montego bay scuba diving

>> cohn: all right. thanks all for coming. sofirst, a couple of quick questions that may seem to be orthogonal here. one is, how manyof you had--had been--had been following along on the road trip blog while i was gone? whoa.and, how many of you have taken the machine learning course here? that's pretty impressive.okay. so there's going to be some aspects here that are familiar to everyone. okay.first of all, hi, i'm pablo. thanks for coming. i also have, in the audience; i'm going toembarrass zach. a fellow polee, zach lash, who is one of my best friends down there,and a south pole veteran as well. and i'm going to be picking on him as my--as my plantin the audience when i ask questions. excellent.

great. so--so this all, you know, just thehigh-level background was--this started about two years ago when i was sitting--sittingaround with an old friend who i'd lost touch with and finding out what she'd been doingfor the past decade. and it turned out she'd been working at the south pole. and i said"wow. what was that like?" and she looked up and said, "magnificent desolation." andi said--how many people recognize that phrase? okay. what it's from?>> your blog. >> cohn: no. not, yes, not from my blog. but...>> apollo missions. >> cohn: what? okay.>> apollo, right? >> cohn: yes. it was apollo mission's buzzaldrin. that was how he described the moon.

okay. i'm going to be a bad frisbee throwerhere. can you pass this back? oh, dear. that's a u.s. antarctic program patch. for the firstcorrect question. sorry about that. okay. so, yes, that's how buzz aldrin describedbeing on the moon. and then i said, "i know that quotation." and she said, "yes. wheni was a kid, i wanted to work on the moon base. and they haven't built it yet, so ifigured the south pole is about the closest i can get." and i said, "tell me more." sothat was about two years ago. and i spent the next year sort of thinking about and lookingat the various antarctic program job postings, and slowly building up brownie points so thatmy wife and kids would let me go away for that long. and made as much--as many friendsas i could--did as much research as i could

and after a surprising amount of luck, i landeda position with the program and i spent the last roughly three months from the end ofoctober till the beginning of february working at the south pole, doing tech support. youknow, being the guy who fixed your computer if you happened to be at the south pole. so,since i'm an engineer, you know, i have outlines for everything, and this is going to be therough outline of the talk. first, i want to straighten out and get people properly orientedof what antarctica is and why the heck people are down there. talk about the process ofgetting to the pole. for me, the real meat of it is going to be here, just like work,life, play. what it's like being at the pole? and then questions. i've got a dory page setup. and we've also got microphones, so, you

know, don't be shy. so, okay. actually oneimportant disclaimer here. almost all of the pictures we've got here are either thingsthat were fortunately up on my blog or that i've stolen from friends who have posted thingsor i grabbed off of the web because we lost all of our pictures in the christchurch earthquakeon the way back. yes. i guess, you can't stay away from adventure. okay. so let's startwith basic antarctica orientation. okay. how many people recognize this? this is the arctic;it's at the top of the planet. it's got about 15 feet of sea ice. there's no land underthere, just floating sea ice. and there are polar bears up there, no penguins, okay? that'sup at the top. okay? the other end is antarctica. okay. antarctica is actually a continent.it's a real hunking big continent. instead

of 15 feet of ice or so, it has roughly 9,000feet of ice. no polar bears. but around the coast, there is sea life, like penguins, forexample. okay? let's get this straight. arctic top, antarctic south. okay? now, another thing--anotherpopular misconception is antarctica is really big. so, you know, we have a familiar continenthere. well, familiar country at least here. antarctica is one and a half times the sizeof the united states. it's big. it's got 90% of the world's ice, 9,000 feet stacks up alot of volume, and 70% of the world's fresh water. it's worth keeping in mind. it's gota lot of other superlatives. okay. highest, driest, windiest, coldest and emptiest continenton earth. highest. average elevation, surface elevation in antarctica is 9,000 feet. it'sgot a lot of mountains. you don't see most

of the mountains, because most of the mountainsare buried below the ice sheet. yes. but, still--the tallest mountains in the antarcticaare over 16,000 feet high. the south pole itself is at 9,500 feet. because of atmosphericeffects, it actually--the physiological elevation is 10,500 feet, in any case. so it's high.it's dry. antarctica is a desert. in the south pole we get less than two inches of precipitationannually. we get a lot of stuff blown in from other places but--and that's--but it's a desert.it's dry. it's the windiest. it regularly breaks 200 miles an hour at some places inthe continent. it's the coldest. this [makes sounds], this is my friend marco, who's actuallyfrom palo alto. he's a winter over. this is him geared up to go on his morning run. thisis him after about half an hour coming out

of his morning run. he sent me this photolast week when it dipped down to -89. now let's put some real numbers on this. justto get a feel for cold, okay? late october, when i headed down, palo alto was a chilly68 degrees fahrenheit, okay? from palo alto, flew to mcmurdo. mcmurdo station is the bigstation on the coast. it's basically the summer limits of where the sea ice melts, where shipscan actually get. this is as far in as you can get. it's a big base. and mcmurdo, inlate october, it was 10 degrees fahrenheit. so this is springtime, okay? ten degrees fahrenheit.okay. so then, we went from mcmurdo to the south pole. now this is a difference of 58degrees. this is not a small amount, okay? so from mcmurdo in antarctica, i want to reemphasizethat, we went to the south pole where it was

