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 ...
Wow. How could I forget him? He hit 50 HR in 1977.
You're right, but the question the article is asking if you read further is can an over-reliance on GPS produce people like her, unable to navigate on their own?
This woman has been coddled and enabled by her family for years.
They cannot all be younger than her, and no one can tell how long they will live.
By not making her learn to navigate on her own, they have created a person who refuses to become anything but totally dependant.
I don’t like GPS.
I read maps, and I write down directions, if there are many turns on different roads.
I have driven about 80,000 miles from age 15 to now- 69.
Would have driven more, but $5 gallon gasoline keeps me close to home.
Heck, anybody who grew up in the country (no street signs or numbers) can do the same. Nothing particularly "special" about it. You just have to be aware of the landmarks. My wife, OTOH, is a "city girl", and can't find her ass with both hands without a street map (but I love her anyway!).
Interesting two weeks: stung by a bee above my right eye, swollen shut for two days. Was treated by a Belgian medical unit my PSG found nearby. My jeep was struck by an M-60 tank...nudged, actually. Still enough to crumple the radiator. Met up with a British unit. One young soldier was so enthralled with paratroopers, he actually traded me his British field jacket for my baseball cap with insignia and wings on it (I was just a cherry jumper).
Exactly my situation. I do very well in the day time but when the sun goes down I have a real problem. I can do interstate driving at night but get me off the main drag and I'm lost.
I do have a GPS now and they are great.
Hell, yes!
During my last tac eval, the old man told me to use my imagination. From experiences gained during my 4 years in the area, I put together a very detailed logistics and resupply plan should our unit be cut-off from its normal supply points, i.e. the 3 air bases we defended, and the Army support units at Baumholder and other places.
I spent an entire week putting this baby together. How imaginative was it? On the first day, I'm laying it all out for the chief evaluator. I could see the battalion commander off to the side, trying hard to keep from busting a gut. I used just about every gasthaus I had frequented, from Hahn AB to Bitburg AB, as well as the bakeries in every town.
When I finished, the evaluator looks at me and says: where did you get all this $hit from? I simply replied that I was following the battalion commander's orders to be imaginative in my thinking and planning, and that I used my four years of experience in the battalion, to include an episode where I was able to get a cargo plane diverted in flight a few months back.
Damn, it was fun.
That flight I had diverted? One of my systems was on its way back from ASP at Crete. Instead of the plane landing at Rhein Main, the Army Liasion Officer at Ramstein helped us get the plane diverted to the system's home base at Bitburg. As Rhein Main was at least two hours from Bitburg, it saved a ton of man hours, considering the system had a busted radiator. It took me about five hours, and 50 calls before I came into contact with the ALO.
I spent some time in Germany around Frankfurt-am-Main in the 60s, but strictly as a civilian.
There’s a portion of the brain that makes internal maps and lets us navigate. If that portion of her brain does not function, it does not matter how much tough love is given, she will always be lost.
It’s a little like being color blind. Some people just cannot process the world like others.
I was there from 77-81. Thanks to the Army, I got two trips to Crete, a week in Oberammergau, and a 3 month TDY to Northern Germany, about 30 miles east of Kiel.
They had to drag me out of there screaming and kicking. For a variety of reasons, I've never made it back. Hopefully, my employment situation will improve so that we can see "The Passion Play" next year.
Never used GPS. Make my own maps if I’m going someplace for a long trip, nothing annoys me more than having to rely on what someone else thinks are the important parts!
I think my longest trip is a 4000 mile or so drive to TX and back. I had a blast. I only got lost once, in Great Falls.
Anything that has liquid damping.
At any given time, one has to select from ~10 possible routes based on expected traffic levels. I still remember one place where traffic would back up a few cars waiting for traffic to clear so one could make a left turn to drive about a half block down a one way street the wrong way to make a good connection with the rest of the route.
Always make sure the ferry boat is at the dock before continuing.
I still use paper maps and a ...gasp... magnetic compass. My GPS enabled friends have trouble finding places while I am generally early.
I can certainly relate to that problem. It's frustrating, it makes me appreciate the shame, embarassment and frustration my grandpa felt as he got older and 'confused'.
I've read theories that a sense of direction is actually created by the Hypthalamus having a high iron concentration, sort of like a built-in compass. At least this was true in birds, when the scientists glued small magnets to the bird's skulls; the birds lost the ability to navigate.
So, what does a college kid with no sense of direction do when he's out hunting with his friends? Say nothing, and take the lead from those friends who have a sense of direction. Then memorize landmarks as you go into the woods/hills; so if you do get separated, you can get yourself back to the truck. This is where my downfall would inevitably come in; as they would take a short-cut to the truck, and I would be forced to re-trace my path back; where they would walk a quarter mile back to the truck, I would trek miles - retracing my path back.
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