The year 1972 saw a number of extraordinary events in the history of computer technology. Atari launched its first popular computer game, Pong. Intel released an eight-bit processor known as 8008. Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, was born. What else? Perhaps the fact that following a week of tedious calculations, World3, a program developed by MIT scientists, came to the
The Barents Sea is my route to work. I sail through it on a ship filled with tourists when, as a guide, I travel north to show people the wild beauty of Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, and the North Pole itself.
Although it’s now merely a shadow of its former glory, the Barents Sea is still full of life. A few years back, I saw my first blue whale here. What a sight it was! Whenever a blow (absurdly called ‘a fountain’ in Polish) is spotted, passengers get excited, especially if it is a few metres high. Whales blow air forcefully, as if they are sneezing. Their breath contains compressed air, some steam, a bit of water from the blowhole, and a lot of snot.
