Svalbard on TV again

The first in a new series of Amazing Animal Journeys follows a Polar Bear and her cub through the wilderness of Svalbard tonight. These programmes tend to be a little anthropomorphic in approach. Can you explain what I mean by that ?

Should be another opportunity to appreciate the extreme nature of the climate and the environment, and also to look at the influence of Global warming, which is threatening the existence of the migratory ursus maritimus.

The programme is on BBC1 at 8pm tonight (Sunday)

I also discovered a book I was given by a colleague at the first SLN Field Weekend: Simon Chapman’s “Explorers Wanted at the North Pole”

It’s got a good section which is a little like the old Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone ‘Fighting Fantasy’ game-books (what do you mean you’ve never heard of them….) where you read a section then make a decision. Whichever decision you make, you turn to a particular numbered paragraph and basically take a different route through the story which could end up in you dying a horrible death or surviving… The section is all about survival in the Arctic and making the right choices, a similar activity to the Race for the Pole game which is part of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures site to support the Antarctica lectures from a few year’s back.

You may also notice a new section in the column on the right hand side of the screen / blog. This is to show the LABELS, which I have attached to each post. This means that if you are interested in posts on a particular topic, you can now view them sorted accordingly, for example the label "Michael Palin" will take you to the post where we used the video of Pole to Pole in the lesson.

This should make it easier for you to find a particular post that you're interested in.

This is an experiment. Below will hopefully appear an updated picture from a WEBCAM on Svalbard: one of many excellent images gained from http://www.svalbard.com which also has the latest weather details (it's -5 degrees Celsius as I type this...)

Update: Very excitingly this seems to work - as I write this, a ship has berthed at the dock, its engines running. Cool !