-48 degrees, okay? now, 58 degree differencehere and a 58 degree difference here. so the same difference between palo alto and theedge of antarctica to edge to the center. now, if you do this iteration one more time,carbon dioxide comes out of the atmosphere as a solid of its own accord, okay? but, youknow, it turns out that, you know, you actually--you can--you can beat the pants off of that. because,at the pole, in the winter, it's gotten down to -117. i've talked with people who--who'veover wintered in conditions in like this. and they say they were actually looking forthe carbon dioxide, but they couldn't actually tell it from the rest of the stuff that wascoming out in the air. but, you know--but in terms of low temperatures, the russiansthink that, that we--we americans at the polar

are wimps because they've got vostok base,which has recorded temperatures even colder than that. so, emphasize, i just want to kindof, let it set in. is it cold? yes, it's cold. okay. also it's the emptiest. around the coast,you know, people, you know, around the coast, there is marine life. but for marine lifeyou actually need access to water, which you only have around the perimeter. remember thisthing is one and a half times the size of the united states. okay? so there are no indigenouspeoples who have ever lived in the antarctica unlike any other continent. and in the centerof the continent, there's nothing that lives there. nothing lives there that wasn't broughtin on a c-130. >> bacteria.>> cohn: bacteria, yes that was a--bacteria

came on the c-130. okay. this is a bit ofa pet peeve. because whenever i told people i was going to the south pole, they said,"oh, take a picture of a penguin for me." okay? it’s okay. no penguins at the southpole, they're around the coast. but remember this is a big continent, telling--this wouldbe akin to somebody's telling you that they were going to--coming to the united states,"where are you going?" "i'm going to north dakota." "awesome. there's this great whalewatching tour." there are as many penguins at the south pole as there are whales in northdakota. that's about--and it's about the same distance. okay. okay. so that's the overviewof antarctica. south pole, obviously, isn't the only base. there are a lot of bases allover the place. all of the bases by--from

all of the countries are governed by the internationalantarctic treaty; which basically says, "there's no commercial exploitation, no military activitybut you can only have scientific and environmental studies there." you can't leave any trashthere, just pick up after yourselves. all of the u.s. bases are administered by theu.s. antarctic program under the nsf. there are three bases. there's mcmurdo, which i'vealready mentioned, that's down on the coast. that's the big city. there are about--in peakof the summer, there maybe 1,500 people there. you know people all live in dorms and theywork in separate buildings et cetera. out on the palmer peninsula there's palmer station,which is a very small base. this tops out at about 40 people in the summer. they mostlydo biology. yes, quick question?

>> well, that's about say east and west?>> cohn: east and west. yes, well... >> but it doesn't work.>> cohn: actually, let me take just a moment to--that--that's a good question. stand by.excellent question. because normal coordinates don't work, we use what's called grid coordinates.and the meridians are our coordinates. so the prime meridian, zero degrees is north.ninety degrees--90 degrees east latitude, east longitude is east, 90 degrees west--longitudeis west. so, you know, this is pointing towards greenwich, this is pointing towards the internationaldateline. excellent question. yes. >> you use the technology throughout antarcticaor you only do the south pole? >> cohn: throughout antarctica. okay. so there'spalmer station, they do a lot of a--lot of

the marine biology, and that's about 40 people.and then there is my home of homes, south pole. okay. this is what it looks like. southpole has about 200 to 250 people in the middle of summer going down to about 40 people overwintering. this is a sort of a view from the distance of the entire complex. there's themain station here. there is the big physics stuff over here, there's the ski way, it'snot a runway; it's a ski way because the planes that land there have to use skis. and, sothe pole, what's special about the pole? okay. it's defined as the rotational axis of theearth. because of that, you know, so you've got the earth turning like this. the sun doesn'tgo up and down like it does in normal latitudes. so, it basically just goes around and aroundand around everyday. and as the earth process--moves

through it--its orbit, eventually the earthmoves to the point where the sun is behind the body of the earth. and so, thus we haveone day and one night. and each of them last exactly six months. so, what's wrong withthis picture? being the south pole and all, right? it's not. it's--it's--there is somethingelse wrong with this picture. >> [indistinct].>> cohn: good. good. so, is--this isn't actually the south pole. that's the south pole. thisother one, this is the ceremonial south pole that sort of stays put. but the geographicsouth pole is computed each year, and a new pole marker is put in place. and right now,they're about 70-80 yards apart, maybe a little bit more. okay. so i said one day, which wesometimes call summer, and one night which

we often call winter. summer is when mostof the activity happens. sunrise happens about september 22nd to 23rd and--and it's actuallynot around it. it actually takes--it actually takes two days because, you know, it getslighter on the horizon and it gets a little lighter, a little lighter, a little lighter,and eventually the sun breaks the horizon. late october, it's finally warm enough toget the flights in. temperature peaks in late december. we have total around 200-250 people,depending on what's going on. january starts getting cold quick. by mid-january, the temperature'sdropping 2 degrees per day. by mid-february, it's so cold that even airplanes can't landand get off again. they like that getting off part. so, they have to get the last ofthe summer population out. and the winter

