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White Christmas In Antarctica
The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but Science Daily asks you to "spare a thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth to support ESA's CryoSat mission." Plenty of people cooped up in the upside-down parts seem to find good ways to amuse themselves; I am especially fond of this introduction to Condition One weather, and Cops McMurdo. If anyone is reading this down there, I hope you're having a nice holiday.
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Thank you for your service. Hope you get home to your families soon.
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I just came down from the (sadly penguin-free) summit of Mauna Kea - where we too are having a White Christmas this year - and would like to wish my fellow scientists in Antarctica a Merry (White) Christmas in Hawaiian. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
*pushes detonator*
captcha: childish
To have posts like this. Probably one of those caring liberals.
I guess everybody is having Christmases. It's damn near dead all over the Internet.
Sure the isolation sounds terrible but apparently those clever scientists have figured out a good way to pass the time, huddle up with other researchers, feeling cold, and needing warmth...
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They're pretty much the only ones enjoying a white Christmas in the southern hemisphere, although it's probably not wintery even for them with 24 hours of sunlight.
I have to point out that Slashdot does seem unoriginal when you have RSS feeds of sites like Ars Technica and Science Daily.
Whenever I see something about McMurdo, it reminds me of when I was in high school (in the early seventies) and had bought my first shortwave radio. Back then, there were no satellite links to McMurdo, so a lot of traffic was done with amateur radio stations utilizing a device called a "phone patch". There was a net of amateur stations in the US, and when someone stationed at McMurdo wanted to talk to their family or other loved ones, the ham that was closest to the family in the US would call them on the telephone and then "patch" the telephone to his transmitter and receiver. The parties could then talk to each other, although the folks on the telephone side of the conversation had to remember that it was actually half-duplex. Mostly it was pretty mundane traffic, but every once in a while things would get hot and heavy and a session of phone sex would occur. The only difference was that everyone in the US (and any other area that had propagation) listening to that frequency (usually in the 7 MHz ham band) could hear all the details. It was thought that the new wives were not aware that their conversation was public since after all, they were just talking on the phone. And it was also thought that the husbands at McMurdo just didn't care (I don't think women were allowed to go to McMurdo at that time). Good stuff for a teenager long before the Internet, cell phones, cable TV and other diversions.
It's boom town over there right now. The real troopers are the ones who stay on over the winter.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us
Hi from Canada !
What's so special about a white Christmas ? ;-)
Joyeux Noel !!!
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
But TFA is about a blue Christmas.
I wintered over at South Pole last year. I'm still on extended recuperation holiday, actually, and just returned to Christchurch where all of my gear was stored (thanks, Windsor hotel).
Summer is pretty easy on the Ice, actually. Just wear sunglasses when you get up to pee, or your body will jolt into alertness with the blazing sun. Plus, you're roach your retinas.
Everyone said it's the last month or two of a year's service that really tests people, and brings out the stupidity. Boy, were they right.
It's not as hard as some people will make it out to be. We get to keep out appendices in (unless like a certain SatComm Eng I know, it goes bad midway through your season). Hardest part is not punching the asshats who try to provoke confrontation (gotta keep that completion bonus), and dealing with the government technology and procurement decisions, which would royally piss off you open source peeps.
Easy for me to say, I didn't break anything nor did I have anything broken for me. Two situations which we did observe this year.
All the best to the new crew toughing it out. Enjoy the cabernet while it lasts. Don't break CommsShop Theater and don't blame me for the current state of affairs! :-D
Interestingly although, as you say, you can have a white Christmas in Hawaii, it isn't always white everywhere in Antarctica during Christmas. Checkout these photos from 2004 for Davis during Christmas.
Good question. Here in Minnesota I would really enjoy a nice warm christmas where everyone can wear shorts and enjoy some sunshine out on the green grass.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
I prefer the term "color-challenged," thankyouverymuch!
It's fairly rare for the entire country to have a white Christmas (one of BC, PEI, Nova Scotia, or Newfoundland and Labrador will usually not have snow on the ground), which I believe happened this year.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Well, it is summer down here in the southern hemisphere.
Ezekiel 23:20
I so want to work down there...
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
And keep in mind that the festive period of Antarctica is not Giftmas or even New Years (too much work to do, too many bosses around), but the Midwinter, celebrated when you are halfway through your 'tour of duty', and the days are the coldest.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I'm in Southern California. A white Christmas would be a nightmare.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
But then in the depths of winter there's nothing to cheer you up, it's business as usual.
Fortunately practically all of the southern hemisphere residents are at latitudes that don't experience a severe winter.
Santa lives on the other side of the planet!
I guess everybody is having Christmases. It's damn near dead all over the Internet.
ya missed the news from a couple days ago. The usdersea cables are cut again.
The truth shall set you free!
Meh. It was 80 here in Brandon, Fl yesterday (Christmas). My daughter who is home on break from college complained it was too hot so we had the air conditioning on all day and night. She's going to school in Indiana so this is a big change for her.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Obviously, that post was intended to disrespect the parent poster and the troops. Joking about terrorists trying to murder people serving in the military in a thread about wishing people well in Christmas is simply not funny.
