Of course that first step is the last, so conceived, as any motion away from the pole re-establishes the NEWS – just highly distorted with a whopping S and an arbitrarily teensy W , E and N.

Like in Facebook land I’m sitting here watching a dog being walked in the snow and trying to pull myself upright one caffeinated bootstrap at a time.

Here’s what has happened in these few minutes: question: does my illustration depict what happens at one of the North or South poles? Do the directions get bunched up – in fact everything becomes one direction, either north or south – while the magnetic needle tries its best to find something specific? In response to Steve a piece of black string sporting an arrow at one end could replace our stiff needle. In fact, one option might be to put a clear plexiglass cover over the whole thing, thus creating a circular box, and allowing all of the components in question to jostle about. One would then read the contents as one might tea leaves or thrown bones. Dali’s watches – but a watch deals in conventions while a compass deals in a real thing. In response to June, I believe that a light enough gimbeled compass will tilt relative to level depending upon where it is. Also, the two intermediates between snark and snort are snart and snork. There is something Monty Pythonish about “snart” as something performed in a person’s general direction.

it was great to have discovered this site , by the way .

Like D, I too saw NEWS, even as I read your enigmatic commentary on points of the compass. Loss of brain-cells, perhaps, or perhaps a bad bit of mutton.

At any rate, it seems to me that the news feels more predictable than the compass points, given that true north isn’t north and the poles change every so often and that the north-south running mountains ranges actually run northwest/southeast, and that the sun also ranges widely north to south as the seasons vary, so that what you can see depends not just on the time of day but the day of the month of whatever year. A slighly leaning compass simply makes as much sense as does the muddle of news — both equally abstracted notions that don’t adhere much to actuality. But the news in the short run and in the very long run is more predictable. Intermediately, it perhaps resembles compass veracity.

So there! First I disappear and then I reappear with a snark. But not the usual snort, so take note.