How far will she sail (currently limited capabilities)

Semyon D. Savransky., Engineering of creativity, 2000                  [ ]

p.162
“parameter threshold” [4]
In an efficient technique this value must be no less than some minimal level, named by Boris I. Goldovsky as “parameter threshold” [4]. Provision for lift power exceeding aircraft weight by 10 to 20% was a threshold. This condition was necessary for reliable flight of an aircraft. Another threshold was connected with the distance a steamer could travel without refueling. This threshold alone has determined the transition from a steamboat to steamship and then to an ocean liner. A necessity to overcome the parameter threshold of the currently limited technological capabilities of a society determines the mode of performance of a technique to be invented and categorizes the problems to be solved in the second case.

p.163
HF - harmful function

The following questions often help to find the source of a harmful function (HF):

  Who   -- the degree of direct human participation in creation of the HF effect
  Where -- the place where the HF effect manifests
  When  -- the time when the HF effect occurs at the above place
           ([ the timing of the HF effect occurs in relation to one other event ])
           ([ the timing of the HF effect occurs in relation to two other events ])
           ([ the timing of the HF effect occurs in relation to one other event, with the HF effect happening over 100+ year later ])
  What  -- the essence of HF effect, what parameters are abnormal
  Why   -- the reason of the HF effect's appearance of HF effect's cause
  How   -- under what condition the HF effect occurs

  These questions can be memorized easily with Rudyard Kipling's short poem:

    I keep six honest serving men
    They taught me all I knew:
    Their names are What and Why and When
    And How and Where and Who. [5]

     Let me stress again that CORRECT STATEMENT OF A PROBLEM ITSELF CAN CONTAIN THE ELEMENTS NECESSARY FOR A SOLUTION ...

    ( Savransky, Semyon D., Engineering of creativity : introduction to TRIZ methodology of inventive problem solving / by Semyon D. Savransky., 1. engineering--methodology., 2. problem solving--methodology., 3. creative thinking., 4. technological innovations., 2000, )
   ____________________________________

Clayton M. Christensen, Innovator's dilemma, 1997, 2000                 [ ]

pp.85—86 n11
    11.  Makers of early hybrid ocean transports, which were steam powered but still outfitted with sails, used the same rationale for their design as did the Bucyrus Erie engineers: Steam power still was not reliable enough for the transoceanic market, so steam power plants had to be backed up by conventional technology.  The advent of steam-powered ships and their substitution for wind-powered ships in the transoceanic business is itself a classic study of disruptive technology.  When Robert Fulton sailed the first steamship up the Hudson River in 1819, it underperformed transoceanic sailing ships on nearly every dimension of performance: It cost more per mile to operate; it was slower; and it was prone to frequent breakdowns.  Hence, it could not be used in the transoceanic value network and could only be applied in a different value network, inland waterways, in which product performance was measured very differently.  In rivers and lakes, the ability to move against the wind or in the absence of a wind was the attribute most highly valued by ship captains, and along that dimension, steam outperformed sail.  Some scholar (see, for example, Richard Foster, in Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage [New York: Summit Books, 1986]) have marveled at how myopic were the makers of sailing ships, who stayed with their aging technology until the bitter end, in the early 1900s, completely ignoring steam power.  Indeed, not a single maker of sailing ships survived the industry's transition to steam power.  The value network framework offers a perspective on this problem that these scholars seem to have ignored, however.  It was not a problem of KNOWING about steam power or having access to technology.  The problem was that the customers of the sailing ship manufacturers, who were transoceanic shippers, could not use steam-powered ships until the turn of the century.  To cultivate a position in steamship building, the makers of sailing ships would have had to engineer a major strategic reorientation into the inland waterway market, because that was the only value network where steam-powered vessels were valued throughout most of the 1880s.  Hence, it was these firms' reluctance or inability to change strategy, rather than their inability to change technology, that lay at the root of their failure in the face of steam-powered vessels.

