Posted on 10/19/2009 12:08:33 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
When Alison Kendall’s boss told her in 2007 that her civil service job was being transferred to a different building in another part of Vancouver, she panicked. Commuting to a new office would be no big deal for most people, she knew. But Kendall might well have the worst sense of direction in the world. For as long as she can remember, she has been unable to perform even the simplest navigational tasks. She needed a family member to escort her to and from school right through the end of grade twelve, and is still able to produce only a highly distorted, detail-free sketch map of her own house. After five years of careful training, she had mastered the bus trip to and from her office, but the slightest deviation left her hopelessly lost. When that happened, the forty-three-year-old had to phone her father to come and pick her up, even if she was just a few blocks from home, in the neighbourhood where she had lived most of her life.
Kendall (not her real name) decided to ask a neuropsychologist if she had medical grounds for turning down the transfer. He referred her to a neuro-ophthalmology clinic at the University of British Columbia, where a young post-doc from Italy named Giuseppe Iaria was studying the neuroscience of orientation and navigation. After a battery of tests, Iaria concluded that Kendall was perfectly normal. She had average intelligence, memory, and mental imaging abilities, and her brain was completely undamaged. She was simply unable to form a “cognitive map,” the mind’s way of representing spatial relationships.
(Excerpt) Read more at walrusmagazine.com ...
I'm also bad with modern baseball players. I still have the starting lineup of the 1975&76 Reds on the tip of my tongue, but if I listen to a game on the radio I can't tell which team is batting based on the names.
My sense of direction is so bad that when a stranger asks me for directions around a city I’ve lived in for 12 years I just fake a heart attack to avoid the issue.
"No ma'am."
"I'm the general's wife!"
After a brief moment, the lieutenant replies, "Well do you know who I am?"
The lady declares, "No, I do not," after which the Lieutenant states, "Good," and runs out the door.
==================================================== As a loosely related aside, when I was a company commander, one of my platoon sergeants had this thing that whenever anybody farted, he'd shout, "Keep talking Lieutenant, we'll find you!"
In our car, we call the non-driving spouse the “Nag-ivator.”
Ain't that the truth! The "light went on" for me during my first tac eval (a bit too late - I flunked). From that point on, I knew exactly what my platoons had to do to excel, and also what I could get away with as long as I showed initiative and imagination. It was great fun.
I made it as far as Captain, but never would have made the Majors list, thanks to a superior that played favorites.
The day after I received my OER from him, I put in my resignation papers. Due to the nature of my command (HQs unit), the first O-6 in my chain of command was the Base Commander at Fort Bliss.
Based on the metrics that I could be reasonably evaluated on, he and the five other O-6s in my unit were certain I was doing a great job. He was really pi$$ed when he saw the OER, but there was nothing he could do.
As word spread, "interested observers" started paying attention to the "leadership" being displayed by the Battalion Commander. As a result, he was never selected for Army War College.
Had circumstances changed, things probably would have turned out better. I got along so well with my last Battalion Commander in Germany, I went to work for him for another 18 months at Fort Bliss. I was his Operations Officer, which was an O-5 slot in that unit.
I'd say there were 3 positions that I enjoyed the most: Battery Commander, Platoon Leader, and Battalion S-4. The job that I came closest to despising was Systems Maintenance Officer/Motor Officer. It was a thankless, no-win job: my vehicle support was 50 miles to my east, my system support was 45 miles to my west, and there was never enough money for spare parts during the Carter Administration.
I was uniquely suited as Battalion S-4: my degree was in Public Accounting, and I filled in as the Battalion Property Book Officer for eight months before taking over as S-4. I had also been in the battalion for three years, so I knew all the key players in each unit, battalion staff, and group/brigade staff.
What made the job particularly rewarding was that I played a role in turning a C-3 battalion to a C-1 in 18 months. The "old man" rode us, but he let us do our jobs. I was fortunate to have fantastic NCOs and a CW3. Couldn't have done it without them.
2:00 am in the fog, nothing beats GPS.
Her case has nothing to do with GPS.
Sense of direction has to do with the ‘mental map’ that a person has formed of the area.
Sense of direction won’t get you to find your way in Boston, especially at night.
Same here. But back before free agency lineups didn't change that much from year to year. Now they bounce around so much there is no point trying to remember except that if they are any damn good they will eventually end up with either the Yankees or Red Sox. ;~))
Think Boston's bad? Try some of the older parts of European cities. They can be a real maze.
I enjoyed my company command time as well...I commanded the 55th MP Co (CS) in Korea. My company HQ and two line platoons were in Chun’Chon (Camp Page, at the time the northeasternmost US base in the ROK), with outlying platoons at Camps Red Cloud and Long (app. 2 hours west and south, respectively). It was like running a mini battalion with three arms rooms, three supply rooms, etc. Because of the turnover in Korea, during 18 months of command I had a total of almost 500 soldiers come and go...it was a tough assignment, but one of those things you’d never trade once it was over...
How times have changed.
During my last 18 months in Germany, it seemed like every "Hail & Farewell" was held within 10 minutes of my apartment. I had an apartment on the Mosel River for 3 years, and I knew where to get the best vintages. There was plenty of available research time, as I lived 10 miles from the nearest base. I went without TV for nearly four years.
I'd invite everyone to my small apartment, where I always had plenty of beer, wine, and snacks ready for consumption.
That's true, but it's not the same set of information available to civilian GPS. The civvie version uses the C/A channel (coarse acquisition). Data rates are around 50 bits per second. The missiles have access to an encrypted channel with a data rate 10x as fast. It's truly an apples and oranges comparison.
You are correct
I'll bet.
4 AM on a Tuesday morning, heading home from a winefest on the Mosel, I'd just hit the auto-pilot switch.
Time enough for a quick shower, headed into work. At about 9 AM, my battalion commander would call me in for an after-action report on the winefests I attended that weekend.
I know that my magnetic sensors in my head don’t work as well as they used to.
LOL! Let's see if I remember...Bench, Perez, Morgan, Conception, Rose, Geronimo, Griffey and ugh...can't think of the other outfielder.
I did CTLT in Hanau...with an extended FTX at Wildflecken. I really liked Germany. Never got stationed there but got back as part of the last Reforger in ‘92 (Clinton actually got elected while I was there.)
There was a story years ago in the Army Aviation magazine about an aviator in Germany who had managed to avoid participating in some survival course. The CO demanded to know what he would do if he was forced down in the backwoods.
"Hell, I'd just walk to the nearest gasthaus and "survive" till my money ran out!" the pilot replied.
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