Ask just about any woman.
Heh. I'll take the map and the compass every time. I'm not in any sort of a competition, and I do have a handheld GPS device, although I rarely carry it on my bicycle. I must say I've gotten a lot of unintelligible and just plain wrong directions, some even bizarre, on occasion. But my GPS does not talk, it's the kind that says, "You Are Here." A friend of mine was on his way to Tierra del Fuego from Fairfax County, VA. On a motorcycle with a GPS. He got lost in the Atacama Desert, which isn't exactly good. He said later, "I knew exactly where I was, but I didn't know which way to go." Hence the map and compass. My GPS does have a mapping function, which is as accurate as its map is. Which is pretty accurate, for CONUS. But I don't trust it implicitly, all maps contain errrors. Google maps are good, but not realtime. But a basic knowledge of astronomy, an accurate timepiece and a compass are all that is really required for navigation. Maps are nice, GPS is nice. But these are just in the "nice things to have" category. As far as the relationship issues are concerned, it is important to value input into the process. What we are trying to do here is get someplace. Women tend, I think, to value cooperation more than men. They value collaborative solutions, and that is good. A consensus value is more important than an absolute. Men want certainty, regardless of the consensus. If the consensus is perceived as wrong, and a certainty is available, a man will take it (it may be wrong too, but it's a basis for action). That I think may be why men are perceived by women as reluctant to ask for directions. And why they value a thing like GPS, because it depends on a certainty, position, but not a context, a map. The only problem is the reliability of the map, which some appear to take for granted but which cannot be assumed. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
