Shapes

Arctic Circle

How It's Used

“We think it little to sit down to a table covered with articles from all quarters of the globe and from the remotest isles of the sea—with tea from China, coffee from Brazil, spices from the East, and sugar from the West Indies; knives from Sheffield, made with iron from Sweden and ivory from Africa; with silver from Mexico and cotton from South Carolina; all being lighted with oil brought from New Zealand or the Arctic Circle. Still less do we think of the great number of persons whose united agency is required to bring any one of these finished products to our homes—of the merchants, insurers, sailors, ship-builders, cordage and sail makers, astronomical-instrument makers, men of science, and others, before a pound of tea can appear in our market.”

“He looked to the south and knew that somewhere beyond those bleak hills lay the Great Bear Lake; also, he knew that in that direction the Arctic Circle cut its forbidding way across the Canadian Barrens. This stream in which he stood was a feeder to the Coppermine River, which in turn flowed north and emptied into Coronation Gulf and the Arctic Ocean. He had never been there, but he had seen it, once, on a Hudson Bay Company chart.”

“Pilots [at Alaska Airlines] liked to tease out-of-state tourists by announcing the imminent crossing of the Arctic Circle. Just as the plane passed over the line, pilots goosed the controls to make the plane wobble, producing the 'Arctic bump.' The airline banned the practice after a passenger complained, but many pilots smile coyly when asked if they still do the bump.”

“As the world’s climate warms, and the environment becomes more inhospitable to the major breeds, humanity might need the genes that allow animals like the Ankoles to flourish in the African heat. The challenge is to safeguard the resource. There are two possible approaches: putting the animals in cold storage, or changing the economic equation. Proponents of the first option desire something like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a doomsday depository for plant species that an international consortium is building in the Arctic Circle. But storing sperm and embryos is far more expensive and technically difficult. Biodiversity advocates say that it would be preferable, anyway, for breeds like the Ankole to go on living in their pastures. The most obvious way to do that would be to create incentives to entice farmers to keep them.”

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