NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Easy Lunars in 1790
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2006 May 2, 15:39 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2006 May 2, 15:39 -0600
On 2 May 2006 at 9:03, Jim Hickey wrote:
> My personal preference, assuming I had only a choice of a graphical method
> like Margetts, a tabular method or a slide rule type method. I would choose
> the slide rule method first, graphical second and the tabular last. Clearly
> I would be out in left field compared to the norm.
Compared to the 1790 norm, anyway. I would choose the same order as you
(if there was a slide rule type method to choose from).
> Certainly one can argue that memory work and performing tasks more by wrote
> was the order of the day in that era. If this were the case, learning a
> tabular method that lead to a definitive answer would not be such a big
> task even if one method was a few steps more or less.
Learning a method should have been simple enough, especially with forms
(formulae as they appear to have been called 200 years ago). It's all
that damn page flipping that creates the tedium of using tables.
> In this day and age we have so many memory aid to help us along. As well,
> we seem to be more systematic thinkers. Just try and teach and elderly
> person how to use a computer and you will likely find a person who will
> want to memorize the steps to do a task as opposed to leaning the system
> that opens up the whole deal.
On the other hand, it could be that young people are just too impatient to
read the manual, or learn about a system before demanding satisfaction
from it. ;-)
> It is sort of like Einstein, when asked why he did not memorize phone
> numbers, he responded that he knew how to use a phone book. I wonder what
> method he would have liked?
Without doubt, he would have preferred GPS.
Ken Muldrew.
\----------------------------+---------------------------------+ o_,
O_/ \ Ken Muldrew, PhD | Voice: (403) 220-5976 |
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<\__ \ Dept. of Cell Biology | Fax: (403) 270-0617 | |
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"\ L | University of Calgary | kmuldrew@acs.ucalgary.ca | / /
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Morning coffee recapitulate phylogeny L/