over population, as i said, is about 40. sunsetis from march 21st to march 22nd. i just get the picture which, i wasn't clever enoughto load up here from one of my friends there of showing--showing sunset--a few picturesof sunset as it moves around the horizon. okay. so that's rough orientation south pole;big, cold, harsh. why are we there? there's one important word, science. yes. we are thereto support science. and it's important--the nice thing is that, at the--on the south pole,science is a mass noun. it's--i remember sitting there on one of my early days and there'sjust some banging upstairs at my desk and i look over and i said, "i thought we're donewith construction here?" and ben leaned over and said, "yes. somebody decided they neededto nail some more science to the roof." so,

why do you come to the south pole to do science?well, there's some special things about it. first of all, it's remote. so it's great forstuff like atmospheric studies where you don't have humans polluting things. it's quiet seismologically.there's very little radio frequency and light. in the night there's no light interference,and it's rarified. you're two miles up, thin, very dry atmosphere. and at night, the atmosphereis perfectly stable, perfectly smooth. you want to shine? you want to get good--goodpictures of space? you can't do it any--you can't get any closer to space than here inthe winter. okay. so because of that, as you might imagine, there's a lot of atmosphericstudies. this plot, by the way, i don't know if you can read it, should scare you. theseare the carbon dioxide measurements at the

south pole going from 1955 to present day.seismology. so this is the--there's a seismic vault as i mentioned at the south pole. lotsof physics. physics is the single, largest scientific endeavor at pole. oh, pretty pictureat--oh, gosh. is that--can you guys actually see that? no, that's just way too dark. itlooks nice on my screen. that's the south pole telescope at night with aurora borealisand great stars over it. >> whoa.>> cohn: oops. thank you. that was gratifying. okay. i want to just talk about one physicsexperiment in slightly greater detail. because it was the biggest part--it was the biggestexperiment that was being worked on while i was there and because it's so freakin’cool. okay. neutrino's go through matter like--like

it wasn't there. because neutrino's just don'tnotice these things. in order to get a neutrino to interact with something you have to putit through a whole bunch of matter. and then to detect that it's actually hit something,you have to be able to see through that matter. so what you really want is this large, dense,clear volume of something with no other photons around. yes, ice. so, what--what these guyshave done is they've taken basically a square mile of surface area and drilled 88 holesa mile and a half down and embedded these digital optical modules called doms into theholes and they have embedded a cubic mile of ice with sensors and computers. so thatwhen a neutrino goes through and happens to hit--interact with a water molecule, the lightcan detected via from all of the doms. pass,

compute and they say, "yo, we have a neutrino."it's--it's a scary huge experiment. i mean, think about--a cubic mile is a lot of space.in any case, so that's science at the pole. that's why we're there. so i decided i wantedto go--yes, eric? >> [indistinct].>> cohn: yes, they have--they have been getting neutrinos. if you go to--i think it's icecube.wisc.edu.university of wisconsin is the u.s. partner there. they actually, i think, have live data;they'll show you of, "we got another one." so, getting to the pole. step number one;get a job at the south pole. i'll talk a little bit more about this during the question periodbecause it's--it's--there's not a real easy way of describing the process. there are twomain groups of people at the pole. there's

the support staff, who keeps science going.they're roughly 150-250 in the summer, 30-40 in the winter. and then there's the sciencestaff. the--or as the support staff referred to them; the beakers. and they tend to rotatethrough some--some only come up for--come down for a week to do their experiments. someare there for the entire season. some like--like robert schwartz are there as far as i cantell haven't left for the past decade. so that's step one, get a job at the pole. numbertwo, step two is actually get yourself to the pole. to get to the pole, it starts outin the u.s., you fly down to christchurch. and there, you stop at the antarctic programcenter where they give you the ecw gear, the extreme cold weather gear. as people are fondof saying, "there's no such thing as bad weather,

only bad gear." this stuff, you put it on,you go outside, you don't notice the weather, at least, for a little while. zach is givingme a grin. he's spent more time out in the weather than i have. okay. you've got yourgear. once you've got your gear, next day or so, if the weather holds, you get on ac-17, which my friend, beth, calls the magic tube. has no windows, you get in on it--youget in it, you sit down; and a few eight hours later, you get off, and you're somewhere else.you're on the ross ice shelf outside of mcmurdo, and you're already in antarctica and you'regoing, "wow." okay. but the adventure has only started. because the next day, if theweather holds, you get on a c-130, also known as--oh, it's a c-130 hercules. just referredto as a herc; that flies you from mcmurdo

the thousand miles inland to the pole. someinteresting things about the herc. skis, jato rockets. they don't usually use jato goingmcmurdo to the pole just because they don't need to. that's more for the field camps.okay. so you climb into the herc, you're wondering around your board, you make new friends, youlook out the window, there is a window there. and then you have--so you suffer through alanding unlike anything you felt before. imagine, you know, unless you used to fly--unless youused to fly u.s. air back in the '70s where you have 130,000 pounds of military aircraftwith skis. no shock absorbers hitting two miles of ice, boomp! and just the sound andfeel of it is something completely unreal. and then it gets a little scarier becausethen the engines stop and they say, "okay,