    (Innovator's dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen, copyright © 1997, 2000, 658.4 Christen, )
   ____________________________________

Monstress

Marjorie Liu
Sana Takeda

graphic novel

volume one  •  awakening


Monstress
volume one
awakening
collecting
montress
issues 1 - 6

Marjorie Liu (writer)
 Sana Takeda (artist)

     monstress
    created by
Marjorie Liu &
   Sana Takeda


MONSTRESS was more a desire than an idea.  An impulse that came over me, something I'd think about in the shower or when I was driving and listening to Janet Jackson on the radio.  I had this image in my head of a battered girl standing alone, absolutely furious, and behind her a battlefield that stretched for miles.  I didn't know what to do with it - and I'm not all that patient - but I had no choice in this matter.  Nothing was there.  No story.  Just that girl.

I didn't know anything about war, not having lived through one.  But my grandparents experienced the devestation of war firsthand in China.  In their stories surviving was more horrifying than dying.  Surviving required a desire to live more powerful than any bomb or any, a summoning of superhuman resilience to keep going, day after day.  Starvation, biological experimentation, rape camps, occupation, colonization - what ravaged Europe during WWII also ravaged China and the rest of Asia.  And the victims of this horror had to learn how to first survive ... and then survive the surviving.

To be Chinese-American meant the war loomed upon the history of my world.  I grew up hearing my grandparents tell nightmarish stories.  Heartbreaking, too.  And also heoric beyond words.  What they endured I could scarcely imagine.  I thought, always:  if I could only be as strong as them.  

My grandparents were chouchun.  I'm a twig in comparison.  That's okay.  My imagination is strong.  And the root of my desire, I finally realized, was to tell a story about what it means to be a survivor.  I survivor, not just of a cataclysmic war, but of racial conflict and its antecedent:  hatred.  And to confront the question:  how does one whom history has made a monster escape her monstrosity?  How does one overcome the monstrusness of others without succumbing to a rising monstrousness within?

...age of that furious girl never left me.  She followed
...m Beijing to Boston and to Japan, where Sana and I
...egan our collaboration and where that girl finally
... to speak.  And here we are - and here you are.

...ere she is too.

...and I thank you, deeply, for partaking in the epic
...y of this haunted young woman who believes she's alone, with a war far behind her - and another one, rising, like a doom, like a monster, on the horizon.

I like to think my grandparents would have recognized her.

Much love,
Marjorie Liu


volume two  •  the blood

p.17
 - “How far will she sail?”
 - “To the farthest shore, sir.  She's built for both capacity and distance.”
 - Easy enough to claim, but every crew that attempts the journey dies of thirst or hunger.  There's no land to the East, master-builder:  Nothing close enough to keep my people alive.  Even the latest airships can't make the journey.
 - This vessel is different sir.  Its size is directly related to the problem of maintaining the crew until they can reach the lost continent.  We've found a way to build cold boxes into the lower ...
   ____________________________________

Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition
by Beulah Tannenbaum and
   Myra Stillman

Beulah Tannenbaum and Myra Stillman, Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition, [1962]

p.138
   Another vitamin-deficiency disease which has been known for centuries is SCURVY.  During the 18th century, a Spanish ship, her sails in shreds, drifted aimlessly in a momentarily calm ocean.  A passing vessel hailed her repeatedly without answer, and finally sent out a boarding party to investigate.  The tough seamen peered over the rail, watching cautiously for any sign of a trap, but the only sound was the occasional flap of tattered canvas, the slap of water, and the bumping of their own long boat.  At last, the men clambered aboard and everywhere found only ── death.  Every member of the crew had died of scurvy, the dread disease of the sailor.
   Scurvy was not always a sailors' disease.  As a matter of fact, it was practically unknown on shipbroad before the middle of the 15th century.  Soldiers, crusaders, and prisoners had suffered from it occasionally, but not sailors.  In those days, voyages were short, usually within sight of land.  It was a simple matter to put ashore frequently and restock food and water.  But the era of great discoveries changed all this.  Columbus opened a whole new continent with a trip over 3,000 miles of trackless ocean without sight of land from September 6 to October 12.  For the sailors, it was a nightmare; to their knowledge, no one had ever lived so long without sight of land.

