Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

A question from a few

A question from a few days ago: When you look at yourself in a mirror, everything is reversed from left to right and from right to left. Why aren’t you upside down as well?

A: Quite simply, everything in the mirror is not reversed from right to left, it just seems that way. Psychologically, we think of the object in the mirror as another person and imagine ourselves in that person’s place. But we really couldn’t be in that person’s place because then our right hand would become that person’s left hand (picture yourself walking around the other side of the mirror and see what happens). With our misguided perception removed from the mix, a mirror doesn’t display things upside-down because *that’s just how mirrors work*.

For more on mirrors and such, visit these sites: 1, 2, 3, 4. Please note that some of the information on these sites may be wrong. Thanks to various folks for sending these links in.