time to get out." you climb out and this islike--this is like, "okay, two miles up on an ice sheet that is as large as the unitedstates. it's minus 45 not counting the substantial wind chill. and you discover you can't reallybreathe. when you blink, your eyes freeze shut. that was a new one for me. and you realizeyou've never been happier in your life. you are at the south pole of the world. you're,"wow!" [makes sounds]. funny thing is that you get used to it pretty quickly. i'm goingto try and see if i can shift over here to--this is a video that i shot with a friend of minejust a couple of weeks after getting there. let me get this back. "okay, good morningeverybody, good morning temperate friends. we're at the south pole." you'll notice i'mwearing a flannel shirt. "i'm above low. it

is sunday morning. it's about minus 42 andwe're going to do an experiment here. we've been asked all sorts of things about whathappens when water is exposed to the atmosphere. we've heard if you toss a cup of water upin the air it will freeze. we've heard if you toss a hot cup of water up in the airit will freeze. we've been asked, what happens if you pee off the second floor balcony willit freeze? we're going to do--try to do some of those experiments." not only those experiments."so here we have a hot mug of water, we must come out here to the edge." that's worth listeningto the sound when i checked this out. "it's remarkably calm air." and so it's nice andsteaming hot. let's get the camera right off to the edge so we can watch what happens.and we're going to go, 1, 2, 3, and wow! that

was neat. okay." it makes it--it makes thissound and then it's gone. you can have a lot of fun. okay, in any case. so, you've nowgotten to the pole and you, sort of, gotten used it. now we're going to, sort of, diveinto the main part which is, sort of, work and life at the pole. life at the south polestation. this is your world effectively. this is the station. there are the out buildings,et cetera. and the station itself is a work of modern engineering. it's got all of thecomforts of home, so we've got--and we've got a gym. there's the greenhouse, there'sthe galley. hallways, you know, where--this is basically what i--what i work, you know,walking around. and except--instead of wearing these because i had to tie these up i was--i'dwear my fuzzy slippers. and here's the dorm

rooms--the dorm rooms are nice, and shiny,and modern, they're small. they're very small but they are, you know, they're quiet andcomfortable. and they--and they--they house about a 100 people. now, what's wrong withwhat i've just told you? >> [indistinct] population [indistinct].>> cohn: yes, okay. did i already give you one of these?>> you have not. you [indistinct]. >> cohn: oh, we're good.>> pretty good. >> cohn: okay. yes. so the thing is that noteveryone lives in the station. the low folks on the totem pole, the people who are supportingscience live out at what is euphemistically called the summer camp. summer camp becauseit's only habitable in the summer and it has

all of the comforts of summer camp. summercamp is actually a series of 14, 1950s era, korean war surplus army tents. they're calledjamesways. they're insulated. gosh, this--that's really dark. well, but in any case, this iswhat they look like from the outside. this is what it looks like from the inside. you'vegot, sort of, plywood separators on either side. an unheated floor, something that isover here--the thing that separates you from the hallway is a glorified military bed sheet.and you have nominally privacy. it's about 8 by 8. you have nominally privacy but youhear every sound that everyone in the dorm knows, you know... you wait a little whileand, you know, at 11 you're going to have to sit up and the yell, "bruce, you're snoring!"and, you know, that cornell's going to come

in. he's going to shut the door, he's goingto turn around, he's going to whack the thing on the back of his back pack against the frame,and it's going--everything's going to go "thung!" and he's going to say sorry. and he's goingto do that tomorrow night too. so, in any case--so that's what life looks like for uslow folks on the totem pole. so let's go--just go a little bit on to a "day in my life."so, i wake up and i was one of the lucky ones because these jamesways have been around forso long, the people who have lived in them especially if they are carpenters--we havea lot of carpenters down there--have made their own little improvements. so i had--insteadof having a bed sheet i had a plywood door. i was the envy of my jamesway for having adoor. i also had a window which was pretty

awesome except that the sun never goes down.and so every night i had to, sort of, take my jerry rig cover and covered it up, so i'dhave some dark and then take it off in the morning. so this is my jamesway, but that'sthe hall way at night. so i stumble, you know, i throw on big red and i throw on my car heartsand my big bunny boots and i stumble out in the darkness to--this is my front door, andeveryone else's front door. and i stumble the roughly 50 yards across the snow to getto the bathrooms. the joys of summer camp. and, you know, where i, sort of brush my teeth,and shave maybe. and i look at my watch and if it's wednesday or if it's saturday theni say it's a shower day. we're allowed--because all of the water there has to be melted fromice. and all of the ice has to be melted with

jet fuel. and all the jet fuel has to be flownin. hot water is a scarce commodity. so we're allowed to two showers a week. two minutesof water per shower. you'll get used to it. okay. yes.>> did you make it all the way to the bathroom at night?>> cohn: did i make it all the way to the bathroom at night? this is where the unheatedfloor is a bonus. we have... >> [indistinct] take anything out, it wouldjust disappear, it would vapor. >> cohn: we're not going to repeat that onebut it's a good point. well, most people who live in jamesways have--have water--non-euphemisticallycalled "pee buckets." you have your little jar or whatever of and instead of going outsideand now you. and it helps that the floor freezes

