Arctic Dreams
This is an account of the author's exploration of the Western Arctic region, between Bering Strait and Davis Strait. It is an account both of the natural history of the Arctic, and equally of how the Arctic grips the human spirit and imagination.\ The chapters are rich in their descriptions of the Arctic –of the physical land itself, the native peoples that the author met, the Arctic animals and plants, both terrestrial and aquatic, the ice and the Arctic light that make the region so distinctly different from the temperate and tropical parts of Earth. But Lopez also gives us a sense of how the Arctic fascinates the mind and spirit – through his own personal experiences and through the history of the Arctic - both of the native peoples and the discovery expeditions.
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What Hacker News says
- On the general subject of the Arctic, I would recommend the book Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.
- I read in Arctic Dreams (Barry Lopez) that polar bears are hard to detect in the visual (white on white) and infrared (very good thermal insulation) spectrums, but that they are easily detectible in the ultraviolet spectrum due to the particular qualities of their fur. I'd suggest this is a reason that UV vision has developed in reindeers. Polar bears are the largest land predator in that region, and being able to see it in the only spectrum it's really detectable in would be a major benefit for reindeer.
- Some books
Hugh Brody Maps and Dreams tells of land use mapping with indigenous people in Canada. They lived without time OK, adjusting activities with the length of the day, and their movement around their land by the seasons and the game available.
Barry Lopez Arctic Dreams tells the story, among other things, of the Government school teachers in a far North village who tried to get the children into school between 9 and 4 on weekdays during the summer (24 hour daylight). The children normally went to sleep when they wanted to. The community reaction was to leave the doors of the cabins unlocked and to suggest that the teachers could come and get the children if they wanted them there....
As this is HN, do we think that a significant number of people could adopt this kind of approach to time given distributed education, home working, ubiquitous computing &c? Remember that my Granddad (born 1892 in UK) went from working in the fields by the light of the Sun to punching a clock in a factory, via the First World War.