p.139
   Such a meagre diet would eventually have produced a number of deficiency diseases, but the first to show up on shipboard generally was scurvy.  Scurvy is an unpleasant illness which, in its advanced stage, causes ulcers of the legs, bleeding gums, and eventual death.
p.139
   Scurvy was considered an unavoidable consequence of most of the long voyages during the era of exploration and colonization.  When Captain Cook bragged that he had sailed the seas for three years without a single man coming down with scurvy, it was regarded as a miracle.  The great captain stoutly insisted that it was all due to feeding his men liberal amounts of sweetwort and sauerkraut.  He may have been at least half right.  Sweetwort, made by soaking malt in water, was a favorite but nearly useless treatment.  Sauerkraut, however, if eaten in sufficient quantities, can prevent scurvy.  
   The specific part of sauerkraut which performed the “miracle” is ASCORBIC ACID, which also is called vitamic C.  
p.140
This vitamin is necessary for the formation of the gel-like substances between the cells.  These substances act as a kind of cement which holds the cells together.  The absence of these gels in cases of scurvy can be seen readily in the teeth and bones, if they are examined under a microscope.
   It would seem that Captain Cook's success should have resulted in an immediate improvement of the food aboard the sailing vessels.  But such lessons are learned slowly.  It was not until 1795 that the British Navy required that lime juice be rationed to all its sailors, thus giving them their nickname “limeys”.  It took seventy [70] more years before the British Board of Trade passed the same rule for merchant seamen.  Lime juice, incidentally, is only slightly more than half as effective as orange juice.
pp.140─141  

Beulah Tannenbaum and Myra Stillman, Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition, [1962]
   ____________________________________

Jennings, Ken, 1974─ Mythology / by Ken Jennings; illustrated by Mike Lowery. ── first edition.
includes bibliographical references and index.
1. mythology, greek ── juvenile literature.

BL783.J46 2013
398.20938──dc23

p.107
Jason named his ship the  Argo  and assembled fifty of the world's greatest heroes to sail with him to Colchis.  They were called the Argo-sailors, or in Greek, “Argonauts”.
   ____________________________________
   ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
    Japanese navy
    English sailors
    Norwegian ships
    (beri-beri)
   ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition
by Beulah Tannenbaum and
   Myra Stillman

Beulah Tannenbaum and Myra Stillman, Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition, [1962]

p.106
   The role of vitamins in the body is very complex and not yet fully understood.  There is still much in the field of vitamin chemistry to be investigated.  It took a long time for scientists to find out how vitamins affect the body.  It took a long time for them even to isolate the vitamins.  The story begins back in 1895.
pp.106─107
   In that year, Jonkheer de Graff, a young Dutch colonial official, sat writing by his window in Buitenzorg, now called Bogor.  This beautiful summer resort at the foot of two Javanese volcanoes is noted for its fabulous botanical gardens.  But de Graff was not enjoying the beauties of the surrounding area.  They were marred for him by the never-ending procession of patients from a nearby beri-beri hospital.  As de Graff described it, each day he saw:

      ... hundreds of the poor sufferers of that mysterious disease passing  my home in batches.  It was a pitiful sight.  Natives, China men and a few white men dragged themselves along with their swollen legs.  They had to take a daily walk ... (exercise in the fresh air was the only treatment known at the time) ...  Many of the numerous cases in the crowded hospital were not even able to walk; they died slowly within the precincts of the hospital, and more than once it happened that some of the patients having their daily exercise collapsed and died on the road of heart failure.

