Regarding forward/back, etc., particularly in relation to reference points, I just ran across this article:
New mechanism of erosion revealed: Gorges are eradicated by downstream sweep erosion.
It's a nice story in its own right for anyone who's interested in how natural landscapes are formed, but when I read the article, I was struck by the researchers' use of "downstream". When I first saw the title, I thought it was referring to erosion
downstream from the gorge, and I wondered how that worked. But as it turns out, they're describing a process where the walls of a gorge are eroded at the
upstream end by debris being carried in
from upstream (where it is produced by a river sweeping out a channel in a braided floodplain - at least I'm guessing that's the "sweep" that they're referring to).
So why do they call it "
downstream sweep erosion"? (The researchers seemed to have coined the term.) I guess because the gorge is
downstream from the source of debris. But the sweep itself is
upstream (if I understand "sweep" correctly). It's good research (they actually were able to study the erosion of a newly-created gorge in real time over a ten-year period), but the terminology does have some of that up/down/forward/back confusion...

And Haruna >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everybody.

If madness made us strong, we would all be invincible.