I saw this on the blog today, which iirc more or less goes along with what I've seen before on the site..

It kind of annoys me when astronomy folks pick this fact out when pointing out errors made by laypeople. It's well known to the astronomy folks that space really doesn't have an "up" or a "down", and that they're just abstractions made for convenience when making diagrams, etc. What I think many book-larnin' stromminers don't realize is that laypeople realize this TOO! And that the reason they describe the planets' motion as "counterclockwise" instead of "counterclockwise if you're looking 'down' on the solar system from above the Earth's north pole" isn't that they really think there's an "up" to the universe, but that A) the second takes a hell of a long time B) the first is completely understood by practically everybody you tell it to. Nitpicking a statement like that is comparable to responding to "the reflecting pool is in front of the Lincoln Memorial" with "Untrue! That's only if you consider the facade of the building to be its front, and all things which that faces to be 'in front of' the building!" Now, I hesitate to use the term "high-horse", but I wonder if so many people jump on the whole planets counterclockwise thing as another way to assert their superiority over laypeople.. or more to the point, to sound smart, because I doubt that they would fail to give average people THAT much of the benefit of the doubt.

Those are my thoughts.