   At about the same time that de Graff watched helplessly at his window, another Dutchman, a young array surgeon who had been sent to Java to study beri-beri, gazed with fascination at another scene.  He was working in a prison where the disease was rampant.  But it was not the men inside the prison that excited his curiosity.  It was the scene in the prison yard.  Around the yard, a group of straggly chickens staggered; their heads were pulled back at a curious angle; then one by one, they died.  It is probable that hundreds of people had seen the tragedy of chickens kept too long in the prison yard.  Perhaps some even wondered about the cause.  But Dr. Christiaan Eijkman did more than wonder; his was the inquiring type of mind that must have an explanation.
   Chickens in Java were generally as healthy as chicken anywhere else.  They wandered about near the countryside homes eating their fill of wild seeds, insects, and grain dropped in the fields.  But put these chickens in the prison yard adn in time they developed the peculiar walk followed by death.  Most people would have suspected a mysterious disease or some kind of poison in the prison yard, but Dr. Eijkman's mind ran in another direction.
pp.107─108
 He was interested in the food these birds ate.  Prison fowl were fed on leftover food from the prison.  As a result, their diet consisted largely of the white rice which made up the bulk of prison fare.  
p.108
   A grain of rice as it comes from the plant is called the PADDY and has four main parts.  The center of the grain is made up almost entirely of starch.  Around it is a layer which contains proteins, fat, and minerals; this sometimes is called the “SILVERSKIN.”  The GERM, or embryo, which is the future rice plant, is attached at one end of this layer.  If you examine a grain of white rice, you can see the dent at one end where the germ once was attached.  In brown rice, the germ often is still present.  The outer layer is the HULL, which is removed in both brown and white rice.  The food chart on page 193 of the appendix shows the difference in the composition of brown and white rice, a difference which results from the amount of milling the rice under goes.

panicle of rice

cross section of rice grain
  hull
  silverskin
  starch center
  germ

p.109
   When a farmer prepared his own rice, he usually pounded it in a mortar.  This removed some but not all of the outer layers.  When cooked, this rice was rather dark in color, and flecked with brown specks of bran ── a typical “poor man's food.”  For use in cities, rice goes to a factory, where it is milled with such efficiency that the two outer layers and the germ are completely removed.  The attractive pearly white grains of pure starch are dusted lightly with talc to keep the grains separated.  When cooked, the result is pleasing to the eye.  It is only fair, however, to add that appearance and status are not the only reasons for milling the rice.  Unmilled rice easily is subject to mildew and invasion by insects, whereas the pure starch of white rice can remain uninfected for logner periods.
p.109
   In 1888, Dr. Eijkman was made director of the Pathological Institute of Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), and he set to work proving his hunch that diet was a factor in the illness of the chickens.  All of the chickens he used were in equally good health at the beginning of the experiment.  He set them up in three groups.  One group was fed only whole rice grains.  A second group ate only rice grains with the outer cover removed, but the “silverskin” and germ intact.  The third group of chickens received only polished white rice.
pp.109─110
   At first, all three groups did well on their diets.  It looked disappointingly as if his hunch was wrong.  But the doctor did not give up easily.  Day after day, he fed his caged birds on their prescribed diet.  One day, one of the chickens in the white-rice group began to move queerly.  Soon others followed.  The chickens in the polished white-rice group had developed polyneuritis, the animal equivalent of beri-beri.  For the first time, a nutritional disease had been produced deliberately in an experiment.
p.110
   Dr. Eijkman did not stop with one experiment.  He further tested his theory of a dietary cause of beri-beri by producing polyneuritis in other chickens with such other starch foods as pearl-tapioca and sago, commonly used in India.  In each case, where the animal received only pure starch, the disease appeared.
   For all his painstaking work, the doctor did not draw the correct conclusion.  He recognized that a diet of starch alone was inadequate, and he knew that the outer covering of the rice grain contained something essential to the diet.  But he believed that this something was a substance which neutralized the poison caused by a starch diet.
p.110
   Even with the wrong conclusion, Dr. Eijkman's work was of immense value, for it showed the ways both of preventing and of curing beri-beri.  Some years later, when de Graff again visited Buitenzorg, he found the beri-beri hospital closed for lack of patients.  And in 1929, Dr. Eijkman, who in the meantime had returned to Holland to become a professor at the University of Utrecht, was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on nutrition.

