Working on puzzle books is like working out in a gym for your brain. Whether solving a Sudoku or cracking a cryptogram, you give your mind a fantastic workout. These puzzles are not only entertaining, but they also help enhance memory, improve problem-solving skills, and act as a form of meditation to de-stress and focus the mind.
Read MoreAccording to many sources, today is Thesaurus Day, an unofficial holiday commemorating the birthday of Peter Mark Roget, best known for Roget's Thesaurus. I still have a battered, dog-eared hard copy of Roget's aboard … 1977 pub date. I knew you'd be impressed. We don't always have internet and I never know when I'll need just the right word and Roget's is chockablock full of them. I admit, however, that having a hard copy of any book aboard makes it a dinosaur..
When we have internet, I do use thesaurus.com and love it, but on the boat, we do not have the luxury of staying on-line all the time … nor even keeping our laptops plugged in and on continuously for that matter. I use an off-line dictionary/thesaurus, Artha, on occasion, but I find pulling the thesaurus from the bookshelf and thumbing through the pages is just as easy and probably more satisfying.
Some thesaurus trivia for you (because you know how I am). The word thesaurus comes from the Greek word, thesauros, meaning treasure or storehouse. First published in 1852 with 15,000 words, Roget's is still one of the most widely used reference books in the English language around the world. Since 1852, the book has never gone out of publication. It is believed that Roget worked on making word lists as a way to combat depression and mental illness, much like Word Find and crossword puzzles are encouraged to ward off (or at least delay) the onset of dementia
Roget is also known for inventing the log slide rule in 1814. Talk about dinosaurs! Just as an aside, I asked David if he'd still be able to use a slide rule and he said “Of course, I would. It's easy!” Anyone out there remember taking a trig class in high school and having to figure out how to use a slide rule? Not one of my favorite memories. I'll stick with the thesaurus. By the way, when I located this slide rule pic on Wikopedia Commons, it's listed as an “artifact”.
The topic of dinosaurs aboard, however, stirred up a conversation with the captain. We started listing techno-dinosaurs like dial telephones, pay phones, dial-up internet, tube tvs and typewriters. Then there were those we think are near extinction like landline phones, fax machines, telephone books, travel agents, hard copy newspapers and magazines and brick and mortar bookstores. We kind of mourn the fact that kids no longer have to learn cursive writing nor the multiplication tables nor how to tell time on an analog clock or count back change. Are we sounding like old curmudgeons?
We wondered just how many items we might have aboard that are extinct or on the verge. Our paper charts, for sure, though we find ourselves relying on them less and less. We've still got CDs and DVDs aboard, too. Our chartplotter (2008) requires us to turn knobs and dials instead of using a touchscreen. Yikes … nine years old and a dinosaur already.
Don't get us wrong. We really do try to embrace new technology. ATMs, GPSs, Wifi and on-line banking allow us to live the life we lead pretty-much hassle-free. Amazon Prime, now that we're back in the USA, has been a godsend.
Yet technological advances are coming so fast and furiously and there are so many things out there that seem superfluous, we have to sit back and wonder if we need all the extra gear, aka “stuff”, that's available and we're encouraged to buy. There's something to be said for a simpler life with fewer toys and a bit more expended effort. Perhaps, we're dinosaurs?
We'll be entering the Bermuda Triangle soon, on our way north to the USA. Just Google “Bermuda Triangle” and you get over 3 million hits. I had to research carefully, because if we believed all the fantastic stories written about occurrences in this area, we'd never sail there. Here are some interesting facts to ponder:
1. The exact size of the Bermuda Triangle depends on your source. The smallest area ever defined is at least 500,000 square miles. Some sources day it is as large as 1.5 million square miles.
2. The Bermuda Triangle is roughly defined by an imaginary triangle that connects Miami, Florida to Bermuda and San Juan, Puerto Rico. This area is also known as “The Devil's Triangle” or “The Hoodoo Sea."
3. Christopher Columbus is thought to be the first European to sail through the area known as the Bermuda Triangle on his first voyage to the New World. He reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings.
4. The first mention of unusual incidents within the area was in 1894. A US Navy officer, S. D. Sigsbee, concluded a 7-year study in which he noted that 1,628 derelict vessels had been found within the area that is now called the Bermuda Triangle.
5. Vincent Gaddis, an American author, coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a February 1964 Argosy magazine cover piece. The Argosy was the first American pulp magazine published 1882-1978.
6. Some scholars claim that William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, was based on a real-life Bermuda Triangle shipwreck.
7. The Bermuda Triangle was a best-selling 1974 book by Charles Berlitz which popularized the belief of the Bermuda Triangle as an area of ocean prone to disappearing ships and airplanes. The book sold nearly 20 million copies in 30 languages, but is now out of print.
8. Unexplained events within the Bermuda Triangle have been attributed to: UFOs, leftover technology from the mythical city of Atlantis, underwater pyramids, sea monsters, methane bubbles and mud volcanoes, giant whirlpools and blue holes, electronic fog, compass deviation, violent weather (including sudden squalls, downdrafts, hurricanes and waterspouts), the Gulf Stream, giant rogue waves and human error … and probably a few more that I've missed.
9. Steven Spielberg played upon the UFO theory in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the planes of the missing WWII Flight 19 were discovered in the desert and the missing crew was returned on the alien spacecraft.
10. Lloyds of London, a major insurer of ships and boats, does not charge any extra premium for vessels plying the waters of the Bermuda Triangle. If the insurers don't charge more, they obviously don't think it's a risk. In actuality, considering the amount of ocean-going traffic in the area, the incidence of losses in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle are no worse than any other place.
11. The Bermuda Triangle was one of the places on Earth where true north and magnetic north line up and this was sometimes considered a cause for miscalculation on the part of sailors when sailing through the BT. This is no longer true, however, because as the Earth's electromagnetic field has changed, magnetic north has shifted. The agonic line, the point at which true north and magnetic north are the same, is now somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
Want to test your knowledge of the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Take this quiz.
Hi there and welcome to Just A Little Further!
We are David and Marcie Lynn and we've lived aboard our Liberty 458 cutter-rigged sailboat since 2000.
What began as an urge to travel slowly and economically at our own pace ended up an adventure of a lifetime.
Well, here we are ... nearly 90,000 miles under the keel, 5 continents, 5 Great Southern Capes, 36 countries and almost two decades later, still taking one passage at a time and going just a little further.
