South Pole is Spook Country - Topic Powered by eve community

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Posted

Smilla's was set in Copenhagen and the North Artic Circle.

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

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Posted

quote:
Claustrophobia is a bigger problem in the winter when there are no flights for 8-9 months, and you are absolutely going to be nowhere but here (and spend most of that time in the dark).

What would happen if someone lost it?

Say they had passed all the psychiatric testing but went buggo like Michael Biehn in The Abyss?

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

Member

Posted

Cusp, found this on BoingBoing:

Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica , By Nicholas Johnson
Is it the pristine but harsh frontier where noble scientific missions are accomplished? Or an insane corporate bureaucracy where hundreds of workers are cooped together in hi-tech communes with all the soul of a suburban office park?

Welcome to Big Dead Place, a grunt's eye view of America's Antarctic Program that shatters the well-worn clichés of polar literature. Here the heroic camaraderie and romantic desolation give way to sterile buildings populated by characters like a crazed manager who fills his boots with antifreeze, the greasepaint obsessed worker Boozy the Clown, ghosts that haunt the food freezer, and horny employees who grab rare private moments coupling on the altar in the Chapel of the Snows.

The Foreword is by Eirik Sønneland, who claims the longest unsupported ski trek in the continent's history. Also included is a glossary of Antarctic slang and bureaucratese, and 16 pages of color photographs.

http://feralhouse.com/titles/kulchur/big_dead_place.php

Also excerpts here:http://feralhouse.com/press/bigdeadplace/excerpts.php

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

psyclone

Member

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by UberDog:
Smilla's was set in Copenhagen and the North Artic Circle.

Damn. Should have looked it up.

Posts: 1329 | Registered: August 19, 2007

Ignored post by psyclone posted

psyclone

Member

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by UberDog:
quote:
Claustrophobia is a bigger problem in the winter when there are no flights for 8-9 months, and you are absolutely going to be nowhere but here (and spend most of that time in the dark).

What would happen if someone lost it?

Say they had passed all the psychiatric testing but went buggo like Michael Biehn in The Abyss?

Right, that's why that is a concern for any mission to Mars. That's also why NASA is now funding research on how to detect early signs of depression in astronauts (after the "space love triangle" mess).

Posts: 1329 | Registered: August 19, 2007

Ignored post by psyclone posted

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Posted

I don't know what the protocol for somebody going off the deep end down here is. In the winter it would pose a huge problem, because the population is small enough that there isn't a lot of redundancy in the staffing. We don't really have any padded cell to throw a nut-case into should the need arise.

Somebody was just talking about reading some papers they'd found online about the psychological research done on us polar inhabitants and how that is extrapolated out for long-duration space flight psychological recommendations. I don't know the name of the researcher, but there is apparently one person that has really taken that topic under their wing.

I'll do my best to capture the field camp experience around swinging a pick-ax to get our science cargo installed into the ice sheet.

Posts: 110 | Location: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica | Registered: November 27, 2007

Ignored post by CuspTech posted

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Posted

quote:
Originally posted by psyclone:Right, that's why that is a concern for any mission to Mars. That's also why NASA is now funding research on how to detect early signs of depression in astronauts (after the "space love triangle" mess).

You might have a problem with space if:

You are buying adult diapers for fun.

You are fatasizing about killing you rlover with a butter knife.

You thing the space shuttle is a big penis.

You aren't getting on with HAL.

Your Wookie doesn't growl at you anymore.

You just had dinner with John Hurt.

You think you're better than a Nexus Six.

You get wet when you hear about "the Picard Maneuver."

You're Harlan Ellison.

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

Boogerhead

Member

Posted

or this guy:

__________________________
_{When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross -Sinclair Lewis}

Posts: 16862 | Location: my happy place. | Registered: February 17, 2004

Ignored post by Boogerhead posted

psyclone

Member

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Boogerhead:
or this guy:

That's how I look too when I housesit.

Posts: 1329 | Registered: August 19, 2007

Ignored post by psyclone posted

Thalassicuss

Member

Posted

Yikes Uber,
Did you take a gander at the rest of their titles? There is something there for everybody. Pulp Fiction Art, South Pole, Sex and Rock n Roll. Good Find.

The Past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
L.P Hartley's The Go Between

Posts: 2150 | Location: Coast of the Pacific | Registered: February 09, 2005

Ignored post by Thalassicuss posted

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Posted

I think we have BoingBoing to thank, as I recall, I found it there.

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

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Posted

I'll have to look around for a copy of "BDP". It doesn't sound like exactly the sort of account of life down here that the management would look too fondly upon.

It sounds like I've had a bit more tame time down here than others, for sure...

Posts: 110 | Location: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica | Registered: November 27, 2007

Ignored post by CuspTech posted

Member

Posted

Sex that place up!

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

ArkanGL

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Posted

We demand details

_____________________________
Albert's path is a strange and difficult one.

Posts: 17428 | Location: Gay Paree | Registered: March 10, 2003

Ignored post by ArkanGL posted

Member

Posted

"...And I say Bruce Sterling is the father of cyberpunk!"

Posts: 7009 | Location: noitacoL | Registered: February 20, 2003

Ignored post by UberDog posted

Member

Posted

Yes, it happened. I'm not naming names, especially since I didn't know either of the guys. I don't know the source of the conflict between the two. Yes, people had to work on their holiday, and there was naturally some complaining about that. But I worked as well, as I do every day.

In general, there is not light snow falling here at Pole. We only get ~20 cm of snow per year, and most of the accumulation is due to wind-blown drifting. The temperatures at Pole only got up to around -7F, and have since returned to the -15F to -20F range, which is certainly not anywhere near freezing.

Posts: 110 | Location: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica | Registered: November 27, 2007

Ignored post by CuspTech posted

ArkanGL

Member

Posted

Thanks for your reply, CuspTech.

I was not demanding names, but simply making sure that you were not one of the two...

_____________________________
Albert's path is a strange and difficult one.

Posts: 17428 | Location: Gay Paree | Registered: March 10, 2003

Ignored post by ArkanGL posted

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Posted

And thank you for your concern ArkanGL.

I have no inclination to get myself kicked off the Ice and out of work whatsoever. Besides, being on-call for fire brigade every day doesn't leave any room for alcoholic beverage consumption, at least in my adherence to policies down here.

I didn't get to read any of the articles about this medevac that showed up in the press before the internet went down, but heard tell about them at lunch yesterday.

Posts: 110 | Location: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica | Registered: November 27, 2007

Ignored post by CuspTech posted

colin

Member

Posted

quote:
Originally posted by CuspTech:
In general, there is not light snow falling here at Pole. We only get ~20 cm of snow per year, and most of the accumulation is due to wind-blown drifting. The temperatures at Pole only got up to around -7F, and have since returned to the -15F to -20F range, which is certainly not anywhere near freezing.

Funny that. Almost every time I have personal knowledge of the subject of a newspaper (or these days... webpaper? Cyberpaper? Shudder.) article, the article gets something wrong. Often trivial little details like that, but it could almost make one distrust the media.

In this case, I suspect the writer used some reference to the "climate of Antarctica," as if Antarctica was a town and not a continent.

________
You have to give up.

Posts: 11143 | Location: Silicon Valley (not Japan) | Registered: May 28, 2003

Ignored post by colin posted