Possible Wise Saying of the Day: "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." Douglas Adams
I haven't written in a long time because we've been traveling for over a month. Being gone so long is a big deal to most families: there's a lot of disruption that comes with abandoning one's dwelling. In our lives we not only have a school-aged daughter, but a largish, brainless, dog, a cat and several plants in various stages of death.
My daughter has logged 12,000 miles since summer and will put in another thousand over Christmas.
This is not remarkable for her; she's very easy-going, unlike her mother, and will "tag along" on most adventures if there is a Starbuck's to be had.
I, however, have been a different story. It's been a long process of healing and overcoming that allowed me to be away from my safe place...and my toilet.
Today isn't the day for that story.
But we are home for a few days and we're glad for it.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Strange namings
Potential Wise Saying of the Day: "Everybody in 15th Century Spain was wrong about where China was, and as a result Columbus discovered Caribbean vacations."
When I first heard that a global positioning satellite company had taken their name from Ferdinand Magellan, my immediate response was, "Now this is a genius in Marketing...name your navigation company after a guy who couldn't navigate out of a wet paper bag."
But then I did some research and realized I was wrong. The navigationally-challenged explorer I had been thinking of was Columbus. Magellan had a good idea on what he wanted to do... he simply sucked at picking his friends. As a result he got himself killed teaming up with one tribe who was aggressively invading another on the teeny Philippine Island of Mactan.
Granted, he had made it 3/4 of the way around the globe, much of it through the featureless ocean...so I'll tip my hat to him for that. But it must be noted that for much of his trip he was traveling on hunches and guesses; for instance he simply hoped that there was a navigable pathway hugging the tip of South America even though all other known attempts had proven disastrously wrong. Basically, the success of most of Magellan's trips is based solidly on luck.
So I'm not sure what the GPS company of the same name is really telling us. Perhaps it's one of these three possibilities:
1) Trust Magellan. We'll get you there alive, probably.
2) Travel with Magellan. We'll get you there, with a little luck and a lot of "gee let's see what's around this corner" but at least we'll do it in a calming, yet almost sensual voice.
or
3) We at Magellan think most of America are morons who don't know history worth a pile of beetle dung, so we'll just pick a cool name from the past...and since most of the famous explorers spent nearly all of their time lost, we'll pick Magellan since his name has not been used as much as Columbus and Vespucci doesn't have the same ring to it and besides Magellan doesn't a lot of copyrights clinging to it.
I don't know about you, is that all this makes me feel safe on the road with the thousands of others following a mostly confused, often lost, dead guy.
P. J. O’Rourke
When I first heard that a global positioning satellite company had taken their name from Ferdinand Magellan, my immediate response was, "Now this is a genius in Marketing...name your navigation company after a guy who couldn't navigate out of a wet paper bag."
But then I did some research and realized I was wrong. The navigationally-challenged explorer I had been thinking of was Columbus. Magellan had a good idea on what he wanted to do... he simply sucked at picking his friends. As a result he got himself killed teaming up with one tribe who was aggressively invading another on the teeny Philippine Island of Mactan.
Granted, he had made it 3/4 of the way around the globe, much of it through the featureless ocean...so I'll tip my hat to him for that. But it must be noted that for much of his trip he was traveling on hunches and guesses; for instance he simply hoped that there was a navigable pathway hugging the tip of South America even though all other known attempts had proven disastrously wrong. Basically, the success of most of Magellan's trips is based solidly on luck.
So I'm not sure what the GPS company of the same name is really telling us. Perhaps it's one of these three possibilities:
1) Trust Magellan. We'll get you there alive, probably.
2) Travel with Magellan. We'll get you there, with a little luck and a lot of "gee let's see what's around this corner" but at least we'll do it in a calming, yet almost sensual voice.
or
3) We at Magellan think most of America are morons who don't know history worth a pile of beetle dung, so we'll just pick a cool name from the past...and since most of the famous explorers spent nearly all of their time lost, we'll pick Magellan since his name has not been used as much as Columbus and Vespucci doesn't have the same ring to it and besides Magellan doesn't a lot of copyrights clinging to it.
I don't know about you, is that all this makes me feel safe on the road with the thousands of others following a mostly confused, often lost, dead guy.
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