Science in Antarctica

Richard writes "Just to prove that science is cool; Tania, the editor of Nerdling zine has travelled to Antarctica just to publish some interesting reading material on her blog. Apparently there to calibrate a bunch of physics equipment she appears to spend most of her time marvelling at ice bergs and penguins, abseiling around the continent, and giving us explicit details of the everyday ordinary stuff. Advanced technology in an extreme environment, fantastic stuff!"

Comments

A Picture Says a Thousand Words

[fembots]

At time like this, isn't it better to have a videolog or photolog?

I'm not very well-travelled, so it's a bit overwhelming for me to imagine "The sun came out for the first time in a few days and turned the smooth ocean into a mirror which reflected the bergs" without linking it to DiCaprio.

And how do I decode "sshhhhhHHHHHH" or "KSHHHXXXXXX" or "CRACK CRUNCH GCKKXX"?

Re:'abseiling'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Abseiling: Lower oneself with a double rope coiled around the body from a mountainside

Yellow snow

[Linuxathome]

Publish a picture of yellow snow in the antarctic and I'll look at the photolog.

Firefox unfriendly :(

[Richard_at_work]

Unfortunately her blog renders badly on this install of firefox, anyone else getting overlapping between the two panes?

Re:Firefox unfriendly :(

[jacksonj04]

Yep, I see the same. How hard could it be to use some real CSS and check it in something other than IE?

Re:Firefox unfriendly :(

[jacksonj04]

Basically, Firefox should try rendering pages in an IE 'quirks' mode if they have no doctype definitions, or certain definitions. What I see increasingly is pages proclaiming themselves (through doctype definitions) to be XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant when in reality they're still in HTML 4.0.

This causes Firefox to go "OK, we will render this page completely according to the specs" and it duly doesn't get it quite right.

IE in these situations goes "Oh, i know it *says* it's XHTML 1.0 Strict but *I* think it's really XHTML 1.0 Transitional", and renders it how the writer thinks they intended.

I prefer Firefox even if half the web looks wrong - I know my pages are standards compliant when I code them and theyy check out in the W3C validators.

Drinking at the southpole

[yorkpaddy]

Here is an interesting story I read about drinking at the south pole. Modern Drunkard South Pole

Why I should never go to Antartica

[MagicDude]

I should never go down there, because I would probably torment the penguins. Am I the only one who's curious about what it would be like to run through a flock of penguins to see if it would it be anything like running through a flock of pigeons?

Re:Why I should never go to Antartica

[leathered]

You're a very brave man to admit on Slashdot that you have the urge to torment penguins.

Re:Why I should never go to Antartica

[cvdwl]

Been there, done that, they (emperors) didn't care much, though we weren't in the group responsible for tackling and imprisoning them. Nor do they care about 2-cycle snowmobile motors or large red Snow-Cat like vehicles. The penguin research group actually had several wander up to their enclosure, wait patiently, then walk in when someone opened the door.

Adelies were a bit more skittish, but even they would stroll up and give you a good looking over from a range of a few feet.

DISCLAIMER: No penguins were harmed in the filming of our research!

"Just to"

[oexeo]

Just to prove that science is cool; Tania, the editor of Nerdling zine has travelled to Antarctica just to publish some interesting reading material on her blog.

I don't think "just to" means what you thinks it means.

Re:Mmm Blog Linkage

[KillerCow]

...just another self-obsessed, self-promoting, intellectually challenged blogger.

But... you said that you liked my blog. You said that I was very talented. Was that just to get into my bed?

wait a tic...

[Anonymous Coward]

...isn't that the same bitch who claimed to jump her kawasaki over the chernobyl reactor or whatever?

Re:didnt know that abseiling was a verb

[Thwomp]

Well in English it is! :-)

I haven't been there...

[leehwtsohg]

But I could imagine circumstances in antarctica in which it would be very hard.

Re:Lake in Antarctica?

[mmontour]

You're probably thinking of Lake Vostok.

Scientific Indeed.

[DeathByDuke]

Advanced technology in an extreme environment, fantastic stuff!

Yeah when are they going to get to finding Atlantis? I want a cool puddle jumper thingy.

6000 male scientist blogs go un-noticed

[Red Moose]

In other Slashdot news, 6000 other web logs by male scientist reporters continue to be unimportant due to their lack of being female.

Next up: a girl called Kristin installs Linux.......hold off whacking it just yet.

Re:6000 male scientist blogs go un-noticed

[kandela]

And I suppose you're one of those nerds who wonders why there aren't any girls interested in what you're doing and wonders why nobody talks to you at parties.

If you'd read the blog without making a pre-judgement you'd see why it was getting attention when some others aren't and it's not because she's female but instead because it's beautifully written and inspiring.

In the early days of Australian exploration, the relevent European powers counted a poetic ability as one of the requirements for an explorer. Tania would have met that requirement, her blog effectively describes the beauty of the pursuit of science that we nerds know it to possess, but that we forget others do not share. What makes this blog (and Nerdling) great is that it not only makes science accessible to non-technical types it relates our love of science.

need link to picture

[anonymous21]

There needs to be a new rule: Whenever linking to a story by a chick, please also include a link to a picture of her. This will save countless hours as every male slashdotter tries to search for a pic of her on their own.

Re:Mmm Blog Linkage

[pritchma]

I actually found it quite interesting. Having never been to Antartica, I learnt quite a few things:

* China has a base there
* Ships take 10 hours to get into "port" with much crunching of ice along the way.
* Penguins aren't even remotely afraid of people.

Your post doesn't really add anything to the discussion. If you don't have anything useful to say, read the next article!

Re:Mmm Blog Linkage

[dan dan the dna man]

No, you just offered me the highest traffic linkbacks...

Re:Mmm Blog Linkage

[IO ERROR]

I met my girlfriend through a 'blog, largely because I was open about myself and my interests.

by Anonymous Coward

This is some serious industrial-strength irony.

Re:Mmm Blog Linkage

[metlin]

I think it's just a human thing for others to take notice of what you are upto. Just that Blogs provide people with the illusion that there are *actually* people who read your Blog and are interested in what you're upto.

And that feeling encourages people to write logs in situations where they otherwise wouldn't have.

Cynical Slashdotters

[kandela]

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most beautiful and personal accounts I've ever read about science. I can't believe that the people who read slashdot, who are apparently lovers of science and technology can't see this blog for what it's worth. Somebody wrote that 6000 blogs by male scientists are being ignored - well I'm a male scientist and the reason I read this blog and not others is because apart from being witty in the way us science types like, beautifully written in a literary style, it's informative and most of all it's INSPIRING. No other blog out there that I've seen gives so much of the blogger. Tania is a most inspiring person, she's a person who LOVES science and if you guys can't see past the fact that the page only loads properly in IE and read the love of science then, as far as I'm concerned, you can't call yourself nerds!