because--that the floor is unheated becauseyou put that under your bed on the floor and it freezes solid.>> ooh. >> cohn: yes. okay, can we get the collective,"eew." >> "eew.">> cohn: thank you. that's what i felt like also. in any case, so finally it's time togo in to work. and i go walking, you know, walk across the roughly quarter mile of snowto get to the station, big imposing station with steam coming off of it. so, i'm goingto walk up the backdoor. this is the backdoor to the station is called destination zulu.the front door is destination alpha. this is dz versus da. and in the door that's anindustrial freezer door, inside destination

zulu, i take my gear off. i shuck off my bunnyboots and my--and my big red. put on my fuzzy slippers and go upstairs to breakfast. foodis one of the great joys at pole. the galley--it's not quite as good as google. but it is awesomefood. the galley staff is there because they want to be at the south pole and their--theylove their polees and they want to work their butts off. they really go out of the way.the--let's see, so what do we have here? oh yes, this was the real imitation crab bakesand it's labeled with artery clogging sauce. and over on the left it was labeled the cheesymeat eater’s pizza of doom. this is--this is christina, when she took over the breakfastthings she just--we got these amazing--yes. zack's nodding his head, yes. remember theraspberry mascarpone stuffed french toast?

>> yes.>> cohn: yes, yes. you eat well at the pole. yes, cat.>> do you need to eat more than usual? >> cohn: do you need to eat more than usual?you got to eat more than usual, it's great. four hot meals a day. actually, there arethe three normal meals and then there's what's called mid-rats. midnight rations for thefolks on swing shift. and because mid-rats folks are only cooking for about 40 peopleinstead for 200 people mid-rats is really nice. if you're not working swing shift or--youactually have to get permission to attend mid-rats. and so, you--i'm over there. thetime--the last week i went over to a split sleep schedule and was going to mid-rats.i remember there was the montego bay shrimp

with some, sort of, pilaff and a molten chocolatehotcake. i'm sorry, i'm getting hungry here. okay, so they feed you really well. so, afterbreakfast i actually have to go to work. so, like...>> so, what are the people in winter eat? >> cohn: people in winter eat stuff as goodas mid-rats. actually i've been told--ben was telling me that it's even better thanmid-rats in winter. yes. he's just taunting me.>> i mean what--i mean they can't fly it in frequently, right? i mean.>> cohn: right under the--you're right. they can't fly anything and in during the winter.so basically the summer is spent stocking up on stuff that's not perishable. freezingit out in the berms to be retrieved and also

getting the greenhouse started so that theyhave fresh vegetables to support--to support 40 people over the winter. that's a greatquestion, thank you. okay, so it's 7:30 in the morning and i have to show up at my desk.my desk is there. there's ben. yes, eric? >> eric: [indistinct].>> cohn: good. what is--what do i mean by 7:30? all time is an illusion, starting time,doubly so. no. excellent question. what we do is we use new zealand's daylight time.i don't know why. it's roughly 21 hours ahead of time here or three hours past the nextday. so right now, it is 4:30 in the afternoon on tuesday at south pole. no. other direction?you're right. it's late morning. yes. devin has practiced for four months. yes, mike?>> mike: do you actually adjust your clocks

for daylight saving time?>> cohn: no. it's all--it's all new zealand daylight, nzdt. yes. it just makes it so thatwe have to get up early to meet with the folks in headquarters in denver. i think that'swhy they do that. yes. those versels have to get up at 5:30 to talk with us, hand mesome more coffee cake. so any case is, this is what my desk looks like. i sit down andi start fielding problems. usually, there's mail from overnight of people who are havingproblems with their email, people whose computers aren't working, people who have forgottento plug the printer in, et cetera, you know, desperate, desperate urgent needs from denverto, you know, let them know something irrelevant, et cetera. and i do this from 7:30 until aboutnoon when or, you know, whenever it is that

we decide that it's lunch time and we go offand get lunch. but actually, one of the big problems is, "is the internet down?" "yes.the internet's down." i don't know if you can read this. this is--this is one of thesigns that i hung on my desk is, "yes, the internet is down. yes, we're working on it.no, we don't when it's going to be fixed. would you like to hear a knock-knock jokein the meantime?" >> sure.>> sure. yes. knock-knock. >> cohn: who? wait. no. no. so, it's knock-knock.>> who's there? >> cohn: not the internet. and then the reasonis--the problem is is that--so we're at the pole and there are all of these wonderfulgeostationary and geosynchronous satellites

that are supposed to cover. yes. and so, youdo the geometry and they would have to go through the earth to get to the pole. so,it's only the satellites that have some eccentricity there or it's not eccentricity. what is itcalled when you're out an angle? some inclination. thank you. i'm going to run out of these things.i'm getting better. i have some inclination that actually come up over our horizon forany amount of time. and because we're a national science foundation project, we are at thebottom of the pecking order for any sort of bandwidth. so we only get the cheap slow satellites,when they happen to come up and when nobody else wants them--to use them. okay. i don'tspend all of my life behind the desk. sometimes, i get to go and fix other people's things,like plug-in a printer at the--next door over

at the med lab or go over to comms where tinahas some sort of problem. and then, i'm always scared to go over to comms because tina says,"i can't get this thing to work." and the prob--the reason why i'm scared is becausetina will have already tried everything i could think of. i am irrelevant with commsbecause tina can do her job and mine better than me. but, you know, sometimes, it's, youknow, i actually get to leave the building and go, you know, down into the tunnels underneathwhere the power plant is because rick, our power plant guy, is great at breaking computers.i think he went through three different machines. or else often for logistics arch which--thisis where our materials that are brought in from the berms are brought in here to thawout to minus 55 until we need them upstairs.

this--walking through the arch always mademe feel like i was in the last scene of raiders of the lost ark. it just--it never went away.so, this is what i do six days a week, 10 hours a day. one of the things that reallythrew me was you've--you don't get--it's not obvious--that the impact of having discretionaryvacation days, like, "you know, i'm not feeling well today," or, you know, "i'm kind of burntout. i want to go out and do something." you know, "i'm going to take a vacation day,"you don't get to do that at the pole. it's--there are no--you know, you get--you get sundayoff but the kind of, "i'm going to take a day off." no, because you're the guy and therearen't any spares. and that sort of gets to you. but i'm not one to complain because iam what folks who work outdoors in the real

weather, folks like--what, folks zach referto as an indoor house pet. i show up at the gallery for lunch in my fuzzy slippers withmy mug and i sit down next to these folks, you know, like eric would come in and hiscohorts would still be--still be smoldering from where he had set himself on fire. itwas just--i have nothing to complain about. so it's either people do hard, crazy, realjobs. they're basically, you know. these are people who are really working as opposed tome. and--so let me just backup a little bit and talk about what people do. yes, what sortof people do you have out there? you know. so we're a very homogeneous crowd here, youknow. we are silicon valley kind of--well, yes, we are. at the pole, you need every sortof skilled labor and unskilled labor that

you would need to run a town; actually, tobuild a town, you know, 2,000 miles from anywhere else and minus 57 degrees. so because of this,you end up working very closely with the people who you ordinarily wouldn't encounter in yourlife and you end up depending on each other. and so, you end up having, at the galley,you know, you've got, you know, across from the principal investigator, a harvard professorof this $100 million project sitting, exchanging just stories how his day was with, you know,folks who've never made it through high school. you've got left-wing liberal hippy freaksfrom california buddying up and talking about airplanes with right-wing redneck conservativefolks, and they're your friends because they're the folks you live with and they're the folksyou work with. let's see. so here are just

some of the--i don't--as i said, i don't haveall of my pictures of the people who i hung out with. these are things i managed to grab.so this is bryce. he's one of the cargo guys i worked with, iraq combat vet. jared. jaredis another cargo guy, forest firefighter, smokejumper, montana smokejumper and yogainstructor. elisa. elisa itinerant mini--minnesotan, drives the largest tractor ever made for herday job. self-proclaimed folkloric banjo aficionado. ricky. ricky gates, the fastest man in antarctica.dishwasher. he also holds a number--he also holds a number of world records such as thespeed on running time up the top of pikes peak and things like that. ben, oh gosh. youcan't... this is... well, you could--you can see his--you can see his electronic shirt.ben was our cicid man. he was the one who

fixed things when no one else could. daniel,senior pc tech, also professional musician in his spare time. ben and danny needle werethe guys that i worked most closely with. meegan. meegan is a south pole sort of lifer.she's been spending the last decade or so working at the pole as much as she can.>> [indistinct]. >> cohn: she's--well, meegan is not quitehuman. i mean, she's been coming down to the pole for a really long--i mean, this is probablyspring, yes, so it's probably--it's probably only minus 20 or so. so, meagan's great, youknow, you'll be sitting around talking about stuff and she'll say, "well, love to keeptalk--love to keep talking with you folks but i think i need to go downstairs and playtractors for awhile." this is not the biggest

thing she drives, this is only a d7. haley,i love this picture. this is a picture by ricky, the--ricky and haley are all both incrediblephotographers. haley was our grub logger. she was the one who's responsible for gettingthe food that was down in the logistics arch up to us in a form that the kitchen staffcould actually turn into food. we love haley. kayak instructor, no actual home, owns a cari believe. but that's--has no actual residence, just an awesome, awesome person. also we have--oh,the ga's. a lot of people come down to pole as general assistants, which basically meansthey get to shovel snow. and shovel snow and shovel snow. so then we also have joel andmarie and i think that's max up there. occasionally they get to do interesting things like drillholes, put dynamite in it and blow them up.

yes, big shovel. cap--captain don, captaindon is our fire chief, also on certain occasions captain christmas. this will become more explainablein just a minute. this is actually one of my favorite--it's an example of the peopleyou end up working side-by-side with. so we have lutry, who is a very traditional grandmotherfrom albuquerque, and rachel who is--has a master's degree in international policy, usedto work for the u.n. doing conflict analysis in somalia. they both decided they wantedto come to the south pole, and they spent the summer washing dishes just so they coulddo it, and they were just happy. they were--yes, they were very pleased with these choices,and it's--and then there's this guy, that's me, being a wimp. i'm all bundled up, andthis is a--this is--this isn't just logistic

search, but in any case. so it's just thatyou encounter a lot of folks you wouldn't normally encounter, and one of the nice thingsis you actually really grow from it. you spend a lot of time realizing the things you havein common. understanding their lifestyle, and--and appreciating it. why do they livethere? okay, i think you're crazy, but i can understand how a rational person would--mighthave that as a [indistinct]. and also, in the sort of--because you're under a microscopeas much as they are, you know when--you know, dan and i are sitting there looking acrosseach other--at you after a recent conversation about politics. you know, he's going, "well,i guess he's a nice guy even though he's loony." it gives you an opportunity to think moreabout who you are, and how--why you've made

