Gawd people! Ok, what our Friendly Neighborhood Bad Astronomer is doing is not belittling people or talking down to them or nitpicking a niggling detail. He's using something that I've heard Dawkins call a consciousness raiser. By clarifying and pointing out an important detail: that in space, reference points are not nearly as clearly defined as your cultural boundaries dictate, he challenges our preconcieved notions and encourages a less dogmatic method of observation.

It's a good thing. It encourages imagination and abstract thinking and more creative ways of viewing the world around us. In The God Delusion I read about maps in Australian classrooms that put the South Pole at the top right alongside those that use the North Pole as the designated "right-side up". I think this is a fantastic way to encourage minds to really think in critical ways. What if, in the development of human history, we had instead as a species been influenced to label the South Pole as the "top" of the world? It really wouldn't have changed much, but that surreal image of a world completely mirrored in the mind's eye is invigorating and nourishing nutrients for imagination and open-mindedness.

So lets not be so quick to bash on Phil for demanding explicit reference points when defining orientations. That's a big part of a truly creative scientific mind.