Previous Dish on north-south cartography in The West Wing here. Money quote:

When the top of the map is given to the Northern hemisphere and the bottom is given to the Southern, then people will tend to adopt top and bottom attitudes.

(Image of map from the 15th century depicting Ptolemy’s description of the Ecumene via Wikimedia Commons)

A reader quotes another:

I’m not saying the white boy you posted doesn’t have skills, but the alphabet rapping concept, including progressive acceleration, was done a long time ago by Blackalcious [see above]. I’m more okay with white boys having their place in hip hop if they bring their own perspective and style to the table, like The Streets for example.

In sum: Once “Alphabet Aerobics” hit in 1999, a white person can’t make a rap with the alphabet and still be considered original. White rappers having their own perspective and style means they can’t revisit a concept done by a black artist, even if it was done 15 years ago. Obviously this is artistic elitist bullshit. While having predominantly black artists in hip hop made for amazing music, as it was a medium for artistic outsiders willing to do something new, it got mired in cliches and authenticity-by-skin-color, leading to a lot of forgettable, stale music. The reader who you quoted is still stuck in looking to skin color for authentic music, and it’s racist. Not nearly as degrading or dehumanizing as institutional slavery, Jim Crow, or unjust as white privilege that still exists today. But it’s racist nonetheless, and he/she probably excuses it because it’s focused against whites.

On a very different note:

I almost wrote you a letter during the Dylan Farrow discussion, but I never quite found quite got to it. But now you’ve brought Brother Ali into it. Brother Ali is not just a talented freestyle rapper. He’s also a touching and personal lyricist. A few years ago, our family was shattered by the discovery that a very young relative was the victim of molestation by her father.

We immediately took in their family (minus one person who, with any luck, will never leave the loving embrace of our state’s prison system.) They’ve been living with us for several years as their mother puts her life back together, brick by brick. The daily challenges go beyond the scope of a letter to a popular blogger.

As the victim is still a child, it partly feels like a waiting game. What will she remember? Will she feel isolated by her past? As a teenager, will she be overcome by anger? Will she be able to find love and comfort as an adult, or will she be constantly haunted? Will she feel the need to take some form of revenge, as Dylan Farrow did? Was Farrow’s letter cathartic? If so, will she ever get a chance to do something like that herself?

I’m predisposed to believe Farrow. True or not, whatever happened in that family, she’s clearly in a tremendous amount of pain. I hope that she can release her anger. I hope that she can find peace and love in her life. Hell, I hope I can release my anger some day.

I first heard Brother Ali’s song Babygirl right about the time this all went down, which was amazing timing. Brother Ali discusses it after performing it in this video (around minute 5):

Hearing it then was touching. I applaud him for writing it. It can’t be easy to open up your family’s life for art like that.

On a side note, in the middle of all of this, my mother became very ill with c. diff collitis. She spent nearly five months of a year in hospitals, coming very close to the end several times. She eventually received a fecal transplant. After that, her health took a nearly unbelievable turn for the better. With the c. diff no longer killing her, other systems were allowed to come back to normal. So, that’s a Dish Trifecta for me. Stop stalking me!

And thanks for reading.

Thanks for sharing.

Rosa Brooks pushes back against Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” philosophy and the culture of overwork, arguing that women, in particular, should fight for their right to relax:

Here’s the thing: We’ve managed to create a world in which ubiquity is valued above all. If you’re not at your desk every night until nine, your commitment to the job is questioned. If you’re not checking email 24/7, you’re not a reliable colleague. But in a world in which leaning in at work has come to mean doing more work, more often, for longer hours, women will disproportionately drop out or be eased out.

Why? Because unlike most men, women — particularly women with children — are still expected to work that “second shift” at home. … It’s hard enough managing one 24/7 job. No one can survive two of them. And as long as women are the ones doing more of the housework and childcare, women will be disproportionately hurt when both workplace expectations and parenting expectations require ubiquity. They’ll continue to do what too many talented women already do: Just as they’re on the verge of achieving workplace leadership positions, they’ll start dropping out.

Kathleen Geier applauds:

[S]lacking off unjustly gets a bad rap. People often enhance their abilities to think independently, to develop their own interests, and to do creative work when they’re not on someone else’s clock — when they’re just doing stuff they enjoy on their own time. It’s scary that our 24/7 economy seems to be allowing less and less time for that (at least, for those who are employed). I pity the Sheryl Sandbergs of the world who, as Kate Losse noted, appear to place little value on “pleasure and other nonproductive pastimes.”

Olga Khazan examines why Brooks’ call will be hard to follow:

U.S. policy doesn’t exactly make it easy to lean out even temporarily. Only about a fifth of moms get fully paid maternity time off, and high-powered “key employees” can be legally denied reinstatement if they go on family or medical leave.

Parents who truly wish to split the “workday” between actual work and childcare might also discover that the U.S. lacks a culture of part-time work, even though more than half of American working moms would prefer to work part-time or not at all. Part-time employees at American companies are much less likely to have access to benefits like retirement, medical care, and sick leave than are their full-time colleagues. U.S. workers are some of the least likely among the OECD nations to work part-time. (And even in countries where working less is accepted, the career disparity persists because it’s generally women, not men, who choose this route.)

A reader writes:

You quote Conor thusly: “I can’t help but wonder, when I hear about Christian businesses boycotting gay weddings, is how many of those businesses also refuse to take photographs or bake cakes for other marriages that don’t strictly conform to Biblical codes.”

In fact we know exactly that it’s only the gays they have discriminated against. The two biggest cases cited for these laws are the photographer in New Mexico and the baker in Oregon, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The Portland alt-weekly, the Willamette Week, contracted Sweet Cakes for a host of cakes for other seemingly unChristian occasions, like babies out of wedlock, divorce party, pagan solstice, and stem cell success. All were agreed to by the company.

Indeed they were. Two priceless examples:

WW Asks – I was calling to get a quote on a cake for a midsummer solstice party. My coven is celebrating on Friday, June 21. The decoration would be very simple: just a green pentagram. We’d like to pick it up sometime that afternoon, before the bonfire. It’ll be for about 30 people.

Sweet Cake says – “For 30 people we have a couple options… We have two kind of cakes you could have. About the diagram you want on the cake, I’m not sure how much extra that would be.”

And this:

WW Asks – I’m shopping around for a nice baby shower cake for my friend. It’s her second baby with her boyfriend so I’m not looking for anything too big or fancy—probably enough to serve 15 to 20 people.

Sweet Cake says – “We have a sheet cake that will feed 30, or a 10-inch cake that would feed 30 people. The 10-inch cake is $50 and the sheet cake is $52. Or we have an 8-inch cake that would feed 15 for $40.”

I think the question in the core case is answered. Their only expression of religious freedom is the right to turn gay couples away. That’s not religious freedom. It’s bigotry.

Nora Caplan-Bricker observes that the 2012 Regnerus sociological study, which suggested that children of gay parents had relatively poor outcomes, is still being used to support conservative arguments against marriage equality despite the expert consensus that it was fundamentally flawed:

The denunciations of Regnerus’ work haven’t kept it from having influence. The study appeared in amicus briefs during the DOMA and Prop 8 cases that went before the Supreme Court in 2013. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which has tracked mentions of the study, it has come up in legislative debates in Hawaii, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and the U.S. Congress. Before Regnerus was scheduled to testify in Michigan, his study was used as evidence in cases that went to court in Hawaii and New Mexico. Regnerus’ work has even influenced debates abroad—especially in Russia, where Yelena Mizulina, the chairwoman of the Duma’s committee on family, women and children, cited him to argue for a law banning same-sex adoption, which was enacted this February.