Discussion: Philosophy Department to the Rescue

Latest info regarding the Western Mass 5 Day (May 26-27):

-- See NEOC's web page for all the details. Online registration is open. Register by April 20 for the lowest rates.

-- In case this is the first you've heard of the event, it's five events but all in two days, the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.

Event 1 is an A meet middle distance Saturday morning on a new map (and new terrain) on part of the Holyoke Range.

Event 2 is another A meet middle distance Saturday afternoon, same place. So it's possible to get two A meets and be home for dinner, and still have most of the weekend left.

But why not stay a little longer. Events 3, 4, and 5 are local club events, but all special. Event 3 is a sprint at UMass, first time an official event there, late Saturday afternoon. Event 4 is a sprint at Cemetery Hill, on the south side of Northampton, Sunday morning. And event 5 is a mass-start forked event at at Mt. Tom, Sunday at noon.

Course setters and vetters will be Alex Jospe, Ali Crocker, Phil Bricker, and Peter Gagarin.

-- All of this, by the way, is to benefit our fabulous Ski-O team as they hope to build on their recent successes. The 2013 Ski-WOC are in Kazakhstan, not an easy or inexpensive place to get to, so we hope to raise a good bit of money to help them out. All net proceeds will be donated to the team.

-- And the Philosophy Department's role? Well, we needed an on-campus organization to co-sponsor the sprint at UMass so we could get permission, and the Philosophy Department stepped right up. And the response was all you could have hoped for. From the person in charge of approving such events --

"Thank you so much, Professor Bricker.
Best wishes for a wonderful event.
My sister was an active and enthusiastic participant in orienteering at Penn State!"

What a nice surprise.

I never heard of orienteering while I was at Penn State (for 7 years!)

Thanks Professor Bricker

I am glad to see this come through. I hope I am able to attend it!

The sprint will be especially philosophical: not only will it cause you to wonder where you are, but also who you are, and what you're doing here.

And how it would be different if you were being chased by zombies?

(Do we have any clue as to who this Penn State sister is?)

And will it be more Continental or Analytical?

I hope it will be continental. Sprints in Euro-town centers are far more fun than the usual North American college campus environment.

Philosophical sprint, by Phil (might have missed that). Numerous orienteers running thru a Cemetery on a Sunday am might get a rise out of some folks. But there wasn't a cemetery last December and nothing to that effect mapped. Somewhere adjacent are the graves of forgotten (usually the case at state hospitals) psych patients?

Actually, Alex is setting the UMass sprint, Ali the Cemetery Hill sprint, and I'm doing the farsta at Mt Tom.

At Cemetery Hill, the "graves of forgotten psych patients" are not adjacent, but underfoot.

I've been trying to think about what the great philosophers had to say about orienteering, but as with so many things, I've forgotten whatever I might have learned.

The only one I called think of is Voltaire's classic -- "I orienteer, therefore I am." -- which incidentally sounds much better in English than the original French ("Je fais de la course d'orientation, donc je suis." Or something like that.)

There must be others?

"(Philosophy) Orienteering is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth."
Albert Pike

The only one I called think of is Voltaire's classic -- "I orienteer, therefore I am." -- which incidentally sounds much better in English than the original French ("Je fais de la course d'orientation, donc je suis." Or something like that.)

Normally I would try to bite my tongue and let something like this slip, but the error is too grievous in this case. That's not Voltaire. It's René Descartes. The reason it's significant is that his name translates to "Born again of the maps". (He actually wrote it in Latin, "Navigo ergo sum".)

"I think, therefore I think I'll designate this the thinking sport. I think I'll like it".
(author unknown)

but the error is too grievous

Apparently I've forgotten even more than I thought possible. The saving grace is that, for better or worse, things that used to embarrass me no longer do.

Don't worry, you'll forget the error soon enough.