pp.110─111
   Dr. Eijkman's work soon was picked up by other scientists.  Dr. Casimir Funk, a Polish biochemist, continued and expanded Dr. Eijkman's work.  He drew the correct conclusion about the substance removed when the rice grain is milled to pure starch.  
p.111
This substance is not an antidote to a poison, but a substance which is itself vital ── necessary for life.  For this vital substance, he coined the word “vitamine” (now VITAMIN) from “vita” meaning life and “anime” because he believed it belonged to the group of chemical compounds called amines.  Dr. Funk, who later became a citizen of the United states, further theorized that four such substances would be found, and he described the functions of the vitamins now known as B1, B2, C, and D.

p.111
   Beri-beri was considered a tropical disease because it was so common in the rice-eating areas of Asia and the  East Indian islands.  Actually, it appears whereever milled grain forms most of the diet.  Even before Dr. Eijkman's work, a medical officer of the Japanese Navy, without delving into the cause, had succeeded in eliminating the disease aboard ship by changing the diet of the sailors.
   About 1880, Takagi Kanehiro, Director-genreal of the Japanese Navy, was concerned to find that about one third of the crews returning from long sea voyages suffered from beri-beri.  On the other hand, he knew that English sailors, who had better rations, still were healthy at the end of similar voyages.  After several experimental cruises where the men were fed on various controlled diets, he was certain he cause of beri-beri was nutritional even though he did not know what factor in the diet was involved.  
pp.111─112
He ordered the diet of the common sailor changed, and as a result, beri-beri was practically eliminated from the Japanese navy.
p.112
   Shortly thereafter, beri-beri suddenly appeared on Norwegian ships.  Before 1894, it was unknown, but that year the diet on the ships was  “improved.”  Rye bread gave place to fine white bread, and a little more meat and fish were added.  A somewhat similar “improvement” led to an outbreak in the Philippine islands.  When the United states took over from the Spanish, the American officials were horrified by the food served to prisoners.  An immediate “improvement”, including changing from common brown rice to white rice, was instituted, and a few months later, beri-beri made its appearance in the prison.
   While some men were causing beri-beri by “improving” the diet, others went on working on the cure.

p.112
Funk was able to obtain a substance from rice polishings which would cure beri-beri.  But when he tried to purify it, it lost its effectiveness.  Obviously, it was a trace of something within his substance which was the factor.  Some people believed that the traces were so slight that they would never be found.  It became popular among people with very little scientific knowledge to picture vitamins as mysterious, magical substances which never could be seen or tasted.

p.112
In 1926, two Dutch chemists, B. C. P. Jansen and W. F. Donath, were able to separate crystals of thiamine hydrochloride (C12H17ON4SCl·HCL) from mountainous piles of rice polishings.  
pp.112─113
This substance, for which so many scientists were searching, is a white crystal with a yeasty smell and a salty nutlike taste.  It dissolves readily in water.  When added to a pure starch diet, it “miraculously” can cure polyneuritis in laboratory animals.  Today this  “magical”  substance is called either THIAMINE or VITAMIN B1.
   
p.113
Although information about the necessity of using unmilled rice and other grains was widespread as early as 1900, people do not willingly change their diets, and beri-beri continued to be a problem.  

p.113
1910, R. R. Williams
A quarter of a century later, working with J. K. Cline,
1936, Williams-Cline process

p.113
Enrichment is voluntary in the United states, but in some places, such as Newfoundland, it is required by law.
pp.113─114
   Another commercial process makes it possible to produce a highly polished white rice which still is high in nutritive value.  
p.114
“Converted” rice is made by steeping paddy rice in hot water under pressure.  The water soluble minerals and vitamins in the outer layers are absorbed by the startch center.  After steaming and drying, the rice grains can undergo the regular milling and polishing processes without loss of nutritive value.

