Maps

My fascination with maps started early. I remember how my dad planned a trip from Windhoek in Namibia down to Kimberley in South Africa, using a large map. We poured over it, and I was transfixed by his calculations, and the tracing of the lines on the map with his pencil as he smoked his Rothmans cigarette. In those days large sections of the route were dirt roads, there were areas where we would cross rivers only if they were not in flood as no bridges existed and in many cases we would drive through dry river beds and we needed to know when to exit onto a road to stay on the route down to South Africa.

The important thing was that we would be doing this at night. We were driving down in December and to spare me the inconvenience of the incredible heat, my parents were going to start the trip at 16:00, driving through the night to arrive in Kimberley midday next. My dad was a real navigator. He would study a route and then just go to his destination. On that trip from Windhoek to Kimberley I was sitting in front in the white Ford Corsair, my mother was pregnant with my brother and she was sitting in back. During the night I remember looking at the light from the radio as it crackled and hissed over the short wave, my dad expertly navigating through the dark of the desolate Namibian landscape: Mariental, stopping for fuel and my dad asking for water for our thermos, Keetmanshoop, Grünau, and he sun rising at Karasburg, cracking open a real desert morning, cold and sharp, with Fanus Rautenbach on the morning show on the radio, my dad being tired, but committed to continue driving through those hours when sleep is at every corner of the eye. Eventually we would cross at Ariamsvlei and then it was a couple of hours to Douglas, where my dad took a break on the farm Duikersvlei, before doing the last stretch to Kimberley and the comforting smells of my grandmother’s house, mutton chops, potatoes, pumpkin, onions and her own preserved peaches in a thick syrup, all of it washed down with the then famous Kimberly Hop Beer. Oh, and Covent Garden Ice Cream...
And through all of this, the map was there. My dad was looking at it, folding it, estimating arrival times, etc.
When I went to school I collected maps, from the old territory maps of the British, to maps of the Union of South Africa, and beyond. I studied these drawings carefully, almost memorising distances, imprinting the key cities into my brain, and finally dreaming about all those exotic places. London, Stockholm, Inverness, Paris, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo, St Petersburg, New York, and great areas of land mass - Alaska, Patagonia, the Andes, Australia - this list is long. And I wondered what it would be like being there in these exotic places. Maps unlocked my imagination and my great passion for travel.
Maps have a long history. Early maps were done in clay, or on papyrus. Some were designed for the journey to the afterlife, others were used to show who owned what, and who ruled whom. It soon became useful as navigation tools, and later, in the days of the great maritime explorers, the art and science of mapping became the competitive edge of nations.
We take geographical and star maps for granted, expecting high resolution and accuracy, and maps that change to reflect our changing world. One of my favourite sites is the world sunlight map, that shows the cloud mass and the day-night partition of the planet. I like the maps from the Weather Underground on which I can see changing weather patterns in my area. I have their gadget set up in my iGoogle space for example. From my blog you can also go to the map that indicates where visitors to my blog came from (left bottom of the blog).
There are other maps hat we use every day, like Mind Maps, Concept Maps, and many other diagrammatic descriptions that allow us to navigate through information. There are even maps of the World Wide Web. And while we are talking about the web, I must mention Google maps as well. I believe that Google is doing us all a favour by building these maps and allowing us to use them as support to many new applications. As always, knowledge brings power, and danger. A map in the hand of a fool is a sure way to come to disaster.

The image above is from iStockphoto - and I have bough the rights to use it here. Before you use any of the images that the links take you to, consider the intellectual rights of the owners and get permission to use it. It is the right thing to do.

Excellence

Excellence: ěk'sə-ləns, a word that is only about 600 years old. Interestingly, this word is now being used quite a bit. As Centers of Excellence, Excellence Award, and then in lesser contexts like excellent food, excellent technique, and many more, it has slipped into the vocabulary of board rooms, the printed media and it has become a bit cheap as a result. What about words like superb, merit, distinction?

Love. A word in a similar disposition. I’ll leave it at that.

Soon I’ll be attending another Excellence Awards ceremony, where individuals will be praised for their achievements. Their lofty achievements will be recounted, it will be shown how noble they have been in their endeavors to achieve beyond their peers. But excellence is a close family member of the brother called exaggeration. Inflated statements may be made to substantiate the lofty claims.

How do we assess the quality of the work done? “Quality” is another slippery word. In 1988 I was given a copy of “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. My friend Jack Fletcher wrote (amongst other things) the following on the inside flap “Besides, no serious post graduate study in ‘science’ should proceed without first reading this!”. What was it that Jack wanted me to notice? Was it the turmoil of the search for understanding, seeking the deeper self and the dynamics of relationships, or perhaps the confounding behaviour of mechanical devices? Or was it about the metaphysical element ‘quality’? Pirsig’s main character argues back and forth during the 17 day journey about the dimensions of this word, looking at it holistically, analysing it, etc.

In the case of “excellence” one could claim that it is similar: can one find the place where the rational and the romantic perceptions come together to bring appropriate meaning to the word? I believe this is necessary if we want to lift the word back to where it belongs. So that it can describe the things that are out there on the edge of our experience, not within reach of everybody that puts in a bit effort. No, it must demand blood, sweat and tears; it must call for the sharpest of analytical ability being applied during its creation, and it must be seen as a guiding light for others trying to achieve in the same area. It must be beautiful.

If it is a book, it must be new, it must challenge the analyst, it must puzzle the zen student, it must make one nod in agreement, while you have a suspicion something is still lurking to be discovered and it must bring the romantic forward in all of us, blinding us with the sensation that we have happened upon real beauty, something deeply good. I believe the same goes for technology and science. In fact, for all human endeavor one can bring examples that will fit the template described above. The template may have dimensions I missed here, but I guess it is a start. Best for me to call in those that have been recognised for excellence to speak on it.

I leave you with this, from Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” Act IV Scene ii:

Who Is Silvia?
Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admirèd be.

Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.
Love doth to her eyes repair,
To help him of his blindness,
And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.

I use images from my own library and other open sources, as well as commercial sites. All commercial images are paid for and may not be used without you also buying rights to them. Do the right thing, reward the efforts of the artists. Image in this piece from iStockphoto.