Saanich News is reporting the story of local teen Christina Service, who has secured a spot on a science ed. program that will see her travlleing to farthest Antarctica to participate in scientific research. Wow, way to go Christina! I am genuinley impressed, especially since she had to sell her horse to pay for the trip. Selling a horse can be no easy thing. If I had Official Science Geekery awards to give away, she would be the first reciepient of ’06.

The rest of us can only sit and imagine what it must be like down there, since outside of science contracts, political junkets and working maintenance for Raytheon, you can’t get to Antarctica for any money. Oh no wait, we can just go and check in with Big Dead Place!

Sincelast we visited, Big Dead Place has sprung up some nice new features and stories. It’s also sprung up a “[This website is presently an archive.]” tag, which is a little worrying. Perhaps the proprietor is simply taking a shift off-ice. In any case, among the new tidbits of interesting austral information including

a plan to improve medical reporting:

If Raytheon’s ethical compass is properly calibrated in paying people to hide their afflictions, then we’ll navigate by the same logic and pay you to report them. We are not paying you to get scurvy. We are merely offering incentives for reporting your legitimate case of it. See?

Here are the prizes, valid through the winter of 2006:

• An ounce of gold, wrapped in black velvet, and tied with a scarlet ribbon bearing a commemorative Big Dead Place wax seal. A definite collector’s item!

and a comprehensive guide to McMurdo policies for new recruits, including information about human resources, “ifyou almost died or something” and

Science

Science is the process of describing the universe through physical observation. Here are some things that are not science: distributing money to scientists, dispersing press releases to the media, inviting Congressmen to stay at Building 137 (that’s a nice apartment for DVs, or Distinguished Visitors), and influencing your contract or your contract-completion bonus. Science is a rational approach to existence, and its true practitioners are, for lack of better words, on the right track. However, to unconditionally bestow respect on scientists is like emptying your wallet for each street musician. And to bestow respect on an agency that funds scientists is like giving your wallet to a bus driver with instructions to give it to a street musician….

….In fact, the main purpose of the United States Antarctic Program, as stated by an external panel report published by NSF, is to establish a physical and political presence. This presence is kind of like hopping out of the car to stand in a parking space so no one nabs it while your friend drives around the block….

….Now, imagine all the trouble that would arise if there were a bunch of people standing around in parking spaces, and bringing their friends and families to stand in parking spaces too, and they said they were just waiting for their friends to arrive. The biggest families would get the most spaces on the street, even if they were a bunch of lowlifes! To avoid this, the Antarctic Treaty was arranged, which meant that anyone who wanted to hold parking spaces for their friends had to perform substantial scientific activity.

In Antarctica, science is a parking permit, and those who want to stand in the parking spaces must first be able to afford the permit to stand there. These affairs do not reflect on the value of science as a sensible process. But science keeps many friends, whose close association with science is often overemphasized, sometimes with zeal, sounding less like science than like religion, which has little to do with understanding the universe through physical observation.

I would prefer if you now show that my pomo friends. The only way I’m going to win any points in these debates about whether science is just another convention of understanding with no privileged standing with regard to other world views, is if I deny them factual ammunition like this. They’re not likely to go to Antarctica anyway.