the decisions that you have made. and it'sbeen--it's a wonderful huge groaning--growing experience. and all of these people, no matterhow different they are from you, well like with one or two exceptions, become your friends.and because you're--so this is the last part here. this is--these are the people loadingup, because i said you know, you live with this people, you work with this people, youplay with these people. there isn't really a work/life balance because these people areyour life while you're down there. and you become--you just, when everything, anythingneeds to be done if it's your job, you do it. if it's not your job you probably stilldo it. so you know, once or every week or two, tina would get on the, i'm going to say,"good morning pole." sort of like, robin williams,

but without people shooting at you. "goodmorning pole, we have freshies at d.c. we need people to bring in freshies at d.c. andthe front-loaders would bring in these pallets of full of fresh vegetables that have beenflew in on the c-130 and everyone would throw on their stuff, and line up down the stairs,and just do basically, a bucket brigade coming up. you know, everyone from, you know, youknow, g.a.'s who--who are using this as an excuse to, "hey, i can put the shovel down.i don't have to--i can..." to folks like, you know, john ram who's been coming downto pole for--he actually--probably 40 years, he helped to design the new station. he isso far above the hierarchy. he's like royalty. you know, the dish pit, they always need help,always need help washing dishes. so we've

got here, let's see one of the--one of theplumbers, one of the firefighters, our meteorologist, and the head of the south pole telescope project.just rubber gloves on all pulling in together, the greenhouse. so that's kind of working.that's--there's also a lot of playing together you know, who else--who else you're goingto play with? south pole ski club. yes, you can ski at the south pole. it's not very goodskiing. marco again, marco brought a bike down. the bike turned out to be amazinglypopular. we all wanted to borrow the bike. lot's of music. i'm going to go into thatlittle later. there's a nice gym, swing dance classes, basketball, all sorts of stuff happening.now, let's see if this one will work. >> “ready. yay!”>> cohn: so that's sledding at the south pole.

quick, what time of day is it?>> [indistinct]. >> cohn: oh, good, good. very good.>> ready. >> cohn: i'm going to pause this though. sozach, you should be able to tell. look at the shadows.>> [indistinct]. >> cohn: shadows are coming--coming that straightthat way. that's north. this is a little bit after midnight. this is one of the thingsthat kind of throws you as you realize that all of those things that you wanted to doafter work before it gets dark. not so much of an issue. yes, yes. cat?>> [indistinct]. >> cohn: oh, awesome, awesome question. whyis the station built up on--okay, if you guys

duck, my range isn't that good.>> [indistinct]. >> cohn: well, let me--let me answer thatafter i've gone through some more slides, but that's a really important interestingquestion. carl? >> so you guy’s videos, did you have toget some kind of special rugged cold resistant camera?>> cohn: did i have to get a special camera? no, no. i just, sort of, kept the camera insidebig red and popped it out. when i was doing the panoramas that i tried shooting for streetview, we took a nikon d90 put a thermal sock around it and stuffed it full of chemicalhand warmers. so they're also quiet indoor activities. you know, we've got a great readingroom, this is a pool table, arts and crafts

room; good places where people, kind of, hide--headout and mellow out. in terms of mellowing out, not everyone uses the recreation timefor recreation. a lot of people who've come down to the pole, let's say as dishwashersor janitors, actually have aspirations of kind of moving into another jobs. and so whatpeople often do, is when they come off from their normal shift at 5:30 they go volunteeron somebody else's swing shift. so, a ga who's tired--who wants--who likes pole but doesn'twant to keep shoveling will volunteer down at the machine shop to maybe kind of developsome skills, build the personal relationships so that next year they can get hired as aheavy--as a machine operator or as a carpenter. and you would basically build skills thisway. i wasn't particularly looking for a new

line of work, but because i was an indoorhouse pet and i'm not really in--i get--i got restless. i started volunteering afterwork with--at the swing shift cargo team, which was huge amounts of fun. and i learnedwhat it really meant to be cold. so, i got to learn how to--how to marshal and directthe 130s and [indistinct]... you know, helped the fuelers, helped build pallets, i got tolearn how to drive a skid loader. it--they're just--this is something you can't do anywhereelse. and so--so i'd like to think that if the google thing doesn't work out, i couldprobably get a job as a--in cargo. three months--well--yes, actually if you do--if you do the early seasonin mcmurdo, you can work it a little bit more. what was the free...?>> [indistinct]

