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Arctic, northernmost region of the Earth, centred on the North Pole and characterized by distinctively polar conditions of climate, plant and animal life, and other physical features. The term is derived from the Greek arktos ("bear"), referring to the northern constellation of the Bear. It has sometimes been used to designate the area within the Arctic Circle—a mathematical line that is drawn at latitude 66°30′ N, marking the southern limit of the zone in which there is at least one annual period of 24 hours during which the sun does not set and one during which it does not rise. This line, however, is without value as a geographic boundary, since it is not keyed to the nature of the terrain.
While no dividing line is completely definitive, a generally useful guide is the irregular line marking the northernmost limit of the stands of trees. The regions north of the tree line include Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), Svalbard, and other polar islands; the northern parts of the mainlands of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada; the coasts of Labrador; the north of Iceland; and a strip of the Arctic coast of Europe. The last-named area, however, is classified as subarctic because of other factors.
Conditions typical of Arctic lands are extreme fluctuations between summer and winter temperatures; permanent snow and ice in the high country and grasses, sedges, and low shrubs in the lowlands; and permanently frozen ground (permafrost), the surface layer of which is subject to summer thawing. Three-fifths of the Arctic terrain is outside the zones of permanent ice. The brevity of the Arctic summer is partly compensated by the long daily duration of summer sunshine.
International interest in the Arctic and subarctic regions has steadily increased during the 20th century, particularly since World War II. Three major factors are involved: the advantages of the North Pole route as a shortcut between important centres of population, the growing realization of economic potentialities such as mineral (especially petroleum) and forest resources and grazing areas, and the importance of the regions in the study of global meteorology.
Physical geography
The land
The Arctic lands have developed geologically around four nuclei of ancient crystalline rocks. The largest of these, the Canadian Shield, underlies all the Canadian Arctic except for part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. It is separated by Baffin Bay from a similar shield area that underlies most of Greenland. The Baltic (or Scandinavian) Shield, centred on Finland, includes all of northern Scandinavia (except the Norwegian coast) and the northwestern corner of Russia. The two other blocks are smaller. The Angaran Shield is exposed between the Khatanga and Lena rivers in north-central Siberia and the Aldan Shield is exposed in eastern Siberia.
In the sectors between the shields, there have been long periods of marine sedimentation, and consequently the shields are partly buried. In some areas thick sediments were subsequently folded, thus producing mountains, many of which have since been destroyed by erosion. Two main orogenies (mountain-building periods) have been recognized in the Arctic. In Paleozoic times (about 542 million to 251 million years ago) there developed a complex mountain system that includes both Caledonian and Hercynian elements. It extends from the Queen Elizabeth Islands through Peary Land and along the east coast of Greenland. Mountain building occurred during the same period in Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya, the northern Urals, the Taymyr Peninsula, and Severnaya Zemlya. There is considerable speculation as to how these mountains are linked beneath the sea. The second orogeny occurred during the Mesozoic (251 million to 65.5 million years ago) and Cenozoic (the past 65.5 million years) eras. These mountains survive in northeastern Siberia and Alaska. Horizontal or lightly warped sedimentary rocks cover part of the shield in northern Canada, where they are preserved in basins and troughs. Sedimentary rocks are even more extensive in northern Russia and in western and central Siberia, where they range in age from early Paleozoic to Quaternary (the past 2.6 million years).
It is evident that the polar landmasses have been transported on lithospheric plates through geologic time and that their positions relative to each other and to the North Pole have changed, with significant modification to ocean circulation and to climate. Motion of plates in the Paleogene and Neogene periods (about 65.5 million to 2.6 million years ago) led to igneous activity in two regions. One was associated with mountain building around the North Pacific, and active volcanoes are still found in Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands, and Alaska. The other area of igneous activity extended across the North Atlantic and included the whole of Iceland, Jan Mayen Island, and east Greenland south of Scoresby Sound; it was probably connected to west Greenland north of Disko Bay and to east Baffin Island. Volcanism continues in Iceland and on Jan Mayen, and hot springs are found in Greenland.
Continental ice sheets of the past
Little is known about the climate of the northern lands in early Cenozoic times; it is possible that the tree line was at least 1,000 miles farther north than at present. During the Cenozoic, however, the polar lands became cooler and permanent land ice formed, first in the Alaskan mountain ranges and subsequently, by the end of the Pliocene (2.6 million years ago), in Greenland. By the onset of the Quaternary Period, glaciers were widespread in northern latitudes. Throughout the Quaternary, continental-scale ice sheets expanded and decayed on at least eight occasions in response to major climatic oscillations in high latitudes. Detailed information available for the final glaciation (80,000 to 10,000 years ago) indicates that in North America the main ice sheet developed on Baffin Island and swept south and west across Canada, amalgamating with smaller glaciers to form the Laurentide Ice Sheet, covering much of the continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky Mountains and between the Arctic Ocean and the Ohio and Missouri river valleys. A smaller ice cap formed in the Western Cordillera. The northern margin of the ice lay along the Brooks Range (excluding the Yukon Basin) and across the southern islands of the Canadian Archipelago. To the north the Queen Elizabeth Islands supported small, probably thin, ice caps. Glacier ice from Greenland crossed Nares Strait to reach Ellesmere Island during maximum glaciation.
The Atlantic Arctic islands were covered with ice except where isolated mountain peaks (nunataks) projected through the ice. In Europe the Scandinavian Ice Sheet covered most of northern Europe between Severnaya Zemlya in Russia and the British Isles. Northeastern Siberia escaped heavy glaciation, although, as in northern Canada, the ice sheet had been more extensive in an earlier glaciation.
As the ice sheets melted, unique landforms developed by the ice were revealed. Although not restricted to the present Arctic, they are often prominent there and, in the absence of forests, are clearly visible. In areas of crystalline rocks, including large parts of the northern Canadian Shield and Finland, the ice left disarranged drainage and innumerable lakes. In the lowlands deep glacial deposits filled eroded surfaces and produced a smoother landscape, often broken by low ridges and hills of glacial material, drumlins, rogen (ribbed) moraines, and eskers. In the uplands the characteristic glacial landforms are U-shaped valleys. Near the polar coasts these have been submerged to produce fjords, which are well developed in southern Alaska, along the east coast of Canada, around Greenland, in east and west Iceland, along the coast of Norway, and on many of the Arctic islands.
Because of their enormous weight, continental ice sheets depress the Earth's crust. As the ice sheets melted at the close of the Pleistocene Epoch (11,700 years ago), the land slowly recovered its former altitude, but before this was completed the sea flooded the coastal areas. Subsequent emergence has elevated marine beaches and sediments to considerable heights in many parts of the Arctic, where their origin is easily recognized from the presence of marine shells, the skeletons of sea mammals, and driftwood. The highest strandlines are found 500 to 900 feet above contemporary sea level in many parts of the western and central Canadian Arctic and somewhat lower along the Baffin Bay and Labrador coasts. Comparable emergence is found on Svalbard, Greenland, the northern Urals, and on the Franz Josef Archipelago, where it reaches more than 1,500 feet. In many emerged lowlands, such as those south and west of Hudson Bay, the raised beaches are the most conspicuous features in the landscape, forming hundreds of low, dry, gravel ridges in the otherwise ill-drained plains. Emergence is still continuing, and in parts of northern Canada and northern Sweden uplift of two to three feet a century has occurred during the historical period. In contrast, a few Arctic coasts, notably around the Beaufort Sea, are experiencing submergence at the present time.
Polar continental shelves in areas that escaped glaciation during the ice ages were exposed during periods of low sea level, especially in the Bering Strait and Sea (Beringia), which facilitated migration of people to North America from Asia, and in the Laptev and East Siberian seas.
Although the detail of the terrain in many parts of the Arctic is directly attributable to the Pleistocene glaciations, the major physiographic divisions reveal close correlation with geologic structure. The two largest shield areas, the Canadian and the Baltic, have developed similar landscapes. West of Hudson Bay, in southwestern Baffin Island, and in Karelia the land is low and rocky with countless lakes and disjointed drainage. Uplands, generally 1,000 to 2,000 feet above sea level and partially covered with glacial deposits, are more widely distributed. They form the interior of Quebec-Labrador and parts of the Northwest Territories in Canada, and the Lapland Plateau in northern Scandinavia. The eastern rim of the Canadian Shield in Canada from Labrador to Ellesmere Island has been raised by crustal changes and then dissected by glaciers to produce fjords that separate mountain peaks more than 6,000 feet high. The surface of the shield in Greenland has the shape of an elongated basin, with the central part, which is below sea level, buried beneath the Greenland ice cap. Around the margins, on the east and west coasts, the mountainous rim is penetrated by deep troughs through which local and inland-ice glaciers flow to the sea. The mountains are highest in the east, where they exceed 10,000 feet.
In shield areas where sedimentary rocks mantle the crystalline variety, as in north-central Siberia, the southern sector of the Canadian archipelago, and Peary Land, the topography varies from plains to plateaus, with the latter deeply dissected by narrow valleys. Far beyond the margins of the shields, extensive plains have evolved on soft sedimentary rocks. In North America these form the Mackenzie Lowlands, Banks and Prince Patrick islands, and the Arctic Plains section of northern Alaska; in northern Europe they form the Severnaya Dvina and Pechora Plains. In Siberia the Ob delta, its northeastern extension to the Laptev Sea, the North Siberian Lowland, the West Siberian Plain, and farther east the Lena-Kolyma plains (including the New Siberian Islands) have also developed on sedimentary rocks. Although there are differences in degree, these terrains are essentially flat, occasionally broken by low rock scarps, and covered with numerous shallow lakes. The plains are crossed by large rivers that have laid down deep alluvial deposits.
The strongly folded rocks associated with the two orogenic periods in the Arctic form separate physiographic regions. The original mountains of the older, Paleozoic folding were long ago destroyed by erosion, but the rocks have been elevated in recent geologic time, and renewed erosion, often by ice, has produced a landscape of plateaus, hills, and mountains very similar to the higher parts of the shields. In Ellesmere Island the mountains are nearly 10,000 feet high. In Peary Land and Spitsbergen maximum elevations are about 6,000 feet, while in eastern Svalbard and on Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya the uplands rarely exceed 2,000 feet. The younger groups of fold mountains of northeast Siberia and Alaska are generally higher. Peaks of 10,000 feet are found in the Chersky Mountains, 15,000 feet in Kamchatka, and even higher in southern Alaska. Characteristic of this physiographic division are wide intermontane basins drained by large rivers, including the Yukon and Kolyma.
Throughout the Arctic, excluding a few maritime areas, the winter cold is so intense that the ground remains permanently frozen except for a shallow upper zone, called the active layer, which thaws during the brief summer. Permanently frozen ground (permafrost) covers nearly one-quarter of the Earth's surface. In northern Alaska and Canada scattered observations suggest that permafrost is 800 to 1,500 feet deep; it is generally deeper in northern Siberia. The deepest known permafrost is in northern Siberia, where it exceeds 2,000 feet. The depth of the permafrost depends on the site, climate, vegetation, and recent history of the area, particularly whether it was covered by sea or glacier ice. Very deep permafrost was probably formed in unglaciated areas during the extreme cold of the ice ages. To the south in the subarctic, the permafrost thins and eventually becomes discontinuous, although locally it may still be 200 to 400 feet thick; along its southern boundary, permafrost survives under peat and in muskeg. In areas of continuous permafrost the active layer may be many feet thick in sandy well-drained soils with little vegetation but is usually less than six inches thick beneath peat.
Permafrost occurs in both bedrock and surface deposits. It has little effect in most rocks, but in fine-grained, unconsolidated sediments, particularly silts, lenses of ice, called ground ice, grow by migration of moisture, and in extreme cases half the volume of Arctic silts may be ice. Ground ice is often exposed in riverbanks and sea cliffs, where it may be 20 to 30 feet thick. In northern Siberia fossil ice has been reported up to 200 feet thick, although it may be glacier or lake ice that has subsequently been buried under river deposits. If ground ice melts, owing to a change in climate, hollows develop on the surface and quickly fill with water to form lakes and ponds. When frozen the silts have considerable strength, but if they thaw they change in volume, lose their strength, and may turn to mud. Variations in volume and bearing capacity of the ground due to changes in the permafrost constitute one of the major problems in Arctic construction.
Drainage and soils
Continuous permafrost inhibits underground drainage. Consequently, shallow lakes are numerous over large areas of the Arctic, and everywhere in early summer there is a wet period before the saturated upper layers of the ground dry out. During the summer waterlogged active layers on slopes may flow downhill over the frozen ground, a phenomenon known as solifluction. It is ubiquitous in the Arctic but is particularly intense where the soils are fine-grained, as in the coastal plain of northern Alaska, or where the precipitation is heavy, as on Bear Island in the Norwegian Sea. The effect of solifluction is to grade slopes so that long, smooth profiles are common; slopes are normally covered with vegetation, but if the soil movement is too rapid plants may not be able to survive. Under these conditions the surface material is often graded, with narrow strips of pebbles and boulders separated by broader strips of finer particles.
The surface of many soils in northern areas show distinctive patterns produced by complex processes of freezing and thawing, which cause frost heaving and sorting of debris; although permafrost is not essential to these formations, it is usually present. There are many different types of patterned ground. In some, coarser material, pebbles, and boulders form polygonal nets, with the finer materials concentrated in the centre. When sorting is widely spaced, stone circles develop. Another variety of pattern, formed in sands and muds, is outlined by frost-crack fissures or strips of vegetation. Individual polygons vary from about 1 foot to more than 300 feet in diameter. Mounds due to frost heaving in the soil also are widespread. They grow rapidly, disrupting leveled fields in a few years and limiting the use of farm machinery for haying. Elsewhere, notably in the Mackenzie valley and in parts of Alaska, removal of the natural vegetation—and, in isolated cases, plowing—has modified the soil climate. The ground ice has thawed, leading to disruption of drainage. Where the ice was wedge-shaped and in polygonal patterns, soil mounds several feet high may result. All Arctic terrains are sensitive to human-induced thermal disturbance, especially by vehicular traffic or oil-pipeline operations, and the preservation of the original soil climate is of great environmental importance.
The largest ice-covered mounds, which may reach 200 feet in height, are known in North America as pingos. Although they are widely distributed in the Arctic and subarctic, major concentrations are restricted to the Mackenzie delta, the Arctic slope of Alaska, and coastal areas near the deltas of the Ob, Lena, and Indigirka rivers. Submarine landforms resembling pingos are found beneath the Beaufort Sea.
Arctic soils are closely related to vegetation. Unlike soils farther south, they rarely develop strong zonal characteristics. By far the most common are the tundra soils, which are circumpolar in distribution. They are badly drained and strongly acid and have a variable, undecomposed organic layer over mineral horizons. Some of the drier heath and grassland tundras overlie Arctic brown soils, which have a dark-brown upper horizon with gray and yellowish brown lower horizons. The active layer in the permafrost is normally deep in them.
Many exposed rock surfaces in the Arctic have been broken up by frost action so that the bedrock is buried under a cover of angular shattered boulders. These mantles are known as felsenmeer (German: "sea of rock") and are found principally on Arctic uplands. Their continuity and depth varies with climate, vegetation, and rock type, but they may be as much as 12 feet deep. Felsenmeer are especially well-developed on basalts and are consequently numerous on the basaltic Icelandic plateaus. They also develop quickly on sedimentary rocks and are widespread in the Canadian Arctic, where they occur down to sea level.
Present-day glaciation
Although the Arctic is commonly thought to be largely ice-covered, less than two-fifths of its land surface in fact supports permanent ice. The remainder is ice-free because of either relatively warm temperatures or scant snowfall. Glaciers are formed when the annual accumulation of snow, rime, and other forms of solid precipitation exceeds that removed by summer melting. The excess snow is converted slowly into glacier ice, the rate depending on the temperature and annual accumulation of snow. In the Arctic, where most glaciers have temperatures far below the freezing point, the snow changes into ice slowly. In northwestern Greenland a hole 1,400 feet deep was drilled into the ice sheet without reaching glacier ice. The hole showed more than 800 annual snow layers, from which it was possible to determine precipitation changes for the past eight centuries. An ice core 4,560 feet deep was recovered in the mid-1960s from Camp Century in northwestern Greenland, and a core 6,683 feet deep from Dye 3, southeastern Greenland, was recovered in 1981. The ice cores have been analyzed for paleoclimatic and paleoatmospheric information covering the 100,000 years since the last interglacial.
The elevation at which accumulation and melting of glacier ice are equal is known as the equilibrium line and is roughly equivalent to the snow line. It frequently varies greatly over short distances and from year to year on a specific glacier. On Baffin Island the equilibrium line is a little more than 2,000 feet above sea level in the extreme southeast, rising to more than 4,500 feet in the Penny Ice Cap 300 miles to the north and descending to about 2,000 feet in the north of the island. In Greenland the line is at about 6,000 feet in the south and decreases irregularly to about 3,300 feet in the north. The summits of some ice caps are well below the snow line, but they continue to survive because of their low internal temperatures; the winter snowfall melts completely but refreezes in contact with the cold ice before flowing off the glacier. This phenomenon, first observed on the Barnes Ice Cap of Baffin Island, is now known to be widespread in the high Arctic.
Greenland ice sheet
The glaciers of the north polar regions can be divided into two groups depending on the source of their snow. The larger group is around the North Atlantic and its marginal seas; the smaller is nourished by moisture from the North Pacific Ocean. The largest ice sheet, the Greenland Inland Ice, is second in area only to the Antarctic Ice Sheet. It extends about 1,570 miles from north to south and has a maximum width of some 600 miles and an average thickness of about 5,800 feet, reaching 11,000 feet in the middle of the island. It covers an area of more than 650,000 square miles, nearly 80 percent of Greenland, and is contained within a basin by the mountains around the margins. In the northern interior the base of the ice is 1,000 feet below sea level. This discovery has led to the suggestion that Greenland is an archipelago rather than one large island. Although this might be so for a short time if the ice melted, the land would soon rise when the ice mass disappeared, forming an upland surface with an elevation of about 3,000 feet.
Mountains project through the ice sheet near the edges, while the interior is composed of smooth, gently rolling snowfields, often covered with wind-drifted formations called sastrugi. The surface of the ice sheet slopes downward to the sides, reaching the sea in a 240-mile front along Melville Bay in the northwest. Elsewhere, outlet glaciers pour out through fjords between the marginal mountains, particularly at Disko and Umarrak bays in the west and in the southeast. Where the ice calves into the sea, it produces vast numbers of icebergs. Those in the northwest cross Baffin Bay and are carried south in the Labrador Current to the Atlantic shipping lanes.
There are three major ice-free zones in Greenland: in the southwest, where the inland ice is separated by 100 miles from Davis Strait; north of Scoresby Sound in the east; and in Peary Land in the north.
Other glacier groups
In Arctic Canada glacier ice is restricted, with few exceptions, to the northeast as a consequence of the greater relief and precipitation around Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. The most southerly ice is found in the Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador, where there are small cirque glaciers at the base of the mountains. Immediately north of Hudson Strait on the plateau south of Frobisher Bay, there are two small ice caps. Larger ice caps and highland ice (through which mountains project) are present farther north along the east of Baffin Island and on Bylot Island; only the Barnes Ice Cap lies west of the coastal group. North of Lancaster Sound the ice is more extensive, and large parts of Devon, Ellesmere, and Axel Heiberg islands are glacierized. In many ways these ice caps are small versions of the Greenland Inland Ice, with a central dome-shaped section and outlet glaciers flowing through the mountains toward the sea. The ice cap on Meighen Island, the most westerly of the group, is an exception, as it is circular in shape and lies on low ground. Except for three small glaciers on Melville Island, there are no glaciers in the Canadian western Arctic. Few Canadian glaciers reach the sea and form icebergs. In the Arctic Ocean off northwestern Ellesmere Island there is an area of floating shelf ice that may at one time have been joined by glaciers, but the glaciers no longer reach the sea. This shelf ice has been the principal source of the ice islands of the Arctic Ocean.
Other glaciers are found north and east of the Atlantic Ocean and its continuation in the Norwegian and Barents seas. Iceland has five major ice caps, the largest of which, Vatna Glacier, covers more than 3,000 square miles. All have small outlet glaciers, although none reaches the sea. The ice caps owe their survival to heavy snowfall. The western part of Vatna Glacier buries a volcano, Grímsvötn (Gríms Depression), which erupts every 6 to 10 years; the heat of the eruption forms a subglacial lake that bursts in great floods over the margins of the glacier.
North of Iceland, Jan Mayen Island supports a glacier on the volcano Mount Beeren. The glaciers of Svalbard cover about 90 percent of the land. On the largest island, Spitsbergen, the plateaus are covered with highland ice from which outlet glaciers reach the sea; there are also numerous independent valley and cirque glaciers. North East Land, the second largest island, supports two ice caps on its plateaus. On the east side of the Norwegian Sea, precipitation is heavy over the Scandinavian highlands, but temperatures are also high, and the total area of ice is only about 2,000 square miles, a small part of which is in northern Sweden and the remainder in Norway. To the northeast beyond the Barents Sea, precipitation is less, but the summer is shorter and permanent ice is widespread.
Farthest north in this group are the islands of the Franz Josef archipelago. Although at no point are they higher than 2,500 feet, probably more than 90 percent of their area is covered with ice; some of the smaller islands are completely buried by glaciers. The southern island of Novaya Zemlya supports a few small glaciers; on the northern island they are more numerous, and the northern four-fifths of the island is ice-covered, with large outlet glaciers reaching the sea. Cyclonic depressions penetrate from the Barents Sea into the Kara Sea beyond Novaya Zemlya and produce sufficient snow for glaciers to form on Severnaya Zemlya. There are four major and many minor islands in the group. Although they are low-lying, consisting primarily of plateaus less than 2,000 feet high, all the larger islands have ice caps that cover less than half the total area. Outlet glaciers reach the sea and are an occasional source of icebergs. Elsewhere the Russian northern areas are remarkably free of glacier ice. Small cirque glaciers are found in the northern Ural Mountains and the Byrranga Mountains of the Taymyr Peninsula.
The glaciers around the North Pacific are concentrated in Alaska. The glaciers of southern Alaska are Alpine rather than Arctic and include some of the most spectacular mountain glaciers in the world. All types of ice are present, from small valley glaciers to highland ice that almost buries mountain ranges, with piedmont glaciers spreading out in the lowlands. The largest ice fields are around the Fairweather Range, the St. Elias Mountains, and the Chugach Mountains. Glaciers in these areas include the Hubbard, 90 miles long, intermontane glaciers such as the Seward, and piedmont glaciers such as the Malaspina. Smaller glaciers also occur inland on the Alaska Range and in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska; there is more ice farther east in the Romanzof Mountains, where one glacier, the Okailak, is 10 miles long, and in a similar situation in the Selwyn and Ogilvie mountains of Canada's Yukon. There are a few small glaciers in the Aleutian Range and on the Aleutian Islands. On the northwest side of the Pacific basin there are small glaciers in the East Siberian Mountains and on the volcanic peaks of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The overwhelming majority of Arctic glaciers for which precise data are available have experienced negative mass balances (i.e., reduction in mass) in the 20th century broken only by temporary cool phases in the 1960s and '70s. The effect has been a general retreat of glacier fronts and thinning of ice around the margins. The Greenland Inland Ice may be an important exception to this generalization.
In Iceland, where glacier fluctuations are well recorded, the ice appears to have been restricted from the 10th until about the 16th century. The ice then advanced, reaching a maximum about 1750. A second advance followed a minor retreat, culminating about 1850, and a major retreat set in about 1890. The recession was slow at first, but by the 1930s it was generally rapid and has continued since, except locally for a brief interruption in the 1970s.
The climates of polar lands vary greatly depending on their latitude, proximity of the sea, elevation, and topography; even so, they all share certain "polar" characteristics. Owing to the high latitudes, solar energy is limited to the summer months. Although it may be considerable, its effectiveness in raising surface temperatures is restricted by the high reflectivity of snow and ice. Only in the central polar basin does the annual net radiation fall below zero. In winter, radiative cooling at the surface is associated with extreme cold, but, at heights a few thousand feet above the surface, temperatures as much as 20 to 30 °F (11 to 17 °C) warmer can often be found. Temperature inversions such as this occur more than 90 percent of the time in midwinter in northwestern Siberia and over much of the Polar Basin. They also are common over the Greenland Ice Cap and in the sheltered mountain valleys of the Yukon and Yakutia. The lowest surface temperature ever recorded in North America was observed at Snag, Yukon (−81 °F, −63 °C), and even lower temperatures have been observed in Yakutia (−90 °F, −68 °C) and northern Greenland (−94 °F, −70 °C).
It has been customary to divide polar climates into two large groups, those corresponding to the climate of ice caps, in which no mean monthly temperature exceeds 32 °F (0 °C), and the tundra climates, with at least one month above 32 °F but no month above 50 °F (10 °C). A more satisfactory division is to classify them as polar maritime climates, located principally on the northern islands and the adjacent coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in which winter temperatures are rarely extremely low and snowfall is high; and the polar continental climates, as in northern Alaska, Canada, and Siberia, where winters are intensely cold and snowfall is generally light. Included in the polar continental climate type are the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which are influenced only slightly by the sea in winter because of thick, unbroken sea ice. In addition to these two climates, there are smaller transitional zones, limited areas of "ice" climates, the climate of the polar basin, and, on the south side of the tree line, the subarctic climates.
In the polar continental areas, winter sets in toward the end of August in the far north and about a month later nearer the tree line. Temperatures continue to drop rapidly until about December. January, February, and early March have uniform conditions with mean temperatures about −35 °F (−37 °C) in the central Siberian Arctic and −30 to −20 °F (−34 to −29 °C) in North America. The lowest extreme temperatures in the winter are between −65 and −50 °F (−54 and −46 °C). A better indication of low temperatures as they affect humans is given by the windchill, a measurement of the cooling power of the atmosphere on human skin. It reaches a maximum north of Hudson Bay, where strong and persistent northwest winds, typical of the Canadian eastern Arctic, are combined with low air temperatures. This area is stormy in winter, with moderately high snowfall (50 to 100 inches [1,300 to 2,500 mm]), rapidly changing temperatures, and even occasional rain. Elsewhere the winter continental climate is quiet, with long periods of clear sky and low snowfall. Visibility may be poor locally if there are open channels of water in the sea ice, and it is universally reduced when the wind blows drifting snow. The lowest snowfall is in the polar deserts of the northern Canadian islands and northern Greenland, where the total annual precipitation is frequently less than the equivalent of four inches of water.
Winter in the maritime Arctic (the Aleutians, coastal southwestern Greenland, Iceland, and the European Arctic) is a period of storminess, high winds, heavy precipitation in the form of either snow or rain (the latter at sea level), and moderate temperatures. The mean temperature of the coldest month is rarely below 20 °F (−7 °C), and extremely low temperatures are unknown.
Summer temperatures are more uniform across the whole of the Arctic. On the southern margin the monthly mean temperature reaches 50 °F (10 °C), and in continental situations short spells of hot weather with temperatures in the 80s F (27–32 °C), continuous sunshine, and calm weather are not uncommon; such weather often ends with thunderstorms. In the maritime climates, along the coasts, and on the northern islands when there is open water in the sea ice, the summer is relatively cool. In the south the temperatures are about 45 °F (7 °C), decreasing north to 40 °F (4 °C) or less; a maximum of 60 °F (16 °C) is hardly ever reached except at the heads of fjords as in southwestern Greenland, where marine influences are less marked. Fog and low clouds are widespread in maritime areas, and at this time of the year these areas are the cloudiest in the world. In lands that experience continental winters, precipitation is heaviest during the summer months; light rain and snow showers are frequent, but the average fall is low. The summer is everywhere a time of sudden changes. Calm, clear weather with sunshine and temperatures of about 50 °F (10 °C) will be followed by sudden winds, often causing a temperature drop of 20 to 30 °F (11 to 17 °C) and accompanied by cloud and fog.
Frost-free and growing periods are relatively short throughout the Arctic. For the most part there is no true frost-free period; frost and some snow have been recorded in every month of the year. At a few places near the tree line, notably in the Canadian western Arctic, the frost-free period may be the same as the less favourable parts of the prairies.
South of the tree line in the subarctic, differences between continental (Mackenzie Basin, interior Yukon, and Alaska and northeastern Siberia) and oceanic (northern Quebec-Labrador, northern Scandinavia, and northern Russia) situations are marked. A summer maximum of precipitation and frequent high summer temperatures (July means exceeding 60 °F [16 °C] in northeastern Siberia) in the continental regions contrast with heavier precipitation, often with a fall maximum, and lower summer temperatures in the oceanic regions.
The central polar ocean, together with the Beaufort and East Siberian seas, have winters comparable to northern Alaska and northeastern Siberia. Conditions are stable for extended periods of low wind velocities, clear skies—especially bordering Siberia—and temperatures ranging from −20 to −40 °F (−30 to −40 °C). Occasional storms originating in the Barents and Bering seas may penetrate the adjacent sectors of the polar basin and bring a temporary rise in temperature accompanied by snow or blowing snow. There is a negligible area (less than 1 percent) of open water in the central polar basin in winter; by April, air temperatures are rising until in June melting of the snow and underlying sea ice begins. Mean summer temperatures fail to rise above 34 °F (1 °C) and are accompanied by almost continuous low cloud cover and fog.
The only extensive ice climate in the Northern Hemisphere is in Greenland. In the south the climate of the inland ice cap has maritime characteristics with heavy precipitation, mainly snow from passing cyclone disturbances. In the centre and north a continental situation develops, and the snowfall is less. Although the air temperature may sometimes rise to 32 °F (0 °C), the mean temperature is much lower than in the south. Strong winds blowing off the ice cap are common in all parts of the island.
The evidence from glacier fluctuations suggests significant climatic change in polar latitudes in the past millennium. The first half of the 20th century saw climatic amelioration in the Arctic, with higher temperatures found particularly in winter and especially around the Norwegian Sea. In general, the magnitude of the warming increased with latitude, and in Svalbard winter temperatures rose by 14 °F (8 °C). Associated with climatic changes were a radical reduction of sea ice around Svalbard and off southwestern Greenland.
Birds, animals, and especially fish appeared farther north than before; in Greenland this led to a change in the economy, as its traditional dependence on seals yielded to dependence on fishing, particularly cod, which were caught north of the 70th parallel.
In the early 1940s, however, there was a downturn in polar temperatures. This widespread climatic cooling continued intermittently into the early 1970s. At this time sea ice failed to leave coastal areas in the summer in the eastern Canadian Arctic for the first time in living memory. A reversal of this trend followed in the next two decades, with the most noticeable temperature increases occurring in the lands to the north of the Pacific Ocean and around the Barents and Greenland seas (a change of +2.7 °F [+1.5 °C] in annual temperatures).
The underlying cause of the changes is not known, although they result directly from increased penetration of southerly winds into the polar regions.
Plant and animal life
Two main vegetation zones are found in the polar lands. In the south is the subarctic, formed by the northern subzones of the circumpolar boreal forest. To the north is the Arctic proper, where the vegetation is generally referred to as tundra, from the Finnish word for an open rolling plain; in North America the descriptive term Barren Grounds is frequently applied. The two zones are separated by the tree line, or timberline, defined in this case (the term also applies to the upper limit of arboreal growth at high elevations) as the absolute northern limit of treelike species, although even beyond it the same species may be found in low shrubs and dwarfed forms. The tree line is composed of different species. In Alaska and northwestern Canada white spruce is dominant, while in Labrador-Quebec it is black spruce and occasionally larch. By contrast, in northern Europe and Siberia the tree line is formed by larch, pine, and fir. The tree line is related to summer warmth, which may be correlated closely with tree growth. Alexander Supan found good coincidence between the tree line and the 50 °F (10 °C) July isotherm, a figure later modified by Otto Nordenskjöld to allow for spring temperatures.
In North America the tree line extends from the shores of the Bering Strait along the Brooks Range of Alaska to the Mackenzie River delta and then curves southeastward across the Northwest Territories to Churchill and James Bay. East of Hudson Bay it crosses northern Quebec to Ungava Bay and then continues into Labrador. In western Scandinavia the tree line is within a few miles of the sea; it curves east and crosses northern Siberia 50 to 150 miles south of the Arctic Ocean.
Arctic plants must contend with a harsh environment including low temperatures, continuous daylight in summer, infertile and often mobile soil and permanently frozen ground, and in many areas strong, dry winds and blowing snow. The species that survive are few and are frequently dwarfed. Many plants grow in compact cushions for maximum protection from the climate. The growing season is so short that annuals are rare and perennials reproduce asexually by shoots or runners. Even so, Arctic plants have a rapid seasonal life cycle. Spring growth often begins when snow is on the ground and there are still heavy frosts; the flower and seed stages follow in a period as short as six weeks. The sudden blooming of flowers is spectacular, particularly along the southern edges of the tundra, and for a short time in July the Barren Grounds are covered with a mass of flowers. The species vary but typical are those in the western American Arctic, which include the blue-spiked lupine, wild crocus, mountain avens, arctic poppy, and saxifrage. By late August the cycle is complete, and the plants are awaiting winter.
At first sight many parts of the Arctic are polar deserts without soil or vegetation. Closer inspection shows that some plant life is always present, and even on permanent ice there are often algae. The bare rock surfaces support thin brown, black, or gray crustaceous lichens that swell and become soft when wet; some of the larger black lichens are edible and are generally known as "rock tripe." In the past these lichens have been used for food by starving explorers. Higher plants grow in rock crevices and succeed in forming tussocks on patches of soil. Close to the southern edge of the Arctic, dwarf shrubs are found in protected sites on these rock deserts.
Tundra areas have a continuous cover of vegetation, and many different tundra associations (plant communities) may be recognized. In the drier and better-drained parts, heath tundra, made up of a carpet of lichens and mosses with isolated flowering plants, is dominant. In some areas, notably west of Hudson Bay, a similar environment results in tundra grassland. When there is more moisture, sedges and grasses become important and form tussock or hillock tundra; willow and dwarf birch may be found between the individual mounds. This type of tundra reaches its greatest development on the northern Alaskan coastal plain.
In the warmest parts of the Arctic, woody dwarf shrubs, willow, birch, juniper, and, locally, alder are profuse. In the southern Arctic several of these shrubs modify the heath tundra, and low scrub woods may be extensive. On sheltered, south-facing slopes, tall thickets of willow, birch, and alder develop, and under optimum conditions these bushlike "trees" may be more than 10 feet high. This type of vegetation is common in all circumpolar lands close to the tree line and is conspicuous in the inner fjords of southwestern Greenland and in northern Iceland. The bushes may be used in the western Canadian Arctic by the Eskimo (Inuit) for fuel or for mats, and in former times the wood was made into arrow shafts. It is unsuitable for bows, spears, or boat building; for these purposes the Eskimo either had to travel to the tree line or search for driftwood, which was formerly widely distributed along the Arctic coasts.
The tundra vegetation is the source of food for the northern grazing mammals but contains few foods of direct value to man. Berries are found throughout the southern Arctic. Most widely used by the native population has been the black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), eaten either raw or mixed with animal oil. Europeans have found the cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus), bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), and mountain cranberry (V. vitisidaea minus) more palatable. Mushrooms are widely distributed and can be used for a welcome change of diet.
South of the tree line is the subarctic forest-tundra. Its bare windswept ridges are covered with tundra associations, while in the sheltered valleys there are woodlands, which may become continuous near large rivers and, if the rivers flow north, may penetrate many miles into the Barren Grounds. These areas, known as galeria (gallery) forests, are found along the Coppermine River of Canada and the north Siberian rivers. The woods contain the same coniferous species as forms the tree line, together with several broad-leaved species, notably birch.J. Brian Bird
Animal life
Animal life in the Arctic, compared with that of warmer parts, is poor in the number of species but often rich in individual numbers. This is generally considered to be the result of at least two factors: the comparative novelty of polar glacial climates, allowing only a limited time for adaptation since their onset, and the much lesser variety of habitats available for colonization in the north as compared with the lower latitudes.
The fauna considered in this section is from the true Arctic Zone only. On the land, this is the zone north of the tree line; in the sea, it is the area in which the upper water is of Arctic Ocean origin, without admixture of Atlantic or Pacific water. This excludes most of the west Greenland waters and the waters of west and southern Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and Norway; it also excludes the Labrador Sea and the waters of the Labrador coast south of Hudson Strait.
Animals of the land and fresh water
The typical and best-known Arctic land mammals and birds are those highly successful forms, most of them circumpolar in distribution, that survived the Pleistocene glaciations probably both south and north of the ice sheets: south along the ice perimeter and north in ice-free refuges such as northern Alaska, the Bering Strait (then dry land) and northeastern Siberia, certain of the Arctic Islands, and probably northernmost Greenland. These include the polar bear (as much a marine as a terrestrial animal), caribou, arctic wolf, arctic fox, arctic weasel, arctic hare, brown and collared lemmings, ptarmigan, gyrfalcon, and snowy owl. This fauna, together with the vegetation that feeds the lemming, ptarmigan, and caribou, forms a tight ecological system that is virtually self-sufficient. During the winter and during periods of low lemming population, which occur every three to five years, the carnivores make some use of seashore life and (through the agency of the polar bear) of seal and fish. In extreme starvation conditions, there is a tendency for the snowy owls and gyrfalcons to go south in winter and for the foxes and wolves to become scavengers.
The caribou is a migrant, but only between the Arctic tundra and the conifer (subarctic) zone to the south, and there are far northern groups of caribou whose migrations are more restricted. The musk ox is a special case. Now restricted to the North American Arctic (including northern Greenland), it was formerly more widespread and is probably a "refugee" species, chased into the far north and on the defensive in the evolutionary sense. It has been established domestically in Alaska and western Greenland, on an experimental basis, with promising results.
Hibernation is not possible in the Arctic, because there are no frost-free refuges; all the nonmigrant, warm-blooded animals therefore must remain active all winter. Any incipient hibernation, shown for instance by the arctic ground squirrel, proves abortive, as the animals will shiver themselves awake after only a few days.
Most of the birds of the Arctic Zone are migrants, coming from wintering grounds as far away as the southern United States, Central America, Brazil, or even the subantarctic zone. By migration the birds obtain the advantage of the long northern summer days and of the high productive capacity of plant foods in the short but intense growing season. There is increasing evidence that food is not a limiting factor on summer bird populations in the Arctic, except in the case of strictly predaceous species during years of scarcity of prey. Typical land and freshwater birds of the Arctic Zone are the redpoll, Lapland longspur, snowbird, wheatear, pipit, certain plovers and sandpipers, loons, rock ptarmigans, ducks, and geese.
There are no reptiles in the Arctic Zone, owing to the absence of frost-free winter refuges, but one amphibian, the wood frog, does penetrate just north of the tree line in Arctic Canada. It breeds in July and early August in ponds and small lakes and spends the rest of the year buried in the mud at the bottom. The mud does not freeze, and the frogs are able to breathe through their skin, which the reptiles cannot do.
Freshwater fishes are represented by a few species only: whitefish, lake trout and speckled trout, Arctic grayling, two species of stickleback, the Alaskan blackfish, and the arctic char. In some regions the burbot, northern pike, and Atlantic salmon penetrate north of the tree line.
The invertebrate fauna of the Arctic land and fresh water consists largely of insects, including the chief scourges of the north, mosquitoes and blackflies. Among the most northern navigators are certain species of spiders that winter even in northern Ellesmere Island. Crustacea are represented by the branchiopods, which form an important part of Arctic pond life, and by the copepods. There is, in addition, a very considerable number of smaller species belonging to many phyla.
Marine fauna
The Arctic Circle, a parallel of latitude, has little value in understanding the distribution and limits of the marine Arctic flora and fauna. Its only significance lies in its relationship to the seasonal behaviour of light, which is of only limited importance and has nothing to do with temperature—which is extremely important—or, in the case of marine fauna, with salinity. The marine Arctic is defined as an area in which the upper layer (650–825 feet) is derived directly from the upper layer of the Arctic Ocean (Central Basin); the subarctic is the region in which Arctic and non-Arctic (Atlantic or Pacific) waters are found in close association or as mixed water. The subarctic marine fauna is much richer than the Arctic fauna, with which this article deals. The Arctic marine fauna is illustrated in terms of the whole ecosystem in the figure.
The fact that mammals are warm-blooded (homoiothermic) was clearly a great advantage when the climate cooled during the Pleistocene glaciations, and even now they dominate the macrofauna. Among the whales, the beluga, or white, whale and the narwhal are Arctic water species. The bowhead, in much depleted numbers, is found in the Beaufort Sea and in Baffin Bay and occasionally in Hudson Bay. Other whales, of worldwide distribution, appear in Arctic water occasionally (blue whale, little finback or lesser rorqual, finback, sperm whale, and killer whale). The killer whale is a fairly frequent visitor. The phocids, or hair seals, are represented principally by the ringed and the bearded seals, typical Arctic species, and by the migrant harp and hooded seals. The harp seal exists in three separate populations, breeding respectively in the Newfoundland region, the White Sea, and the waters south of Jan Mayen on sea ice in March and April. The fur seals, which are not strictly Arctic, appear in the North Pacific, breeding in Alaskan and Russian waters. A special ecological place is occupied by the polar bear, which is at home in the sea, on the sea ice, and on land but which is essentially an aquatic animal.
Fishes are not abundant in the Arctic zone, perhaps owing to the early competition with the homoiotherms. There are probably not more than about 25 species within the zone. The arctic char, an anadromous (river-ascending) migrant, is abundant and circumpolar, and the two small gadids, the polar cod and the arctic cod, are abundant throughout the region, their numbers being as yet only tentatively estimated.
Marine birds are abundant in summer, all of them migrants except, apparently, for a small proportion of the black guillemot population that winters in the Arctic, using the open water, such as the polynyas, for feeding areas. The seabirds in the true Arctic zone are represented by the auk family (murres, guillemots, auklets, and little auk), the sea duck (eider, scoter, old squaw), the gulls and terns (especially the glaucous and glaucous-winged gulls, many of the herring gull group of species, Sabine's gull, and the common and arctic terns), the jaegers (parasitic, pomarine, and long-tailed), and the waders (sandpipers, etc.). One of the petrel group, the fulmar, breeds on certain Arctic cliffs. The arctic tern, which breeds in the Arctic in the summer, makes a remarkable migration to subantarctic waters, where it winters.
There is a special ecosystem associated with the sea ice that is based on algae (mainly diatoms) living within the ice itself in considerable concentrations, especially in the lowest few inches. This plant growth supports a food web ranging from worms and copepods to amphipod crustaceans, polar cod, birds, and seals. The algae develop earlier in the season than do the planktonic algae (phytoplankton).Maxwell John Dunbar
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Asia: The Arctic zoneIn the Arctic, where glacial and Arctic deserts predominate, the processes of soil building occur only in rudimentary form. The soils are skeletal and low in humus. The subarctic north of Asia is occupied by a timberless zone of tundra vegetation. The subarctic…
Central Asian arts: Arctic regionsIn the arctic zone of Central Asia, the prehistoric age extends from the 3rd millennium
bcto the arrival of Europeans around ad1800. Knowledge of the region's arts is still very limited, for it is wholly dependent upon the sculptures produced by…
iceberg: Arctic icebergsMost Arctic icebergs originate from the fast-flowing glaciers that descend from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Many glaciers are funneled through gaps in the chain of coastal mountains. The irregularity of the bedrock and valley wall topography both slows and accelerates the progress of…
Holocene Epoch: The Viking-Norman PeriodIn the Arctic regions during the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries there was widespread navigation by the Vikings. Partly in response to reduced sea-ice conditions and milder climates they were able to establish settlements in Iceland, southern Greenland (Erik the Red,
c.985), and in eastern North…
permafrost…therefore, is widespread in the Arctic, sub-Arctic, and Antarctica. It is estimated to underlie 20 percent of the world's land surface.…
More About Arctic22 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- arts
- history
- Holocene climatic changes
- physical geography
- population and demography
exploration and study
- Byrd


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The new iPhone is cheap, the new iPhone is sexy and -- most important to developers looking it as a platform - the new iPhone has a built-in store that could generate more than $1 billion next year. Compare that to Google's Android mobile OS, which doesn't have a formal launch date, or the backing of one of the world's best marketers. And it doesn't yet have a built-in method of promoting and retailing applications.
So you'd think you'd see a rush of developers dropping their Android projects to get on the the Apple bandwagon. But based on conversations we've been having with developers, it doesn't look like that's happening. Why not? Android guys tell us it's mostly three reasons:
- The languagegap: Android apps are built in Java, iPhone apps are built on Objective-C. One Android developer we talked to said that he would switch to the iPhone, but he doesn't know Objective-C, and neither do any of the other developers at his company. Other Android developers who know the language don't like it, saying that it doesn't have the speed and flexibility of Java.
- The walled garden: Apple is tightly controlling what apps end up in its app store. It's deciding which ones get prime virtual shelf space, and it will set rules about pricing, file size and content (no "Adult" games). On the flip side, Android is completely open -- there are virtually no requirements on what you can or can't do with Android applications. On Android, the third-party apps have as much power as the phone's core applications, meaning you can build an app that will switch out the home screen, change the style of the dialer, etc.
- The money on the table: Google has already given away $1.25 million in first round of the first phase of the Android Developer Challenge. That means that there's $8.75 million left on the table. The developers we heard from said that they're busy working on the next round, and while they may think about the iPhone in the future, they're concentrating on Android -- and the upfront case -- for now.
See Also:
Google's Android: Worth Passing On The 3G iPhone For? (AAPL, GOOG)
Google Android: Still Sexy, Still No Launch Date (GOOG)
Get the latest Google stock price here.


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tbconsults needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 15 designs submitted by 8 freelance designers.
This logo should be about a connection between a group of people who have evolved personally and professionally over an intense 6 week period. However, though intense, it was fun and light and invigorating. Blend your creative juices and make it powerful!
I am looking for a logo design that captures the event described in the short summary. I want a logo and coloring that says emotion and connection and that's all about people reconnecting with the energy and synergy of their experience. It's a really good feeling thing!
This design will be the logo for the EAMConnection division of TBConsults and will be used primarily through an on line, interactive membership site for all students that completed the 6 week course.
By the way, the students are adults, business owners and on a quest for improvement.
- Item 1... Logo using EAMConnection.com.
- If a tagline, it would be something along the lines of "Re-living the experience!"
- You can complement the coloring of TBConsults.com but do not have to.
- Item 1...I don't want pictures of people. Capture the feeling, but not with photos of strangers!
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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March 9–July 22, 2007
Ellen Johnson Gallery
Two bold new wall drawings created by Sol LeWitt specifically for the AMAM's Ellen Johnson Gallery are the highlights of our exhibition of the work of this American conceptual artist. The drawings, each measuring more than 18 feet high, are installed on opposite walls of the gallery. The graphite scribble drawing is a gift from the artist. The wall drawings are shown with a selection of early figurative drawings dating to the 1950s, recent gouache drawings, and other sculptures—all from the artist's personal collection. The works on loan complement the AMAM's important early LeWitt work, 49 Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes (1967–71), also on view. Acquired in 1972, this enamel-on-steel work underscores LeWitt's belief that the concept is the most important aspect of a work of art. In his words: "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art." Newly restored and on view for the first time in more than a decade, it explores three types of cubes: solid cube, cube with opposite sides removed and cube with one side removed, representing all possible permutations of these cubes and their arrangements.
Sol LeWitt, who was born in 1928, died on April 8, 2007, at the age of 78. The two wall drawings at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, created in January, are among his very last. As was noted in his obituary in the New York Times, LeWitt gave instructions to teams of people – in Oberlin's case, members of his studio, Oberlin students, and students from other colleges – for such drawings, which took weeks to execute, always giving the teams "wiggle room" and believing that their input contributed a vital part of the art. The Allen is proud to be able to display these works, as well as works from our permanent collection and works from Mr. LeWitt's own collection, at this time, as a memorial to him and a tribute to his artistic legacy.
For a review of the Allen's Sol LeWitt exhibition from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, please click here.
Friday, March 9, 5:00-7:00 pm, opening reception
Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)
49 Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes (1967–71)
Enamel on steel
Fund for Contemporary Art, 1972.77


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Girls' Dorm Room Goes VIRAL For Being INSANELY Extravagant!
Uh, our college rooms did NOT look this good!
Two American students have taken the usually daggy standard of uni living to unheard of heights by seriously tricking out their dorm rooms.
No really, this place/ palace looks like a Pinterest board.
Lindy Goodson and Abby Bozeman, who we'll just point out have been designing their new room's aesthetic since December last year, met on social media in October and agreed that they were going to take their new digs at the University of Mississippi into luxury hotel territory.
"Most all dorms [at Ole Miss] are matching and decorated fabulously," Goodson told Cosmopolitan.com, "so we have been so surprised to see the amount of attention we've gotten over ours!"
Please tell us at least one of them is pursuing a career in interior design?
"Abby found the dresser at an antique shop and had it repainted and added some crystal knobs," Goodson continued. "The curtain on the dresser is a hand towel my mom found at TJ Maxx and made into a little cafe curtain (which hides their microwave when not in use).
"I also found the lamps... on clearance and the stools from Home Goods (which I hot glued some velvet ribbon on)."
They're not lying about other dorm rooms at their uni being top notch, either; look at their competition!
We would TOTALLY go back to uni if our rooms looked like that...


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OT - scary shoes!
And an alert to anybody that models these, we are going to want poses! :-)
mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
Just who, in anything that passes for the remotest glimmer of sanity, would give an award for something that idiotic?
Some joker just got toked up and said, "Hey, dude, I bet I can get some moron to give me money for these..."
Not going to comment on that E-lax walk she's got going on there.Post edited by mjc1016 on
Nominated for a design award - am certain I saw a headline for winning but ? where that went. Anyhow the artist is "making a statement". And she's made more than one pair of shoes ... expectations/hopes of some are that they may be making an appearance in a Lady Gaga musical.
cabachmr_8893cdeebf Posts: 21
I've said it before, and I say it again: Fashion is a joke.
GiGi_7 Posts: 1,131Patience55 said:And an alert to anybody that models these, we are going to want poses! :-)
No exactly McQueen's in the last photos, but it is not far. It was for V3 and it had poses too.exotic2.jpg225 x 225 - 10Kexotic.jpg160 x 160 - 4KPost edited by GiGi_7 on
LeatherGryphon Posts: 5,847
Well I don't know what they take to make such things, but it should be banned.
Morpheon Posts: 738
jakiblue Posts: 5,877
nah, they can't be REAL shoes. Had to be an "art" design for a gallery showing or something like that. No way in hell would they mass produce those for sale in a shoe store.
Murgatroyd Posts: 1,117LeatherGryphon said:hecate61 said:I've said it before, and I say it again: Fashion is a joke.
No no! Fashion is a scam.
No, no!
"From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. From the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of health, every principle of hygiene. While from the point of view of simple ease and comfort it is not too much to say that, with [a handful of exceptions], there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that can be worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer."
-Oscar Wilde
Kattey Posts: 2,899
I wonder if anybody noticed that shoes supposed to "serve as a commentary on today's impossible standards of beauty."
From reading the article, I got a feeling that designers didn't do it for a money (it was a grad thesis project), or for the art sake but to vent frustration of the designer on a fashion industry, which makes normal people feel inadequate because they can't or don't wish to conform to standards of fashion/beauty, which are often either too high or too absurd or both. In that role I'm finding those shoes actually to be perfect. A lot of normal people, among which are impressionable teenage girls, will feel inadequate even if they are perfectly normal/healthy/beautiful in non-mainstream way, even in case if standards of fashion/beauty may become something like that sort of harmful, absurd way of walking; some will mutilate themselves just to be "beautiful" but even on those who won't it may leave a serious impression that they are, in some way, "ugly"
That this design got an award is either deeply ironic (to give a fashion reward to the design that is, basically, anti-fashion) or deeply disturbing (as it was nothing more creative to award). The fact that "The jury applauds the way aesthetics, ergonomics and prosthesis merge into an awkward choreography" looks for me like either they completely missed the point the author was trying to make, or they deliberately ignored it.Post edited by Kattey on
jakiblue said:nah, they can't be REAL shoes. Had to be an "art" design for a gallery showing or something like that. No way in hell would they mass produce those for sale in a shoe store.
No they wouldn't be for a shoe store ... would be way too many lawsuits!Post edited by patience55 on


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Like Victor Cruz, Ramses Barden has spent his entire NFL career playing for the Giants. Unlike Cruz, Barden became an unrestricted free agent in March.
Also unlike Cruz, Barden has re-signed with the Giants, but for roughly an order of magnitude less than the Giants have offered Cruz.
Per a source with knowledge of the contract, Barden's deal takes advantage of the minimum-salary benefit, which uses a reduced cap charge for veterans with four or more years of service. Barden, a third-round pick in 2009, will receiver a $715,000 salary and a $65,000 signing bonus. By rule, his cap number will be only $620,000.
If Barden has a big year for Big Blue, they Giants won't be able to re-sign him until he becomes a free agent in 2014.
The Giants once lost defensive lineman Kendrick Clancy that way. He signed a one-year deal via the minimum-salary benefit in 2005, and the Giants couldn't re-sign him until he hit the market in 2006. The Cardinals signed him before the Giants could do a deal to keep him.


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If I had been an investment counsellor in the 50's, I'd have told you to put your money in a manufacturer of Santa Claus suits......because if advertising is an accurate reflection of a society's cultural habits (and let's face it, we know this to be true) then every male old enough to father a child was jamming his legs into fur-trimmed pantaloons and stuffing a pillow down the front of his pants at the first sound of bells jingling. How did costume shops keep up with the demand?
Personally, I'm not sorry to see this time-honoured tradition go the way of the dodo. My dad never wore a Santa suit. Well, he's Chinese and that would have just looked... odd. And I never had the urge to dress up like Mr. Claus - thank god Wendy never forced me to give it a try!
Call me a grinch but something about all these mock Santas skulking around the house in the dead of night strikes me as kinda creepy. Playing the role of Santa in any meaningful way takes a lot of stage presence. That doesn't come naturally to many guys! I can still remember "Santa" showing up at our house when I was a tyke and knowing right away that it was one of my mom's co-workers. Sure, his intentions were good but in my childish mind I was thinking, "I better play along because this grown-up could be drunk or crazy - or both!"
The truth is, all but the youngest of Cindy-Lou Whos can see right through that fake beard. Your voice or your cologne or your body language always gives you away. Kids notice that stuff, believe me. The imagination of a child is a powerful force and the Santa of our dreams is so much better than any "Santa's Helper" you'll ever sit on the knee of - at the mall or on your livingroom sofa.
Here's to keeping a little mystery in the Santa experience. Santa should never be seen - only heard.
These images can be seen at full size in my Retro Christmas Flickr set
Celebrating illustration, design, cartoon and comic art of the mid-20th century.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Father... Christmas
4 comments:
Now if you had a Jockey Christmas ad I'd be in heaven (my wife works for Jockey...).ReplyDelete
I will make a point of seeking something out for you, King. I remember promising you a FotL ad last year... still hunting! :-)ReplyDelete
Here's a Christmas Jockey ad for jingaling...ReplyDelete
Now with Candy Stripes!!!!
Say thanks to your father being santa claus.ReplyDelete
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Safe Routes to Schools grant program sparks old debate
One Wapakoneta City Council member is urging his fellow councilors to consider residents' objections to the installation of sidewalks along five streets in Grandview Estates.
Another councilor points out the work is a city improvement, in the city right-of-way and is paid completely with state and federal funds with no assessments on the property owner.
During Monday's meeting, councilors heard the first reading of an ordinance to apply for a third round of Safe Routes to Schools grant funding to install sidewalks along parts of Carnation and Laurel drives and Gardenia Avenue.
1st Ward Councilor Jim Neumeier said residents in that area continue to tell him they object to the plan to install sidewalks in their neighborhood behind Grandview Plaza.
"The point they keep making to me is they are adamant that they don't want the sidewalks installed," Neumeier said. "They have given us plenty of input over the last two or three years. I agree the quasi-petition is not a legal petition and that you may not accept because it was not in a legal form, but it was what they wanted."
He also questioned if the ordinance stipulated the proposed project would be paid 100 percent by the grant or did the city have to pay.
Several councilors explained the grant cover 100 percent up to the maximum of the grant amount and if the grant amount was exceeded it was then the city's responsibility to pay.
In the past, the federal Safe Routes to Schools grant provided funds to cover 100 percent of the proposed project. Now the federal grant's share has been reduced to 80 percent, but the state of Ohio picked up the remaining 20 percent so the city is still funded 100 percent for the project. The city is seeking the grant's maximum annual amount of $500,000.
Councilor-at-large Tom Finkelmeier Jr. voiced his stance in support of sidewalks and public safety.
"The point is not lost on me that there are some people opposed to sidewalks whether they are assessed or not, but I am as dedicated to putting in sidewalks, as I ever was, because I believe they are a safety improvement," Finkelmeier said. "This is a public safety benefit. We are putting a public improvement in the public right-of-way. I don't see this as an aesthetic improvement so it is not up for debate in my opinion."
Finkelmeier, who serves on Streets, Alleys and Sidewalks Committee with Neumeier, authored an ordinance a couple of years ago regarding sidewalk installation throughout the city but he withdrew the ordinance from consideration when Safety Routes to Schools grants became available. The 100 percent grant required no assessments on property owners.
"I know the issue of installing sidewalks where they were not previously required has been contentious, and we had a former sidewalk ordinance that was controversial, in part, because of its assessment component," Finkelmeier said. "I was happy to repeal that and I consider it one of my proudest achievements in public service that I was able to participate in bringing nearly $1 million and 100 percent paid sidewalks to Wapakoneta — adding no burden to the property owners."
The city has been awarded $950,000 through two phases of the Safe Routes to School grant program.
Councilor-at-large Dan Graf, who chairs the Streets, Alleys and Sidewalks Committee, also offered his position on the issue.
"I really believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to install sidewalks where now the city believes they should have always been installed which is in every subdivision in Wapak," Graf said, explaining this is not costing local residents nor the city any money. "This is a way to correct past deviations and to bring areas into compliance for not only the present owners but for future owners of those properties along those streets.
"This is a way of looking forward, to enhancing those areas and the safety of those areas," he said.
Mayor Rodney Metz explained state officials conducted surveys with Wapakoneta City Schools students and with school and city administrators and evaluated pedestrian traffic flows in the city. State officials then determined the routes based on the information.
He advised city councilors to listen to the residents, but the grant has been applied for and the routes identified and determined by the state in multiple phases. The city has completed the first two phases through Bramblewood Estates and along Redskin Trail.
Metz welcomed the state and federal funds coming into the city.
"We are close to $1.5 million if we are awarded the full amount this round and that is money the city did not have to cut costs to come up with or to assess property owners to complete," Metz said. "It is a nice benefit to the city to have the incoming funds to do a project of this magnitude."


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Is there a more knowledgeable sailor in our community than Dave Grant?
Because this is my column, I can ask and answer my own questions. My response is, "I think not!"
Now, you could hide my knowledge of sailing on the business end of a cotton swab. But I've known Dave for 40 years, and take my word for it, he knows about sailing.
The retired Orange Coast College professor, crew coach, president — and lifelong sailor — is midway through a swashbuckling eight-part lecture series he's presenting at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. Titled "Seafaring Tales With David Grant," the lectures are from 7 to 8:15 p.m. Thursdays at the museum, 600 E. Bay Ave. in Newport Beach. Admission is $10 for non-members and $5 for students. For reservations, call (949) 675-8915.
There are four lectures left.
This Thursday's lecture looks at Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914-17 trans-Antarctic expedition. The Oct. 21 session will focus on Capt. William Bligh of H.M.S. Bounty fame.
Christopher Columbus will be the subject of the Oct. 28 lecture. The series will conclude Nov. 4 with a look at Ferdinand Magellan and the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Raised in Newport Beach, Dave was a member of the college's faculty for more than 30 years, and served as president from 1989 until his retirement in 1995.
He loved his time as an OCC student in the late 1950s.
"The college shaped my life," he says.
At OCC, he learned how to be a student. He discovered leadership skills, mapped out his educational future, and fell in love with rowing. He was coxswain for OCC's crew and later rowed at UCLA.
"There were a number of people at Coast who made a huge difference in my life," he said. "Bob Griesser, my history professor, was the reason I ended up teaching history. He made his subject enthralling, and his passion was infectious.
"Mary McChesney taught me American literature. She was a fabulous teacher. I took German from Elmo Shaver. He taught me about the erudite life, and showed me there was a world beyond Orange County."
After two years at UCLA, Dave studied for a year at the University of Stockholm, traveled to Russia and backpacked throughout Europe.
He returned to the U.S. and completed a master's in history. He joined OCC's staff in 1962 as sailing coach and assistant crew coach, and became a history instructor and head crew coach the following year. He coached crew for more than 40 years, continuing long after his retirement.
Dave was an assistant U.S. Olympic crew coach for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Sports Illustrated Magazine, in a story about him in the early 1990s, tagged him as the only college president/head coach in the land.
He's a member of the Sailing Hall of Fame and, during a 1972 sabbatical, sailed a 28-foot sloop to Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa and Noumea, retracing the voyage of Captain James Cook.
Told you he knows sailing!
Dave served as OCC's assistant dean of students and dean of students for 20 years. He was director of marine programs, facilities and services from 1986 through 1989.
When Dave became the college's president, he posted a sign in his office that read "How Does it Benefit Students?" That became his mantra.
"Before making any decision, I'd ask myself, 'Is it a good thing for students?' That kept me focused," he said.
Dave says his six-year presidency was the highlight of his career.
"I had a great staff, and we all worked hard and did a good job. It was a creative atmosphere."
David retired in 1995, at the age of 57. His popularity as president had never been higher. There were no detractors at the gate calling for his ouster.
"The college is in very good shape," he told the community as he prepared to step down.
Did he leave too soon?
"Perhaps," he said. "But I didn't want to overstay my welcome. I wanted to leave while things were good." And things were very good in 1995!
Editor's Note: David Grant is running for a seat in Area 5 of the Coast Community College District.
JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.


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Various file systems exported by the kernel are used to communicate to and from the kernel itself. These file systems are virtual in that no disk space is used for them. The content of the file systems resides in memory.
Begin by creating directories onto which the file systems will be mounted:
mkdir -v $LFS/{dev,proc,sys}
When the kernel boots the system, it requires the presence of a few
device nodes, in particular the
console and
devices. The device nodes must be created on the hard disk so that
they are available before udevd has been started, and
additionally when Linux is started with
init=/bin/bash. Create the devices by
running the following commands:
mknod -m 600 $LFS/dev/console c 5 1 mknod -m 666 $LFS/dev/null c 1 3
The recommended method of populating the
/dev directory with devices is to mount a virtual
filesystem (such as
tmpfs) on the
/dev directory, and allow the devices
to be created dynamically on that virtual filesystem as they are
detected or accessed. Device creation is generally done during the
boot process by Udev. Since this new system does not yet have Udev
and has not yet been booted, it is necessary to mount and populate
/dev manually. This is accomplished
by bind mounting the host system's
/dev directory. A bind mount is a special type of
mount that allows you to create a mirror of a directory or mount
point to some other location. Use the following command to achieve
mount -v --bind /dev $LFS/dev
Now mount the remaining virtual kernel filesystems:
mount -vt devpts devpts $LFS/dev/pts -o gid=5,mode=620 mount -vt proc proc $LFS/proc mount -vt sysfs sysfs $LFS/sys
The meaning of the mount options for devpts:
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes are owned
by group ID 5. This is the ID we will use later on for the
tty group. We use the group
ID instead of a name, since the host system might use a
different ID for its
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes have mode 0620 (user readable and writable, group writable). Together with the option above, this ensures that devpts will create device nodes that meet the requirements of grantpt(), meaning the Glibc pt_chown helper binary (which is not installed by default) is not necessary.
In some host systems,
/dev/shm is a
symbolic link to
/run/shm. Inside a
chroot environment, this temporary file system needs to be mounted
separate from the host file system:
if [ -h $LFS/dev/shm ]; then link=$(readlink $LFS/dev/shm) mkdir -p $LFS/$link mount -vt tmpfs shm $LFS/$link unset link else mount -vt tmpfs shm $LFS/dev/shm fi


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home page > news > news
October 22nd, 2007
Study depository of furniture in Kamenice nad Lipou)
home page)
about the...)
on display)
press release)
active programs)
Newly opened!
A study depository of 19th and 20th century furniture from the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
A visit has to be arranged by appointment with the chateau administration
Entrance fee)
full CZK 30
reduced CZK 15
In mid September, the first part of a study depository of furniture design from the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague opened within the Days of European Heritage in the chateau in Kamenice nad Lipou, situated at the south-west corner of Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. After extensive reconstruction the chateau has been used for several years for exhibition and depository purposes, solving the inadequate capacity of museum depository. In addition to the Museum of Decorative Arts it is used by the Municipal Museum in Kamenice nad Lipou for a regional exhibition. The municipality of Kamenice nad Lipou takes care of the chateau park with a memorable linden tree; other premises host seasonal exhibitions and other cultural activities; there is a café with a summer terrace.
The first floor of the Eastern wing will gradually give access to the public to seven halls featuring 19th and 20th century furniture. This more or less chronological display, whose two halls opened on 15 September, is preceded in the connecting corridor by an "educational trail" of furniture design from its beginnings in the early 19th century. Eleven panels with text and photographs provide basic information on individual styles, significant foreign and domestic architects and designers and their realizations beginning from Biedermeier to the end of the 20th century. The texts are also available in English. Selected representative furniture has been installed on several stages along the panels throughout the entire corridor.
The purpose of this exhibition is to document key moments of inception and development of furniture design related to the transition from the individual handcrafted pieces to mass mechanical production during the 19th century: the influence of new technologies and materials to furniture design; the modern way of life impacting the typological construction of furniture; the enchantment by the plastics and subsequently their criticism; the role of individuals and specificity of national furniture schools in view of the new look of furniture design or, on the contrary, leveling the differences in the international style. We can find here the latest craze of Postmodernism as well as periodical comebacks of Functionalism, the dominance of the rational function as well as furniture conceived of as a work of art. The exhibition features icons of the world design, although often merely in replicas, as well as works by the youngest generation of Czech designers. This collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts, which is presented in this way to the public for the first time, is a result of a long-term collection activity of curators of the Museum of Decorative Arts, in particular Olga Herbenová, Milena Lamarová, Alena Adlerová and Věra Vokáčová, continued in the 1990s by Daniela Karasová.
The author of the scenario, selection of exhibited items and accompanying texts is Daniela Karasová; architectural layout has been designed by Karel Lapka; graphic design has been created by Jiří Sušanka.
October 22nd, 2007
Study depository of furniture in Kamenice nad Lipou)
A study depository of 19th and 20th century furniture in chateau in Kamenice nad Lipou
Study depository...)
Museum to be...)
Museum closed)
Toy Harvest 2007...)
New tapestry in...)
Ring ring ring)
Professor PhDr....)
Easter Monday)
Museum closed as...)


text:
UMKC coach Kareem Richardson makes coaching staff official with hiring of Thorpe, others
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Missouri-Kansas City basketball coach Kareem Richardson has completed his first coaching staff by hiring Angres Thorpe as associate head coach and Sean Bledsoe and Jason Sautter as assistant coaches.
Connor Hampton was promoted director of basketball operations, while former 'Roos star Spencer Johnson was hired to be a graduate assistant.
Richardson, one of Louisville coach Rick Pitino's top assistants, was hired by UMKC in March to replace the fired Matt Brown. He officially announced his staff on Wednesday.
Thorpe has spent the past two seasons as associate head coach at Toledo. Bledsoe has extensive experience running camps and AAU programs, and Sautter joins the program from Seward County (Kan.) Community College.


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Evening classes canceled Feb. 7, 2018. Learn more.
Home | Academics | Our Schools | Conservatory of Performing Arts | Conservatory News & Features
Major and degree earned: B.F.A. in musical theatreGraduation year: 2008Current role: National tour of Mary PoppinsHometown: Easton, Pa.Now living in: New York City
I wanted to attend a performing arts program that would nurture and develop who I was rather than turn me into a cookie-cutter performer. From my first visit, I knew Point Park was a school that embraced individuality.
I was given many performance opportunities. Through Point Park, I was given the chance to be in various conservatory shows and cabarets, participate in workshops and readings with Broadway talent, learn behind-the-scenes work in stage management and stagecraft, perform in a dance company, audition for feature films, work at a professional regional theatre (Pittsburgh Public Theatre), and perform in the New York and Los Angeles showcase for industry personnel. Essentially, I was able to explore every facet of myself as an artist. When I moved to New York, I felt confident, knowing that the vast experience I received in my four years at school would come in handy.
The theatre showcase gave me the best chance to make a smooth transition into the next phase in my career. I signed with my first agent out of the showcase, and had appointments for Broadway auditions within a few days of moving to New York. I couldn't have asked for a better situation to begin my time here, and I have Point Park to thank for that.
I would have to say our student cabarets. Every few weeks, the student body organizes and puts on a show like nothing you've seen. It's a chance to take a breather from the everyday pressure of classes, shows and auditioning. Most of the time I would be laughing from some of the ridiculous sketches, but the cabarets also lent an outlet for various talents. One minute you would have someone playing a song they composed, and the next, a guy tap dancing on stage (i.e., me!).
At the end of the day, you always need to know who you are as a talent and stick to that. There are always going to be people telling you what you can and cannot do, but only you know what you're fully capable of. I think it's important to be a well-rounded artist, but all of us have specific talents that make us stand out from the crowd. Embrace those talents, and never be ashamed to walk into a room and know you're good. Confidence is half the battle.
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To Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis, O.co Coliseum is a sight to behold, but not in a good way. Home to the Raiders and Oakland Athletics, the 46-year-old stadium is beyond renovation, Davis told NFL.com and NFL Network reporter Ian Rapoport during the NFL Fall Meeting in Chicago.
Relive every game this season online and on-demand with enhanced viewing features, including the "All-22" coaches film. Get NFL Game Rewind.
The multipurpose stadium poses problems when it comes to repairs and upgrades and the sightlines for football are "absolutely terrible," Davis told Rapoport.
The Raiders' Bay area rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, broke ground on their new, 68,500-seat Santa Clara Stadium in April. But Davis told Rapoport that he has no plans to share the stadium, a la the New York Giants and New York Jets before MetLife Stadium was built.
"I give the 49ers all the credit in the world for getting a shovel in the ground in California," Davis said. "That's phenomenal. But we're trying to get our situation right. It's not easy to do."
The 49ers and Raiders have kept discussion open about sharing a home field, although Davis told Rapoport that the best-case scenario would be to keep the Raiders in Oakland and build a new stadium on the current site of O.Co Coliseum, or at another viable site in Dublin, Calif.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed the Raiders' stadium situation during his press conference Tuesday, saying the league recognizes the need for upgraded facilities in Oakland.
"I think there is a very strong recognition that they need a new stadium," Goodell said. "That's going to be something they have to have in that community to be successful going forward. Everyone is working toward finding out how to do that."


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Dozens of protesters rallied outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters yesterday in a show of support for Christopher Dorner and his claims of racism on the part of the LAPD. Among the signs the protesters carried were:
"If you're not enraged, you're not paying attention."
"Why couldn't we hear his side?"
"Clear his name! Christopher Dorner"
Support for the deranged killer wasn't limited to the protesters. According to the Los Angeles Times, "as the protesters stood Saturday, drivers passing by honked, waved and gave thumbs up."
Dorner was hardly unique in blaming his race for his misfortune; there's an entire industry devoted to this. What was unique about Dorner's claim of racism was its self-refuting nature. Through his deranged and murderous conduct, Dorner confirmed in spectacular fashion that he did not belong on LAPD. If yesterday's protesters want to stick up for a victim of racism, they should find a better poster-child.
But Dorner's deranged and murderous conduct is precisely what provides his appeal to some people. Marc Lamont Hill spoke the truth for once when he said that Dorner is "like a real-life superhero to many people."
It's often said that a common sense of right and wrong is one of the prerequisites for a nation. The pro-Dorner movement offers a hint that the U.S. one day will no longer satisfy what I had always assumed was a "gimme" criterion.
UPDATE: Some protesters express unhappiness with the fact that Dorner wasn't captured, but instead (apparently) shot himself after the police caused the cabin he holed up in to catch fire. It would be interesting to know how many more law enforcement officers needed to die at Dorner's hands before these protesters would be satisfied. On second thought, I don't really want to know.


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Dr. Farvardin and took office as the 7th president of Stevens Institute of Technology in July 2011. With a little over a year under his belt, we caught up with Dr. Farvardin to discuss Stevens' future, living in Hoboken, and the state of education.
You spent 27 years at the University of Maryland, College Park, which has 27,000 undergraduate students and 11,000 graduate students. That's a much larger institution than Steven Institute of Technology. What do you like most about working in a smaller school?
There are two distinct differences that I have found particularly attractive about Stevens' smaller size. First, Stevens is like a family. Faculty, staff, and students know and care about each other. It is easier to get to know the members of the campus on a first-name basis—to have meaningful conversations about the future. Second, because of its smaller size, Stevens is agile, dynamic, and non-bureaucratic. It can react to challenges and respond to opportunities far more rapidly than larger, more bureaucratic institutions.
What have you found most challenging?
Because of Stevens' relatively smaller size, we must be disciplined in choosing the types of education and research programs we will build. There are many interesting problems an institution like Stevens—with its strong technological foundations—could tackle. We need to select and pursue areas in which we can have a distinctive and differentiating impact. Therefore, all of our education programs, even those in the College of Arts and Letters and in our business school, have a strong technology core.
We must continue to invest our time and resources in the highest priority areas for our state and our nation requires ongoing attention and focus. Remaining focused on providing a comprehensive, yet technology-centered, program is a key strategic priority for us.
What goals do you have for Stevens? Where would you like to see Stevens in 10 years?
We've just completed an intense strategic planning process—lasting nearly 10 months—that substantially engaged many, many members of our campus community, our alumni, and our industry partners. This process has resulted in a vision and a very ambitious, but achievable, plan that will propel our university into a leadership position through our technology-centric education and research programs.
In 10 years, Stevens will be an internationally-renowned technological university with its graduates and research making a significant impact on our society. Building on our current strengths, Stevens will educate technology innovators and problem-solvers who will lead in addressing some of our nation's most pressing problems and who will make an impact in dynamic and growing industries, such as health care and medicine; sustainable energy; financial systems; defense and security, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.
Stevens has been in the news a lot lately—all good things. Can you tell us about some of them?
A few months ago, Bloomberg Businessweek placed Stevens among the top 25 universities in the country for the return on investment, and Wall Street and Technology put Stevens in the list of ten best science and technology universities. The university's reputation is on the rise!
We launched our Financial Systems Center, the Hanlon Financial Systems Lab, in April 2012. A brand new master's program in Business Analytics and Intelligence is generating unprecedented interest by students and corporations. Our students and faculty are in the midst of designing and building our second Solar House to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon Competition in October 2013. And a number of student-faculty groups are working hard on developing apps for broadband networks in response to the FCC Chairman Genachowski's and Senator Lautenberg's New Jersey Apps Challenge.
We have just reorganized the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and expect significant new developments, leading to technology transfer and licensing agreements and new start-ups.
Our high-school summer programs experienced a 57% growth over the previous summer; and in September we welcomed the largest and most academically talented freshman class in the history of the university.
And one last thing, we just reported our FY12 fundraising efforts that represented a 189% growth over the previous year. And that's just the beginning.
Everyone has something to say about the state of our education system these days. Would you like to weigh in?
Well, I have a lot to say, and could go on all day. Let me say this: first, our K-12 system—while there are pockets of excellence—needs to be overhauled to provide students with the knowledge and skills they will need to be productive citizens. Many of the jobs that our current generation of K-12 students will hold do not even exist today! We need to develop students who are adaptive, creative problem solvers who have a strong technological foundation. Technology underlies almost every aspect of our life—from our communications devices and household appliances, to the ways we secure our physical and cyber infrastructure. Yet, much of schooling is not about developing these types of capabilities.
Second, there is growing misalignment between what the country needs in its educated workforce and what our universities produce. One may argue that the free enterprise system will fix the problem in the long run, but I am afraid we need to intervene sooner.
If you were attending Stevens as a student, what class would you be most excited to attend?
I haven't been at Stevens long enough to answer this question with certainty. But, I find our design spine (an eight-semester experiential learning sequence in which students develop physical prototypes and products) and the senior design project most intriguing. If I had the time, I would have signed up for three sections of this course simultaneously!
I love the Stevens tagline 'The Innovation University". It might be hard to pick just one, but tell us about your favorite technology innovation?
Probably the iPhone, if I were to pick just one; it's the perfect example of how innovation occurs. Steve Jobs and Apple brilliantly integrated a number of technologies that had been invented and developed over the years—wireless networks, microelectronics, computing, digital music, advanced display, digital photography, voice recognition—into one product that simplifies life, is elegant, and for which there was a clear need in the market place.
Hoboken NJ is a far cry from College Park MD. What's your favorite thing about living in Hoboken, and in NJ, so far?
I find life in Hoboken most stimulating and rejuvenating. Hoboken is a vibrant city with a lot of energy and a diverse mix of young professionals, students, and long-time residents. Also, it has history, culture, wonderful restaurants, a beautiful waterfront and views and when my wife and I venture into New York City, it's quick and easy. We really love it here!