Triple thesis defense week

This has been a busy week in the glaciers lab - three of the four students are defending their theses, including yours truly. I successfully defended mine on Tuesday, and can now move on to bigger things. These days the thesis defense is more of a formality than the exam that it used to be. Basically your committee won't ask you to defend unless they think you're ready to, and they are also the ones who decide whether or not you pass the defense. And, of course, it looks bad on them if they have students who fail their defense - so they want you to pass. Its become such that the thesis defense is really just an opportunity to share your work with friends and colleagues and to celebrate your accomplishments over the past few years. Since I'll be continuing on for a Ph.D., this is just one step down that road, but it still feels good!

My mom came up to see my defense; Inari and I have been busy showing her around. We saw the start of a dogsled race, went cross-country skiing, visited the museum, saw "Good night, and good luck" (a great movie), watched a moose walk past our cabin, played Carcassonne (a great tile-laying game - buy it!), and are going to view the World Ice Art Championships this afternoon, go to a triple-thesis-defense party on Friday, and swim in the hot springs on Saturday. Phew!

Our skiing adventure

In typical fashion, our spring break trip didn't go quite as planned. This year we tried to do a 3- to 4-day ski tour near Summit Lake on the Richardson Highway. Under good conditions this would be an ideal ski tour - rolling hills above the trees with spectacular views in all directions. It's also an area that can be very wind swept.

This year the wind had formed extremely hard packed snow dunes, turning skiing into an interesting dance. Our friend Sebastién even managed to break his ski (almost into two seperate pieces) by straddling two of these dunes. Luckily we weren't too far from the road when that happened, and he managed to crawl/walk back to his car while we continued on.


It was a beautiful weekend, too beautiful. There were no clouds in the sky, and temperatures quickly dropped after the sun set and didn't stop until they had reached -30C (-22F). Brrr! After one night in a tent at those temperatures and after having difficulties getting our stove to light, we decided the smartest thing to do would be to head back to the car and get home.

Science vs. Politics

Since I have recently been discussing (but mostly just intending to discuss) evidence for climate change and potential for anthropogenic causes, I thought I'd insert some political commentary into the mix. An editorial in the February 17th issue of Science highlights some very disconcerting news. In the past, scientists have complained that politicians, the media, and the general public don't listen to the results of their research, and in particular that they choose to ignore evidence for anthropogenic climate change. Now that the public is starting to listen, it seems that politicians want to restrict research and interpret the results on their own - and we'd better agree with them. This is a very dangerous path. Should we also let politicians be open heart surgeons, just because? Let the experts be experts. In addition to the above mentioned editorial, there is a fair amount of speculation in the science community that the current administration is encouraging exploration on Mars and the Moon in order to draw money and attention away from satellites that are observing Earth, many of which are documenting rapid climate warming and environmental degradation.