But it is funny.
Mocking other peoples' bad decisions has been a staple of comedy forever.
Try listening to this to cheer you up.
There are PLENTY OF CONSERVATIVES who take exception to what people say. ALL THE TIME. Both of you conservatives and liberals take exception to things that you do not agree with. Personally, I am sick of the lot of you. Election is over. Our nation has been nearly destroyed by Reagan and Bush II. It is time to re-examine our nation's gov and where we are going.
Christ I live in Boston, and it can get hot here, but at the beginning of December when I went to Florida, I turned OFF the AC. I WANTED hot weather... why would I want to freeze in a tropical wonderland? I can do that at home for the next four months.
I was at McMurdo 95-96, for 13 months ( Winfly, Summer, Winter, Summer). Yeah, I agree that summer is not that hard. More like: its great. The mating scenarios there are called ice-marriages, ice-wives, ice-husbands. Thats the enduring ones. Then there are the thousands of serial relationship hook-ups. Some got through the winter by logging amazing amounts of hours in bed (WITH SOMEONE ELSE!!). Then there was the whole girls-nude-in-suana-looking-for-a-hookup, thing. Ahem, and a lot of the guys and girls are geeks. My own account is written here: http://lanceville-antarctica.appspot.com/?page=antarctica-alaska As I recall, Christmas at McMurdo was a lot of fun, plenty of people, parties, and the weather is usually great.
Lance,
Am I to assume that there are still a lot more guys than girls down there?
Inquiring nerds want to know!
And Merry Christmas
7 to 3 ratio. Take out the married ones and the scary ones and you're looking at probably 9 to 1.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
That's what it's like here in McMurdo, except there's only basalt instead of grass.
Those pictures looked a lot like the McMurdo Christmas photos. I guess everyone does the same silly stuff down here.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
My answer only goes for 95-96. I'm not sure of the ratio, but maybe females made up 30%. I supply that figure as a wild azz guess, someone out there may be able to data mine NSF reports for the true figure. What geeks want to know: it is very hard to avoid having sex while on the Ice. In explicit language geeks can understand: Sex is prevalent, and distributed almost evenly.
Did summer 07/08, and will be wintering 2009. I'll keep that in mind about the last two months. I already suspect who our biggest asshat will be next winter. Surprised the psych boys didn't drum him out. Most of the people are pretty awesome, though. Enjoy New Zealand, and may I recommend visiting Dunedin to your south? Go see the albatrosses there.
I read your account but was even more intrigued by Akutan. It sounds like an incredibly violent place. What's the scoop?
So what piss-ant little country that America defends do you hail from?
I guess you would prefer the almighty UN "handling" the world's problems.
Just don't ask those that the UN "helps" what they think (Rwandans, Darfurians, etc).
This being Slashdot and we are talking about Antarctica I must tell this story. I was at McMurdo 1995-6. In the winter-over we are down to around 190 people, and one unix sys admin for the base. He had been there through the summer, so I had gotten to know him before the sun set and winter began. He seemed normal enough in a loner sort of way in the summer. I even got my first exposure to unix know-how from him. As the winter set in, this unix admin began a new behavior. He would bark. Yes, bark with a real barking sound. He would only bark when upset at someone or something. At the wine bar (yes, wine bar ) someone said something he disagreed with and he just....barked. One very articulate and semantically well-formed bark. A few weeks later I saw a sign behind the bartender that said "No Barking". I lurked in the Crary Lab Mac Lab during my free time, enjoying the early WWW before spam-crud polluted it. One time, as I surfed the net, the unix admin was doing his job on another terminal. I guess he was having trouble with a script or other command line incantation. I heard him snapping his teeth at the keyboard, just a like a dog. This promoted unix like no other marketing campaign, I have been using Linux or OS X Unix ever since.
Given that the continent is one of few places not visited by every tourist (yet) the summer sees the population of visitors exceed the residents.
And yet, despite my efforts, there is not a single hotel on the ice.
I tried to convince the British Antarctic Society that their latest research station should incorporate a hotel--but they said their charter prohibited it.
There are probably even some people who would like to become permanent residents...there are advantages to living in the last lawless zone on the planet--and tax free as well. (Of course, scientists aren't exempt because their home countries still tax them.)
If anyone is interested in such a project, or a similar remote location facility, I would be very happy to discuss it with them.
My plan eliminates the major problems of building in places like Antarctica where all material brought in must be accounted for and taken out again, and the building season is both extremely short and extremely variable in weather--not to mention far from typical trade/shipping routes which makes labor and material costs soar.
This design can be used in any climate including the sea, and is best suited for areas with coastal access and limited slopes.
The design for Antarctic use is mobile and can be used to build facilities into the 100,000's of cubic meters while providing both shirt sleeve and "cool" work environments (cool = above -40)
wizodd AT wizodd DOT com
The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us
Hi from Canada !
What's so special about a white Christmas ? ;-)
Joyeux Noel !!!
Hi from Australia whats a white Christmas :-p
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit