"Tiny Nuns"
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The Catholic Church is abandoning Antarctica as a faithless wasteland of pr0n-guzzling irredeemables – or, as the rest of the world knows them, scientists. The US National Science Foundation has asked the New Zealand diocese of Christchurch to abandon its foothold on the continent. The withdrawal will go ahead thanks to a …
I remember back in the day when girls were a novelty on the ice, and NZARP survival training was based at Tekapo army base, everyone hit the communal showers after a day in the snow at Round Hill, before a few beers in the mess. The female students from one of the uni field parties chose to go in with the Father, probably for protection from the rest of us PFYs. I think the comment afterwards was along the lines that "I thought there was something different about those chaps". Antarctica is such a huge environment that it reaches everyone's spiritual places, and Scott Base as well as McMurdo and South Pole Station have been well guided by people like Father Doyle over the decades.
Judging from the events of New Year's Eve a few years back, it's the British Antarctic survey who are in need of salvation, not the Americans.
Strangely not on Google now, but some sort of fight broke out, resulting in broken jaws and at least one boffin being helicoptered out and then flown onwards to hospital in Argentina IIRC.
UPDATE found it http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/27/usa.barbaramcmahon
Was those pugilistic Americans after all, not the sturdy British chaps.
For years the USAP was immune to major cuts, due to "strategic presence and claims" considerations, but ever since the moronic US government shutdown that seems to have changed. Back when I worked down there it was even closer to 3,000 people (including various outer camps). Now McM must look like a ghost town.
Never mind the decline in religious belief, what about the decline in science? Though I expect the penguins and seals are happy about the reduction in "alien abduction" style poking and probing.
Agreed, our government is cutting all of the wrong things from the budget, rather than an immense and crushing expense of an enormous military.
Wouldn't mind a tour there, even with a winter over. Maybe I'll pop over to the site and see if they need any IA types, who can also provide BOFH mk II services.