Comments about technological history, system fractures, and human resilience from James R. Chiles, the author of Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (HarperBusiness 2001; paperback 2002) and The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks, the Story of the Helicopter (Random House, 2007, paperback 2008)

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Celebrating Low Temps

This week I helped Son No. 1 replace a dead battery in his car. Our garage was a parking lot while it was blowing snow, dark, and below zero.

Things didn't go as smoothly as they do in summertime, and occasionally we had to take our gloves off to get at some little part, or to make sure we didn't lose something important by dropping it into the engine compartment. Metal absorbs heat quickly so our fingers took some time thawing out afterwards.

That was enough fun for a half-hour or so, and reminded me of one group that can truly claim to be heroes of cold-weather repairs: the Russians manning Ice Station Vostok when it suffered a catastrophic fire at the start of the 1982 Antarctic winter. My blog post on that close call is here

And in celebration of another two months of frigid weather in Minnesota, here's a pointer to my Ice-Rules blog with more ice images and videos on the way. 


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