Lewis Black 2004 – If It Hadn’t Been For That Horse…

In September 2004, I went to the Lewis Black show at the Improv in San Jose. I was expecting an evening of Lewis detonating at the audience and I wasn’t disappointed. It occurred to me that I’d never seen a Comedy Central presentation of him that was longer than a half hour. I figure this …

Stupid Traditions – Cold, Naked and Dumb

This post was prompted by @nuclearanthro and @pinkrocktopus leading me to notice that I have never actually written down the tale of The 300 Club before. Certainly told it enough times in bars and pretty sure I did while doing Legos With Friends. But now here it is, committed to posterity for your reading pleasure. …

Phil vs. The Otago Rail Trail, Part 2

We last left our intrepid heroes at the trailhead of the Otago Rail Trail in Middlemarch. Apologies for the delay getting to part two because one of the hard things in reconstructing this tale is that the websites I used in 2003 have dramatically improved and it’s hard to recreate my old errors. Pretty sure …

Antarctic Medical Evacuation 2003

I’m putting this here to, potentially, stop questions. I, honestly, remember near to nothing about the medevac we had in late 2003. Hypothyrodism due to protracted exposure to cold and dark takes a lot of forms and mine was memory loss and appalling Yoda like grammar. I remember very little about September 2003 and near …

Regarding Breathalyzers in Antarctica

As I have been asked by a number of people about the latest Office of Inspector General’s report, and in the case of Wired they interviewed me and generated a very cherry picked set of quotes designed for maximum clickbait, allow me to share my collected thoughts about it here. TL;DR version: the NSF response …

Carbon Dating Primer

This was originally written on June 16th, 2012 after my family’s Father’s Day viewing of  “Prometheus”. It was then published in the final issue of Coilhouse. The editor of Coilhouse, Meredith Yayanos, immesuarably improved my words by adding excellent illustrations, such as the one to the right. Hollywood, we need to talk about your dating habits. …

St. Patrick’s and ANZAC Days, 2003

April 25th means little to Americans other than, probably, waiting anxiously for whatever you ordered with your tax refund to arrive. But to the fine folk of Australia and New Zealand it is ANZAC Day which, generally, means a fall holiday. At the very least it is an excuse to have gunfire breakfast, AKA coffee …

Station Closing – Settling Down For A Long Winter’s Nap

Ten years and eighteen days ago, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station closed for the winter, with the last LC-130 ski cargo plane departing the skiway on Valentine’s Day 2003. I watched it disappear from a mostly abandoned experiment in the Dark Sector (AKA the pie wedge extending from pole with all the telescopes in it). With …

The Antarctic Musical Tradition (AKA: NYE 2002)

What do people do when they are trapped with no possibility of escape or parole? An Antarctica station is not all that different from an old gulag in this respect; you’re welcome to try to flee, but the surrounding environment will kill you more surely than any guard will. To keep this properly nerdy, let’s …

The South Pole Bar Albums, Volumes I-V

This is my holiday gift to you as I put together some other thoughts about Antarctica. A lot of things happened around New Years 2003, so they will take some collating. In the meantime, I have a YouTube playlist for you. While I was bartender at Club 90 South at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, I …