http://www.xefer.com/ en-us 2008-06-19T20:28:09-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/06/220 For the second time since April a polar bear has made its way the 300km from Greenland. Even though it most likely drifted part of the way on an ice flow, in both cases they must have swum tremendous... 220@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-06-19T20:28:09-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/06/panorama While looking through the scans of the Baffin Island photos, I recalled that I had purposefully taken a series of sweeping shots at our first camp at the terminus of the Coronation Glacier. After a bit of work with... 219@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-06-14T11:06:41-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/05/baffin This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of a trip my friend Dave and I took to Baffin Island. It was without a doubt the most incredible trip I've ever been a part of. The overwhelming landscape, physical toil, and... 218@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-05-31T13:47:49-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/05/twitter Below is a segment from a scatter plot generated using a specific Twitter user's "tweet" data, gathered via Yahoo Pipes and rendered using the Google Chart API. Scatter plot of Tweets - Tweets by Hour and Day of Week... 217@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-05-01T19:22:42-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/04/216 I updated a previous entry to reference The Good Cop on YouTube now that it is available there.... 216@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-04-29T09:37:26-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/04/215 215@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-04-17T18:53:41-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/04/214 A Russian company will bring tourists to stay at a huge camp near the North Pole. € 10,000 for a 3-day stay: Currently, the “Barneo” camp located [on] drifting ice flow close to the North Pole point has a... 214@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-04-14T20:42:27-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/04/213 Igloolik residents are starting to face the inevitable. I put together something on this project before that includes a map. But nobody knows how the walrus that frequent Foxe Basin will react to the year-round presence of enormous freighters,... 213@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-04-14T20:28:42-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/04/roosevelt A recent article reminded me of one of my favorite historical incidences, the attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt. This is one of those events that is utterly inconcievable today: though he had been shot in the chest, he refused... 212@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-04-11T21:23:55-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/04/minibob Below is a picture of perhaps the greatest winter sled ever created, the MiniBob. Anyone who was a kid in 1970s had no doubt used one of these: The Classic MiniBob As some old ad copy puts it: THE... 211@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-04-07T20:30:05-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/04/210 Mills seems to have gone into radio silence since the release of his last book in 2005. Here's hoping we hear from him again soon.... 210@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-04-06T09:59:59-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/04/maps All maps distort whatever data they try to present. The examples below show, in increasing levels of magnitude, how badly this exaggeration can accumulate with scale. These examples aren't being used for propaganda purposes, but illustrate how similar representations... 209@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-04-05T14:58:32-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/04/behead Several years ago an end-piece in New Scientist magazine asked that timeless question, “How long is one aware after being beheaded?” Among the reader comments was this bit of grotesquery, so vivid it borders on the poetic: Dr Livingstone... 208@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-04-02T05:38:14-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/03/207 The article referenced above from The Boston Review explores similar themes to "The Next Slum?" in this month's Atlantic Magazine. Is this emerging meme driven by angst from the current housing downturn, or is it the start of a... 207@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-03-25T13:16:18-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/03/206 A huge iceberg rends itself atwain off the coast of Shackleton's resting place: Iceberg A53A Splitting Apart East of South Georgia Island... 206@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-03-18T08:31:46-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon 205@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-03-08T10:34:11-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/03/204 Everyone knows the word "alphabet" itself ultimately derives from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: "alpha" and "beta". But there are two words in English that most likely have their origin in phonetic runs of letters: abecedarium... 204@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-03-04T08:05:51-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/02/excrementae The February 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine has an interesting article describing the life cycle of sewage called Wasteland: A journey through the American cloaca by Frederick Kaufman. Actually, the most fascinating aspect of the whole piece was a... 203@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-02-17T07:35:38-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/2008/02/your-inner-fish A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin The reason I picked up this book can ultimately be attributed to a remark in Jennifer Clack's more scholarly "Gaining Ground", perhaps the definitive exploration of the... 202@http://www.xefer.com/ 2008-02-11T18:40:44-05:00 http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/2008/02/201 A study shows the northern ice fields of Baffin Island are smaller than any time in the past 1,600 years. There is a podcast by the main author of the paper referenced in the link, Gifford Miller of the University... 201@http://www.xefer.com/iuncturae/ 2008-02-02T19:55:21-05:00