Beulah Tannenbaum and Myra Stillman, Understanding food : the chemistry of nutrition, [1962]
   ____________________________________
   ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Rogers, Everett M.
Diffusion of innovation.
rev. ed. of :  Communication of innovations.  2nd ed. 1971.
bibliography
includes indexes
1. diffusion of innovation.
2. diffusion of innovations──study and teaching──history.

HM101.R57   1983
303.4'84

pp.7─8
Controlling scurvy in the British navy :  innovation do not sell themselves

   Many technologies think that advantageous innovations will sell themselves, that the obvious benefits of a new idea will be widely realized by potential adopters, and that the innovation will therefore diffuse rapidly.  Unfortunately, this is very seldom the case.  Most innovations, in fact, diffuse at a surprisingly slow rate.
   Scurvy control provides an interesting historical case of how slowly an obviously beneficial innovation spread (Mosteller, 1981).  In the early days of long sea voyages, scurvy was the worst killer of the world's sailors, worse than warfare, accidents, and all other causes of death.  For instance, of Vasco de Gama's crew of 160 men who sailed with him around the Capf of Good Hope in 1497, 100 died of scurvy.  In 1601, an English sea captain, James Lancaster, conducted a kind of experiment to evaluate the ability of lemon juice to prevent scurvy.  Captain Lancaster commanded four ships that sailed from England on a voyage to India; he served three tea spoonfuls of lemon juice every day to the sailors on the biggest of his four ships.  Most of these men stayed healthy.  But on the three smaller ships, by the halfway point in the journey, 110 out of 278 sailors had died from scurvy.  The three smaller ships constituted Lancaster's “control group”; they were not given any lemon juice.  So many of these sailors were sick, in fact, that Lancaster had to transfer men from the larger ship to staff the three smaller ships.
   These results were so clear-cut that one might expect that the British Navy would decide to adopt citrus juice as a scurvy prevention on all its ships, or at least carry out further investigations on the effects of citrus  fruit.  But it was not until 1747, about 150 years later, that James Lind, a British Navy physician who knew of Lancaster's results, carried out another experiment on the ship  Salisbury.  To each scurvy patient on this ship, Lind prescribed either two oranges and one lemon, or one of five other diets; a half-pint of sea water, six spoonfuls of vinegar, a quart of cider, nutmeg, or seventy-five drops of vitriol elixer.  The scurvy patients who got the citrus fruits were cured in a few days, and were able to help Dr. Lind care for the other patients.  Unfortunately, the supply of oranges and lemons was exhausted in six days.
   Certainly, with this further solid evidence of the ability of citrus fruits to combat scurvy, one would expect the British Navy to adopt this technological innovation for all ship's crews on long sea voyages, and in fact, it did so.  But not until 1795, forty-eight (48) years later.  Scurvy was immediately wiped out.  And after a further wait of only seventy more years, in 1865, the British Board of Trade adopted a similar policy, and eradicated scurvy in the merchant marine.
   Why were naval authorities so slow to adopt the idea of citrus for scurvy prevention?  Historians are not able to provide a very clear explanation.  But it seems that other, competing remedies for scurvy were also being proposed, and each such cure had its champions.  For example, Captain Cook's reports from his voyages in the Pacific did not provide support for curing scurvy with citrus fruits.  Further, Dr. Lind was not a very prominent figure in the field of naval medicine, and so his experimental findings did not get much attention in the British Navy.  While scurvy prevention was generally resisted for years by the British Navy, other innovations like new ships and new guns were accepted more readily.  