>> cohn: frequency of flights? when the weatherwas good we could get up to like four flights a day. but there were weeks that we just didn'tget flights because of the weather. and, you know, then they'd all stack them in. yes?another question. >> were there, like priests, monks, rabbisthere kind of do their thing? >> cohn: oh, right, religion. there--therewere--there were chaplains that rotated through every--you know, would come down to a massor, you know, priests, you know, chaplains to do a service maybe once a month or so.and other than that we were sort of on our own. yes, randy.>> randy: what [indistinct] do you need [indistinct] you were talking about during the winter [indistinct]?>> cohn: that's... yes. so during the winter,

in theory they can parachute, they can airdropstuff. airdrop is something that is a really awful, awful thing it turns out. later inthe slideshow if we--i don't think we got there. when you airdrop stuff it ends up embeddedabout six feet into the ice and you have to go out there and dig it out. and if it's minus100 degrees, it's just--it's no fun. so airdrop is considered sort of the last--the last resort.let's see. okay. real play at the pole, let me just, you imagine a lot of stress buildsup doing this stuff and when it's time to cut loose, people like cutting loose and wehave a lot of opportunities to do so on the weekends. so, you know, things like thanksgiving,christmas, et cetera are pretty well-celebrated. you know, thanksgiving the kitchen staff reallygoes all out. we've got, you know--i forgot.

what did we have for thanksgiving? well forthanksgiving there was obviously turkey. but i think the beef wellington and lobster was--thatwas christmas, right? four different kinds of turkey that was it, that was the big thingfor thanksgiving. so, good meals, special meals, lots of music. so, open mike nights--newyear's eve. so you have 200, 250 people at the pole. new year's eve we had three differentbands. polees love to dance. they went until a new year's eve--or it was near year's evesince it was--we celebrate holidays on the weekend, on a saturday, so you get a two dayweekend. so we celebrated on the second and it went until 3 a.m. the race around the world,that's another fun thing. that's christmas day. people familiar with bay to breakers?okay. bay to breakers meets burning man. it's

a two and a half mile run around the compoundand it composes both the geographic and a--and a ceremonial pole. and people dress up. thereare some serious runners and people create mutant vehicles. and let's see what else isthere. yes, in january we have the south pole international film festival, spiff. where--thisyear we had seven entries of--if you come to me after, so i can point you to the spifffilms that are online. some really good stuff, some starring members of the audience--induress. and then suddenly it's february and you go whoa, it's time to go, temperature'sminus 40 again, and starting to see contrails, and it's time to pack up your jamesway, geton the herc and head home. and you find yourself back here and you go, "whoa." and everyoneasks you one question, "would you do it again?

yes." let's do--i need--i need to answer cat’squestion. okay. excellent. we're going to do this by going to some history here. thisis the--this is not old--the original pole station 1957, the new dome, you can see thereare these nice long metal arches and the dome and everything. and 15 years later, the domeis mostly under snow and ice. and the arches are completely under snow and ice. what happensis even though we don't do as lot of precipitation, all of the stuff blows in from everywhereelse and the surface pack raises by eight inches per year. old pole, the original polestations are now 40 feet underneath. the dome--they got tired of trying to dig it out. actually,you--here you can see it with the construction of the new station. here is the dome in sortof this crater that they keep carving out.

so, the new station they just put up on pylonsand the idea is that every 20 years or so, they jack the pylons up a bit more. okay.other questions--oh, you know, i should--i realize i should go to the dory because i've--ithink we're nominally almost like out of time but i should really do the dory thing. comeon, dory questions for pablo at the pole. has anyone actually submitted them? no. boo.oh, like carl has another question though. >> [indistinct].>> cohn: sure. >> so, the personality--as you mentioned allthe great people, right? is there some kind of personality screen for [indistinct]?>> cohn: yes. is there some kind of personality screen? yes, so a lot of it is--so for thewinter-overs--the winter-overs, you actually

have to go through a psych test. and theyask you, are you, do you want to--do you want to spend winter at the pole? say, yes. you'recrazy. no. no. the summer--the summer it's--you have to go through a fairly extensive physicaleval and the--it's mostly personal interview, because during the summer if you turn outto be unworkable they can send you home. but there is a personality that definitely worksand a lot of the hiring is not who can do the job the best. the criterion is who isnot going to screw up. who's going to be perfectly adequate at the job, but i'll be able to dealwith in close quarters for the next three months. and that's why so much of the hiringis kind of face to face, in person. yes. >> [indistinct] or you?>> cohn: so how do we get to keep in touch?

so, there was email and when satellites wereup. when the tdrss--the high speed satellites were up. tdrss the high speed satellite hadabout the bandwidth of a cable modem for the entire station. then we would--you could actually--sowe weren't allowed any video chat, that just too much of a bandwidth hog but you can actuallymake phone calls through. and in fact my desk, when the satellites were up, i had a phoneon my desk that was--that rang through from a denver area code. so, you know, if peoplein the station or people from mcmurdo or denver could call me, also that meant, wrong numberscould call me. and i was one number transposed from a funeral parlor in las vegas. and soi kept getting these phone calls like, "hi, is tj there? sorry ma'am this is not tj'sfuneral parlor. oh, come on, i know, he's

trying to avoid me but just tell him thatbrenda called. [indistinct] you have not called tj's. well, who is this? you wouldn't believeme. tj, tell tj--you don't want to tell them that they've called the south pole, becauseeither they're not going to believe you or they're going to believe you and they're goingto tell their friends, hey, call this number again and you're going to talk to the southpole. yes. >> how would you get one of these jobs?>> cohn: how do you get one of these jobs? we've gone over the--okay, we gone over theofficial time. so, let me say, thank you to those who wanted to bail out and then i'llsort of pause for 15 or 20 seconds so they can escape and talk a little bit more aboutthe jobs things. okay? thank you all.