Another interesting obituary from The Economist

Mau Piaulug

I almost skipped right past the article as I had never heard of this man, but the subtitle, "master navigator" made me pause. This man could navigate on water without a compass or GPS device for thousands of miles at a time. Probably doesn't mean that much to most folks in our world of GPS enabled cell phones and other spatial devices, but as someone who has difficulty finding points on a map every day with a GPS for my job as a soil scientist, reading about someone who does this kind of thing without any device other than his brain definitely sparked my interest.

Apparently Mr. Piaulug had about a 100 constellations memorized, and could refer to these stars as they appeared above the horizon for steering his boat in the right direction. His father taught him as a young child how to do this prodigious memorization task with "cosmic" stones on a beach.

Was a good reminder to me to take some time away from the net and the technology that tethers it to make sure my son, Matthew, gets some quality time out in nature, an incredible teacher in its own right.

Thanks for stopping by,

Drew