Rogers, Everett M.
Diffusion of innovation.
rev. ed. of :  Communication of innovations.  2nd ed. 1971.
bibliography
includes indexes
1. diffusion of innovation.
2. diffusion of innovations──study and teaching──history.
   ____________________________________

Dave Oliver, USN (Ret.), Against the Tide: Rickover's Leadership Principles and the Rise of the Nuclear Navy

Oliver, Dave, 1941-
Against the tide : Rickover's leadership principles and the rise of the nuclear Navy / Rear Admiral Dave Oliver, USN (Ret.).
1. Rickover, Hyman George.
2. admirals--united states--biography.
3. united states. navy--officers--biography.
4. nuclear submarines--united states--history--20th century.
5. nuclear warships--united states--safety measures--history.
6. marine nuclear reactor plants--united states--safety measures--history.
7. united states. navy--management.
8. leadership--united states.

2014

p.21
   The Navy had not yet invented equipment that could adequately control the atmosphere inside the submarine, so everyone breathed air containing carbon dioxide, as well as other nasty contaminants, at about thirty times normal levels.  We understood that our atmosphere wasn't exactly the same as the one that grew corn and soybeans back in Indiana, although doctors weren't sure of the long-term effects.  Without reading the New England Journal of Medicine, we could tell excess carbon dioxide affected the bodies' platelets, as our blood took a long time clotting until we had been off the submarine for a couple weeks.  We assumed the air was also the reason for the low-level pounding ache in the back of our brains.

   (Against the tide : Rickover's leadership principles and the rise of the nuclear Navy / Rear Admiral Dave Oliver, USN (Ret.)., 1. Rickover, Hyman George., 2. admirals--united states--biography., 3. united states. navy--officers--biography., 4. nuclear submarines--united states--history--20th century., 5. nuclear warships--united states--safety measures--history., 6. marine nuclear reactor plants--united states--safety measures--history., 7. united states. navy--management., 8. leadership--united states., 2014, )
   ____________________________________

Gods and heroes : mythology around the world
by Korwin Briggs

2018

p.235
The Maori of New Zealand have one of the best-documented mythologies in all of Oceania and the Pacific.  
Polynesians some of history's greatest mariners, allowing them to explore and settle thousands of miles of islands and archipelagos using nothing but wood canoes.

Korwin Briggs is the creator of Veritable Hokum, a webcomic about weird, funny, fascinating stories from history and mythology.  He lives in New York under a pile of sketchbooks.
   ____________________________________

Robert Greene, Mastery, 2012
Greene, Robert.  Mastery / Robert Greene.
1. successful people.  
2. success.  
3. self-actualization (psychology).

