Word: poling
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Back from a cruise to the North Pole aboard the Russian icebreaker Yamal, tourists told the New York Times that a mile-wide lake had opened up at 90[degrees] north, with gulls fluttering overhead, and they had the pictures to prove it. The newspaper declared that such an opening in polar ice was possibly a first in 50 million years, though that claim was dismissed by scientists who nonetheless see other serious signs of Arctic warming (see box, page...
...tourists and their scientific guides aboard the Russian icebreaker Yamal, it was an astonishing sight. Just as they approached the North Pole, they spotted a mile-wide hole in the ice. "It was totally unexpected," Harvard oceanographer James McCarthy, one of the scientists on board, later told the New York Times. Paleontologist Malcolm McKenna, of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, said, "I don't know if anybody in history ever got to 90[degrees] north to be greeted by water, not ice." Even more surprising, they saw ivory gulls soaring blithely overhead. The Times itself commented...
Even so, the scientists did not dispute the many other signs of warming in the Arctic. It's just that one opening in the ice, even at the pole itself, doesn't mean a polar meltdown. But what about those ivory gulls? Aren't they pretty rare birds in a locale known more for fauna like polar bears? Not really, explains the Audubon Society's John Bianchi, who points out that the tough gulls are regular inhabitants of the Arctic Ocean. "If you've got open water at the pole or anywhere else up there," he says, "you're going...
...While Haworth discovered weight lifting, Stacey Dragila was using coordination honed by years of goat roping at rodeos in a different contortion: pole vaulting. Dragila started experimenting with vaulting in the early 1990s after enjoying only modest success as a heptathlete. She is drawn to the daredevil aspect of the sport. "I think women have brought a lot of life back into the sport--first, because a lot of people doubted women could actually do it well. Two, part of it is that odd fascination some people have in watching athletes risk injury to win." Dragila, 29, is doing something...
...rural Idaho, I had to keep up--and put up--with my brother and all his friends. I got tough physically and mentally, and it's one reason why I'm so aggressive and competitive." It was also her male coach, Dave Nielsen, who first suggested she try the pole vault. "I admit the women aren't anywhere near the men in height [the men's record is 20 ft. 1 3/4 in.]," says Dragila, "but I've got the words World Record next to my name, and that's something all athletes would like...