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The year before last on a passage Thyborøn to Hulll, in the middle of
the North Sea two red admiral butterflies landed on deck for a rest.
What amazes me is not their navigational ability, for surely they have
little choice but to fly down wind, but their endurance. We offered
them some sugar solution but they were not interested.

Bill Lionheart

On 20 April 2016 at 08:08, Frank Reed  wrote:
> Gary, you wrote:
> "At the risk of appearing politically incorrect"...
>
> Observational comedy about the different styles of local (down the block,
> here to there) navigation among men and women has been around for decades.
> It's only a bit 'politically incorrect' since, after all, it supposes no
> innate superiority of one strategy of navigation over another. But sure,
> just between you, me (and that big phallic tree over there), our way is sooo
> much better. Chicks navigate by recipes. Guys navigate by visuals. That's
> the comedy version of how it's done, at least. And yes, the hunter-gatherer
> evolutionary model is not unreasonable. Maybe it does work that way...
>
> You added:
> "I think you see these distinctly different way of dealing with direction
> today when you examine the way males and females give directions. "
>
> Of course we should remember that we can't easily disentangle innate
> behavior from cultural training. Boys are raised to navigate like boys!
> Girls are raised to... well, sell cookies. Imagine a world where 12-year-old
> boys went door-to-door selling 'thin mints' instead of hiking cross-country
> with compass in hand. Yikes.
>
> Throwing political correctness to the wind, I often say in my navigation
> workshops, 'celestial navigation is women's work'. I mean that literally and
> without any negative connotation whatsoever. Celestial navigation, even from
> the early nineteenth century, was an acceptable domain in which women could
> work and excel professionally. We should take pride in this. Celestial
> navigation is one of those unique fields that has provided opportunities to
> intelligent, mathematically-inclined women in the western world for nearly
> two centuries. How rare is that?!
>
> Frank Reed
>
> 



-- 
Professor of Applied Mathematics
http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/bl

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