The Cook/Peary Polar controversy and why people lie.

Not nearly as cool as it sounds, but it caught my attention this morning. I went through a brief polar obsession in the Winter of 2006 when I read Voyage of the Narwhale by Andrea Barrett and The Terror by Dan Simmons. I highly recommend both. I did a little light non-fiction reading, but couldn ( Read more... )

So, my latest obsession seems to be the arctic. There was a brief interview with Will Steger, arctic explorer and environmental educator, on the radio this morning. His latest expedition is a 1200 mile trek across Baffin Island w/ three Inuit hunters documenting the impact of warming in the arctic on Inuit culture ( Read more... )

( So, in addition to work trauma, I have spent the past five days submerged in arctic horror. )

This week I got ahold of Werner Herzog's Wild Blue Yonder a science fiction fantasy. It's a speculative film about space exploration utilizing stock footage and archival material primarily from NASA and from a team that dived beneath the ice in Antarctica. The Antarctic ocean stands in for a new planet with a liquid atmosphere.

( Read more... )

An article about the impact of climate change on Greenland.

What caught my attention in this article is not the bits about climate change, but the implications for cartographers and explorers:

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks - “lonely ( Read more... )

I'm embarrassed to admit I've totally retreated into books since Xmas:

( Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett )