Dear Nick,

I don’t know how involved you still are with things Antarctic, but I wanted to bring to someone’s attention that Raytheon Polar Services Co is now charging a “Foreign Transaction Fee” for credit card purchases made in the store at McMurdo. My credit card company said that the charges do originate with RPSC. Does this mean that Raytheon now considers Antarctica foreign soil? How does this jive with Raytheon’s insistence that we pay US income taxes? Hmmmm.

Best,

[Foreigner]

P.S.: For goodness sake please don’t use my name. I’m a grantee and NSF would not be pleased with me for bringing this up.

Even at Antarctic stations bustling with grand achievements, scientists (and support staff) still find time for the occasional theft.

The most common theft is of clothing, which is probably because Antarcticans daily wear more clothing than anyone in the world, apart from soldiers or clowns. With everyone donning and shedding layers like a bunch of snakes, there is expensive technical clothing just lying about nearly everywhere on station. Often the acquisition is a case of mistaken identity, fliers are posted on the walls and doors of Highway 1, and the North Face X50 Turbo-Fleece is returned to its rightful owner. But sometimes it is simple, unrepentant theft. Standard-issue USAP parkas alone have a retail value of around $600, and each season a few go missing from the vestibules in 155.

Overall the Antarctic community is, refreshingly, a trusting one. Typically, you can buy a case of beer and let it sit in the vestibule all day, leave your door unlocked or, as a most astonishing example, loan someone a book, and still be secure of your property.

Nonetheless, every season some clothing or cameras go astray, and when the NAVCHAPS are in town it becomes fashionable to blame them.

As with all misdeeds, some thefts are more intriguing than others. The missing parka or the TV taken from NASA are simply irritating: someone stole a commodity for profit. But some thieveries, despite the offense, invoke the imagination, such as when someone stole:

• various auto parts and tried to mail them home, alongside bags of crappy tortilla chips that are free from the Galley
• a tank of nitrous oxide
• baby Jesus from the nativity set at the Chapel of the Snows

Or when, several days ago, someone stole over 150 lbs of prime rib from the Galley, which the McMurdo community widely deems to be the focal point of the upcoming Christmas dinner.

The case brings up many questions:

Who would do such a thing? Did they have a plan? Or did they just have a truck, see the meat, and swipe it? Where are they storing it? When will they eat it?

With typical good humor, the town now jokes about the missing prime rib. Anyone could have done it, so everyone is jibed.

With typical fervor, management is on the hunt. The station manager, a useful tool for errands far beyond his job description, has been appointed detective. He is investigating work-centers that have freezers or refrigeration units, in search of the missing meat. The thief is likely one step ahead of the managerial bloodhound. Considering that the theft happened in Antarctica, the delectable haul is probably just being stored somewhere outside.

Message: If you stole the prime rib, I would like to interview you briefly. Anonymity assured. My email is on the sidebar.

Goose

Oxcart

Sheep’s Foot

Donkey Dick

Sebastian Copeland has some remarkable photos of the Antarctic.

Arrivals at the bottom of the world quadrupled from 40 in the 2003-04 season to 164 last year, statistics from the United States base at the pole say.

“They come and they come,” US National Science Foundation representative Jerry Marty told The Antarctic Sun.

The US Antarctic Program was trying to work out how to manage the influx, he said. “It’s one of those unknowns¹ we hadn’t expected.”

Link

This really is the greatest place to practice good HR,” Weir says. “I have a group of employees who are in excellent health. They have free housing, free medical care and very good nutrition provided to them. I have no issues with illegal aliens, attendance problems, language barriers or accommodations for disabilities.

In an environment where firing someone–or even allowing them to pack up and go home early–is an impossibility, your recruiting and hiring strategies better be spot on, and you’d better do a darn good job of maintaining employee relations.

Link

Antarctica, distant and exotic, yet cold and lifeless, is a place built for media fibs.  Any small inconvenience, paired with a tantalizing subzero temperature (usually including the wind-chill for dramatic purposes, even if you’re inside), is enough to drive the hometown papers bonkers with stories of their American sons and daughters braving the harshest conditions on earth for the good of all humanity.

Us brave conquistadors who visit the ice soon learn that the professional media has no pragmatic ideas about the place at all, so it is easy to feed them back their own ideas of heroism at the end of the earth, skipping over the small comfortable details that just so happen to make the place amenable for Quality Assurance Representatives and cubicle workers, as well as those who occasionally fear for frostbite.

And some love playing it up more than others.

Here is a recent story by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that highlights many of the surreal collisions of fact when an enthusiastic journalist, with romantic ideas of the Antarctic, receives information from an enthusiastic Air National Guardsman who considers a discussion with the media merely an opportunity for a heroic press release.

Here is the link to the full article, commentary is featured below:

AF C-17 Rushes to Antarctica Rescue

The scariest moments of my life have not been in the wilderness, but in the cities.

Link

Fuel prices are crippling the USAP. Budget cuts are rampant, affecting every aspect of The Program, even on the smallest levels.

For example, take the new workboot reimbursement policy. Due to budget cuts, workboot reimbursement will be limited to select departments, and will only be reimbursed every other year.

That the company is cutting back on reimbursements for workboots is of little concern. However, there is one line in the new reimbursement policy that warrants attention:

It is important to mention that workers/positions who are provided boots will be required to wear the boots. It is the supervisors responsibility to ensure this happens. EHS is planning on randomly auditing PPE usage (including foot protection) throughout the season.

That’s right: footwear audits.

Though I burned over $2500 of diesel at work last week, and though my boots were amortized at a rate of $2 for that same week, it is important to recognize that every penny counts.

In this capacity, Big Dead Place presents a FAQ sheet for supervisors who will be responsible for monitoring their crew’s footwear.

Per policy, the employee must wear the boots that the company paid for.

I told the employee that he must wear the company boots instead of the skua boots. The next day he wore the skua boots, then winked at me and said these were the company boots. I know that is not correct, but I can’t prove it. What should I do?

We will soon be implementing a workboot identification program (WIP) involving tracking chips implanted in the workboots under satellite surveillance. The program will cost $100,000 to implement, and will certainly reduce, if not eliminate, employee workboot fraud.

One of my employees has been wearing his bunny boots to work every day. Upon interrogation, he replied that the temperature is -45F and that these conditions warrant the wearing of bunny boots rather than leather workboots. What should I do?

Per policy, the employee should be instructed to change into the appropriate footwear, which are the boots the company reimbursed him for. If desired, the employee may wear bunny boots in his off time or on the weekends.

My employees come to work barefoot. They like to keep their workboots at home and drink champagne from them. How can I rectify the situation?

This sort of behavior is precisely what the company was afraid would happen regarding the new workboot reimbursement program, and the policy is written expressly to curb such deviance. Drinking champagne from workboots will not be tolerated.

New Zealand is one of those rare countries where home distilling equipment is legal.

If one were to find oneself in New Zealand territory with nary a store nearby that sold liquor, one might consider purchasing a still.

Accordingly, Big Dead Place has arranged a 10% discount off home distillery equipment for Antarcticans (Scott Base too!) traveling in New Zealand.

The proprietor’s website is here: Your Shout on Papanui, including their phone and location on Papanui.

Tell them Big Dead Place sent you, and perhaps we can arrange a better discount in the future.

Essencia Express Still - The fastest still producing the highest quality. Achieves 90% ABV at over 2 litres per hour. 28 Litre stainless steel boiler. Includes a digital thermometer for accurate and easy temperature monitoring.

Update 09 Aug:

An ex-Iraq contractor has suggested another still from Nutriteam.com. It is less than $300.