🚀 go-pugleaf

> matt@shorty.CS.WISC.EDU (Mad Matt Schaefer)

> The point that seems to have been missed (but I'm not sure, since I may
> not have read all of these mirror articles too closely) is that because
> our eyes are situated on a horizontal line relative to our head,
> front/back reversal will cause left/right reversal. If our eyes were
> vertically aligned, let's say one on the forehead and one on the nose,
> then front/back reversal would cause top/ bottom reversal. Or something
> like that.

This is a remarkably poor explanation.  Consider a person with one eye.
Would such a person be equally likely to flip left-right and up-down in
a mirror?  I doubt it, because the left-right flip of a human body is
"symmetrical", while the up-down flip is not.  Is somebody who has two
eyes in a vertical line above the nose apt to flip so feet become head
rather than hand becomes hand?  Implausible indeed.

Much more likely is the "you treat your image as if you were meeting
another person" explanation.  Your image then seems rotated 180 degrees
about the vertical axis and reflected left-to-right.  Which, if you go
through the transforms, is identical to being reflected front-to-back.

--
"You think this is a trap, then?" the Count asked.
"I think everything is a trap until proven otherwise," the Prince
answered.  "Which is why I'm still alive."
                        --- from "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw