This comment reminded me of the "architecture astronaut" post by Joel Spolsky[1]:

"Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away."

Yes there might be two points on your compass but the "interesting" point is the one that's drawn to the magnetic pole of the planet. Cushman, you're a rhetoric astronaut.

1 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html

I agree that cushman seems to be being thick, but there are two magnetic poles on all magnets including the Earth, dangit, not "the magnetic pole of the planet". In fact, the part that points north is the magnetic south pole of the compass.

(Now I suspect the bit about the level of discourse does apply; I was well-aware of magnetic polarity in 1st grade, and polarity itself defines there being two ends...)

I was more concerned with expressing a relevant thought I had than ensuring that the phrase I used to sum up the general concept of a compass was scientifically accurate. Because after all, the very thing this entire thread about is that the properties of magnetism and the nature of compasses are irrelevant to the meaning of the phrase, "moral compass."

Nerds, each of us. I say that affectionately but man I regret answering theorique's question.

Nobody is talking about spherical moral compasses.

It remains the case that a compass points both north and south by nature; which is a matter of convention.

Just out of curiosity, how do you manage to converse with other people in the real world?

It varies, but usually I compress my diaphragm to force air from my lungs past a set of vibrating membranes which produce a base tone, then modulate that tone using the various muscles in my mouth to produce a set of distinct acoustic patterns which my conversational partner can decode. If that's working well I'll also modulate the frequency and volume of the tone itself to encode additional semantic information, but that's not strictly necessary for communication to take place.

His conversations end in "yer fired!".

It's just an analogy, I'm sure everyone understands what he meant.

Ever been fired? ;)

You offering me a job?

>"Every mechanical compass I've used has two points."

And the pedantic-bs-to-save-some-face-of-the-day award, goes to...