includes bibliographical references
BF637.S8G695  2012
158─dc23
2012027195

pp.270─272
Among the many feats of human navigation of the sea, perhaps none are more remarkable and mysterious than the voyages of the indigenous peoples in the area known as Oceania ─ comprising the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Poly nesia.  In an area that is 99.8 percent water, the inhabitants of this region were able for many centuries to deftly navigate the vast spaces between the islands.  Some 1,500 years ago they managed to travel the several thousand miles to Hawaii, and perhaps at one point even voyaged as far as parts of North and South America, all in canoes with the same design and technology as those of the Stone Age.  During the 19th century, mostly because of Western interference and the introduction of charts and compasses, these ancient navigating skills died out, and the source of their uncanny skill remained mostly a mystery.  But in the area of Micronesia known as the Caroline islands, certain islanders maintained  the ancient traditions well into the 20th century.  And the first Westerners who traveled with them were astonished at what they witnessed.
   The Islanders would travel in outrigger canoes fitted with a sail with three or four men aboard, one serving as the chief nagivator.  They had no charts or instruments of any kind, and for the Westerners who accompanied them this could be a disconcerting experience.  Taking off at night or day (it didn't matter to them), there would be apparently nothing to guide them along the way.  The islands were so far apart that one could travel for days without spotting land.  To go off course only slightly  (and storms or weather changes could certainly cause that) would mean never spotting their destination, and probably death─it would take too long to find the next island in the chain, and supplies would run out.  And yet they would embark on their sea voyages with a remarkably relaxed spirit.
   The chief navigator would occasionally glance at the night sky or the position of the sun, but mostly he talked with the others or stared straight ahead.  Sometimes one of them would lie belly down in the middle of the outrigger canoe and report some information he had gleaned.  In general they gave the impression of being passengers on a train, serenely taking in the passing scenery.  They seemed even calmer at night.  WHen they were supposedly getting closer to their destination, they would become slightly more alert.  They would follow the paths of birds in the sky; they would look deeply into the water, which they would sometimes cup in their hands and smell.  WHen they arrived at their destination, it was all with the air of pulling into the train station on time.  They seemed to know exactly how long it would take and how many supplies were required for the voyage.  Along the way, they would make perfect adjustments to any changes in weather or currents.
   Curious  as to how this was possible, some Westerners asked to be initiated into their secrets, and over the decades such travelers managed to piece together the system the Islanders used.  As these Westerners discovered, one of their principal means of navigation was following the paths of stars in the night sky.  Over the course of centuries, they had devised a chart comprising of the path of 14 different constellations.  These constallations, along with the sun and the moon, described arcs in the sky that could translate into 32 different directions around the circle of the horizon.  These arcs remained the same, no matter the season.  From their own island, they could map out the location of all of the islands in their area by locating what stars they should be under at particular moments at night, and they knew how this position would change to another star as they traveled toward their destination.  The Islanders had no writing system.  Apprentice navigators simply had to memorize this elaborate map, which was in continual motion.
   During the day, they would chart a course by the sun.  Toward the middle of the day they could read the exact direction they were headed in by the shadows that were cast on the mast.  At dawn or at sunset they could use the moon, or the stars sinking below the horizon or starting to rise.  To help them measure the distance they had covered, they would choose an island somewhere off to the side as a reference point.  By following the stars in the sky they could calculate when would be passing by this reference island, and how much time remained to reach their destination.
   As part of this system, they envisioned that their canoe was completely still─the stars moved above them, and the islands in the ocean were moving toward and then away from them as they passed them.  Acting as if the canoe were stationary made it easier to calculate their position within their reference system.  Although they knew that islands did not move, after many years of traveling this way, they would literally experience the trip as if they were sitting still.  This would account for the impression they gave of looking like passengers in a train viewing the passing landscape.
   Their sky chart was complemented by dozens of other signs they had learned to read.  In their apprenticeship system, young navigators would be taken to sea and made to float in the ocean for several hours.  In this way, they could learn to distinguish the various currents by how they felt on their skin.  After much practice, they could read these currents by lying down on the floor of the canoe.  They had developed a similar sensitivity to winds, and could identify various wind currents by how they moved the hairs on their head, or the sail on the outrigger.
   Once they approached an island, they knew how to interpret the paths of land birds, which left in the morning to fish or returned at dusk to their homes.  They could read the changes in the phosphorescence of the water that indicated closeness to land, and they could gauge whether the clouds in the distance were reflecting land beneath them, or simply ocean.  They could touch the water to their lips, sensing any changes in temperature that indicated they were approaching an island.  There were many more such indicators; the Islanders had learned to see everything in this environment as a potential sign.
   What was most remarkable was that the chief navigator hardly seemed to be paying attention to this complex network of signs.  Only an occasional glance upward or downward would indicate any kind of reading that was going on.  Apparently, Master navigators knew the sky chart so well that with the sight of one star in the sky they could immediately sense where all of the others were located.  They had learned how to read the other navigational signs so well that it all had become second nature.  They had a complete feel for this environment, including all the variables that seemed to make it so chaotic and dangerous.  As one Westerner put it, such Masters could travel hundreds of miles from island to island as easily as an experienced cab driver could negotiate the labyrinthine streets of London.  

   (Mastery / Robert Greene., 1. successful people., 2. success., 3. self-actualization (psychology), includes bibliographical references, BF637.S8G695  2012, 158─dc23, 2012027195, )
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πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα
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