While it's unlikely I will ever being doing Micro-O myself, I do welcome it personally, as it can be amusing to think about. And also thought provocative in more serious ways. For instance, are there skills that will be extra important with Micro-O? Are there any skills that will have no bearing at all?
As to the latter, the answer is clearly yes. Map memory is one skill that has no bearing whatsoever in the world of Micro-O. And while thinking about that, I started thinking about how some orienteers think of themselves as different from other people because of skills like map memory. For instance, an orienteer, about to embark on a long and complicated journey, can take one quick glance at a road atlas, and then confidently proceed to get horribly lost within a few minutes of pulling out of the home neighborhood. Regular people don't do that.
But, with map memory type skills in mind, are orienteers really different from regular people at all, or are we just the same, except for a tendency of some of us to wear funny looking pajamas or ridiculous bib overall type affairs (an especially popular look in parts of New England) while running around in the woods? I decided I wanted to answer that question, and by relying on the scientific process, I quickly narrowed my investigations to focus on 2 critical questions that would shine light on darkness. And then I went out and conducted a survey, using advanced polling techniques. I must stipulate from the outset that I was unable to control for certain basic characteristics like age, ethnicity, polling bias, sample size, and cowboyness (for "regular" people I had to use students hanging around the Student Union at UW on a Saturday morning), but other than that, it was very scientific.
The first question: were orienteers any better at being able to remember the color of the eyes of their spouses, or, in the case of the UW students I put the question to, the color of their own eyes (I couldn't find enough students who were already married)? The answer was, rather surprisingly, that there was no difference at all. Both groups displayed no ability to remember eye color at all. The students at least had an excuse: they were utterly wasted after partying all Friday night, and their reddish eye tones were probably atypical anyway. The orienteers sampled had no obvious excuse. They were just bad! Bad, bad, bad!
Well, on to question number two then. Maybe this one would go better.
Which group was more likely to have a picture of their spouse (or themselves, in the case of the UW students) in their wallet? I figured that orienteers, with their extraordinary map memory skills, would be less likely to need to refer to a picture of their spouse to be able to remember what they looked like (thus avoiding getting in some potentially tricky, unhappy situations of mistaken identity). But here, too, "we're the same." Nearly all orienteers carried a picture of their spouse with them, and nearly all the students at least had a picture ID--though some of the ID's were clearly fake.
However, one significant, and wholly unexpected result did jump out at me, when I analyzed at the data: on average, the age of the photo subject at the time the photo was taken was *even younger* among the orienteers than among the students, and the students were, of course, pretty young!!!
I don't know how to explain that shocking finding. Could it be that orienteers, as a group, are more prone to nostalgia, and wistful yearnings of yesteryears spent with their significant others? That might be a nice thing. Or, could it be that orienteers just don't clean out their wallets very often? Maybe it's some kind of deception operation. So hard to know for sure!
At any rate, the summary finding is that: "We're The Same."
What the... has this guy been smoking bitterbrush or something?
Too much LDS is the 60's.
LDS? Does too much religion mess you up?
Definately. But, I digress. Its a movie quote.
Lawyer: You sir are a moron!
Homer: A mormon? But I'm from earth!
What Swampfox tries to say is that he would like to get a free plane ticket to the Highlander, otherwise he gets involved in doing research and we have to listen to the results. You have to able to read between the lines when scientists present their findings.
Well, yes. Wise people do read between the lines, especially in the case where a very crafty Helvetician trained course setter has set traps--I mean, controls--consisting only of pits.