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Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

bbc.com

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Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#51

Post by bigiain »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #34
jacquesm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason that you should be able to set up a tent, cook a meal, write some software and repair some piece of kit that you need. It's the kind of thing that comes in handy all the time. Of course you could rely on all kinds of technical gizmos to cover you but that stuff can break, run out of battery power, be lost and so on. Good luck finding your way out of the national park with your empty phone.

> Good luck finding your way out of the national park with your empty phone. That's why the national park is full of clearly marked trails. If you're backpacking through unmarked wilderness, you need a navigation system, and you know you need it. That's 0% of people to several significant figures.

I have ended up in neighbourhoods in cities I'm not familiar with, which all have "clearly marked roads", but knowing I'm on the corner of Smith St and 22nd Avenue isn't the same as knowing how to get back to somewhere I know where I am.

Having a very coarse idea of compass directions lets you do things like "I just need to keep heading east until I hit the railway line, then follow it to a station", or "I can head to the coast then turn right and I'll eventually end up at Cliff House, and I know how to get home from there".

It is still a useful skill, especially if you ride a motorcycle, where those strategies are often "good enough" that it's not worth stopping to pull out your phone (even if you do have coverage and battery...)

Even just being at a large event like a festival, and being able to look at a map with north indicated and then go, "yeah, so we need to go _that way_ to get to the stage we need next" is better than trying to match landmarks from the map to choose which direction to go (in my opinion...)

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#52

Post by jussij »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #43
tanakachen wrote: post #26

It’s fascinating to see. But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage). I don’t mean to say the pollution isn’t worth the fox study. But why isn’t anyone asking if it is? Who determines, or at which point do we say, yes this study is worth creating this amount of pollution?

But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage). You need a little perspective about the true extent of the problem. A GPS tracker probably weights 4 ounces. For comparison, the Yangtze river alone dumps 1.5 million metric tons of plastic per year into the Yellow Sea. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Or the estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that make up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:

https://earthsky.org/earth/great-pacific-garbage-patch-bigge...

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#53

Post by School-Cotton »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most aren't. Some are.

It's scary how inept people are in general at navigation. Telling the time and obtaining a rough compass heading by the position of the sun should be something anybody can do but surprisingly few people can do this.

> ...should be something anybody can do...

Why? Certainly anyone could learn to do this, but is there any practical reason for someone like me who absolutely never goes to the wilderness to spend time doing this?

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#55

Post by hak8or »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
mirceal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why? why do humans nowadays need this skill?

For the same reason that you should be able to set up a tent, cook a meal, write some software and repair some piece of kit that you need. It's the kind of thing that comes in handy all the time. Of course you could rely on all kinds of technical gizmos to cover you but that stuff can break, run out of battery power, be lost and so on. Good luck finding your way out of the national park with your empty phone.

I live in NYC and live pretty much my entire life in dense urban cities. Why on earth would I need to know how to make a tent, tell the time via the sun, or other things you probably view as crucial like starting a fire or knowing how to fish. Heck, for me it is a waste to learn how to drive.

It is very self centered of you to think everyone's lives are similar enough to yours that this skill even has a chance d being used once, less so being necessary.

By the same reasoning I could argue that everyone should know how monetary policy in the united States works, because it effects everyone in the world, even if you don't live in the USA. We have finite time and energy to learn things, it would be a waste to use them on learning how to do something you will never have to do.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#56

Post by xarope »

bigiain wrote: post #48
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scary how inept people are in general at navigation. Telling the time and obtaining a rough compass heading by the position of the sun should be something anybody can do but surprisingly few people can do this.

I'm pretty good at this at home in the southern hemisphere, but I'm much worse when visiting the northern hemisphere and the sun "goes the wrong way"... My instinctive sense of direction doesn't work with "the sun in the south midday" thing, and I need to pull that up into the intellectual part of my brain all the time. "Ummm, I'm in SF, if the sun's over _there_ and it's mid morning that much be, ummm, south east-is…

I know how you feel. I used to live in OZ, and when I visited NYC, I'd always end up going in the opposite direction of where I was supposed to go (and no, taking the opposite of the direction I "felt" I should go, didn't work either... haha)

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#57

Post by LanceH »

howdydoo wrote: post #40

You might also like: - Polar bear shot dead in Iceland I can't say that I would. I guess this is as good a place as any to ask – what's the value of interrupting the article halfway through to link me to other articles? It's something I expect from the likes of Buzzfeed, but now the BBC is doing it too. Did they think I'd get bored halfway through?

The article on a polar bear shot in Iceland is also about migrations patterns of mammals in the far north Atlantic. So someone is reading it for the subject rather than the story may like it.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#58

Post by tanakachen »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #43
tanakachen wrote: post #26

It’s fascinating to see. But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage). I don’t mean to say the pollution isn’t worth the fox study. But why isn’t anyone asking if it is? Who determines, or at which point do we say, yes this study is worth creating this amount of pollution?

But what about the plastic pollution as a result of this (from the GPS tracker that will now become permanent plastic garbage). You need a little perspective about the true extent of the problem. A GPS tracker probably weights 4 ounces. For comparison, the Yangtze river alone dumps 1.5 million metric tons of plastic per year into the Yellow Sea. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Some oceanic science experiments drop thousands of ocean drones into the oceans to track currents. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but how come nobody questions if it is worth it?

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#59

Post by dmitriid »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
debatem1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, tents. Those can be broken or lost, utterly unreliable. Best just cover yourself in leaves when the rains come. Sarcasm, of course. But this manly-man "gotta be self sufficient" thing always strikes me as so peculiarly limited. Why assume that this piece of gear will be lost but not that one? Why should we believe that, when all the restaurants have gone and civilization has collapsed, the grocery stores will st…

It's nothing to do with manliness, but just common sense. If you don't know the sun sets in the West and is at its highest point roughly at noon in your local timezone what else is there that you don't know? Basic practical knowledge comes in handy all the time. There isn't a skill that I have that I have not used (and not just to use it when some better alternative was available) and there are still plenty that I'd…

> If you don't know the sun sets in the West and is at its highest point roughly at noon in your local timezone what else is there that you don't know?

And how many more things I do know

> Basic practical knowledge comes in handy all the time.

It doesn’t. The ability to strike a tent, roast a grizzly bear, read weather from moss and bird patterns comes in handy about 0% of the time.

Even knowing that the sun sets in the West has zero practical applications in urban settings.

Re: Scientists 'speechless' at Arctic fox's epic trek

#60

Post by irrational »

School-Cotton wrote: post #53
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scary how inept people are in general at navigation. Telling the time and obtaining a rough compass heading by the position of the sun should be something anybody can do but surprisingly few people can do this.

> ...should be something anybody can do... Why? Certainly anyone could learn to do this, but is there any practical reason for someone like me who absolutely never goes to the wilderness to spend time doing this?

I can't tell you how many times I've told my wife something using cardinal directions (it's due west of here) and she has no idea which way that is. Frankly its frustrating. Cardinal directions are so very useful that not knowing naturally which way is which is self-limiting.
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