Job on world’s remotest inhabited island could be yours

[rug]

Tristan da Cunha is the world’s most remote inhabited island (Picture: Getty)

Richard Hartley-Parkinson for Metro.co.uk
Tuesday 19 Jan 2016 2:09 pm

If you’ve ever thought about getting away from the rat race for a life in the country we may have found the perfect job for you.

The government of Tristan da Cunha – the world’s remotest inhabited island – is looking for a farmer who can help advise locals on agriculture.

A dream job has come up for the farmer who wants to get away from it all – as an agricultural adviser on the world’s remotest inhabited island.

It’s a UK overseas territory in the South Atlantic right next to Inaccessible Island and there are nine ships a year to the island from South Africa.



http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/19/job-on-worlds-remotest-inhabited-island-could-be-yours-5632201/

[LynneSin]

1. I don't know. I always thought it would be neat to live in an island like Pitcairn

Until there was a big child sex abuse scandal that rocked the island about 10 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_sexual_assault_trial_of_2004

A study of island records confirmed anecdotal evidence that most girls bore her first child between the ages of 12 and 15. "I think the girls were conditioned to accept that it was a man's world and once they turned 12, they were eligible," Tosen said. Mothers and grandmothers were resigned to the situation, telling him that their own childhood experience had been the same; they regarded it as just a part of life on Pitcairn. One grandmother wondered what all the fuss was about. Tosen was convinced, however, that the early sexual experience was very damaging to the girls. "They can't settle or form solid relationships. They did suffer, no doubt about it," he said emphatically.

[rug]

3. Pitcairn Island is 100% Seventh Day Adventist, just like Ben Carson.

http://www.religionfacts.com/religion_statistics/religion_statistics_by_country.htm

I think I would like to visit Tristan da Cunha.

[LynneSin]

16. Yeah but I don't think it's about religion

These people have been cut off from society for ages. They just never realize that deflowering 12 year old girls was a bad thing until people from outside of Pitcairn showed up and realized they were doing that. When you live in a society that is that cut off from the rest of the world, rules are developed that tend to be completely different from what the rest of the society thinks is acceptable.

[rug]

17. There's a lot of truth to that.

[malthaussen]

2. If wikipedia is to be trusted...

... Easter Island is 1289 miles from the nearest inhabited land. But who's counting?

-- Mal

[rug]

5. But that land is South America not St. Helena.

[malthaussen]

7. Pitcairn Island, actually.

(Which is an interesting coincidence in light of LynneSin's post upthread)
Chile is over 2,000 miles from Easter Island (about as far as Brazil is from Tristan).
But Easter Island has become a real tourist trap, they even have an international airport.

Speaking of remote islands, though, you should check out Wake, Midway, Johnson Island, and the two Christmas Islands... all were important in WWII, none now have any inhabitants except for the odd ranger from the BLM or FWS. Midway used to be a refueling station back in the days of the Pan Am clippers, but now it is mostly a vortex where half the Pacific Ocean's garbage washes up. The indigenous birds, three subspecies of Albatrosses called "Gooney Birds," are all more-or-less endangered. It's a cool place.

-- Mal

[Mendocino]

11. Remote Islands

Bouvet,
Heard
Kerguelen
Clipperton
Franz Josef Land
Bear Island
Spicer Islands
Ward Hunt
Jan Mayen
Campbell
Macquarie
Novaya Zemyla
Belcher Islands
Antipodes

[valerief]

4. Well, this deserves one of the best getaway songs.

[rug]

6. Good choice.

[trof]

13. Oh yeah...

[KamaAina]

8. This has possibilities!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha#Economy

The island's unique social and economic organisation has evolved over the years, but is based on the principles set out by William Glass in 1817 when he established a settlement based on equality. All Tristan families are farmers, owning their own stock and/or fishing. All land is communally owned. All households have plots of land at The Patches on which they grow potatoes. Livestock numbers are strictly controlled to conserve pasture and to prevent better-off families from accumulating wealth. Unless it votes for a change in its law, no outsiders are allowed to buy land or settle on Tristan; theoretically the whole island would have to be put up for sale. All people – including children and pensioners – are involved in farming, while adults additionally have salaried jobs working either for the Government, or, a small number in domestic service, and many of the men are involved in the fishing industry, going to sea in good weather. The nominal fishing season lasts 90 days; however during the 2013 fishing season – 1 July through 30 September – there were only 10 days suitable for fishing.

[rug]

9. Fascinating.

They're communards.

[KamaAina]

10. Ruh-roh, Rorge...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha#Communications

From 1998 to 2006, internet was available in Tristan da Cunha but its high cost made it almost unaffordable for the local population, who primarily used it only to send email. The connection was also extremely unreliable, connecting through a 64 kbit/s satellite phone connection provided by Inmarsat. From 2006, a very-small-aperture terminal provides 3072 kbit/s of publicly accessible bandwidth via an internet cafe

[hunter]

12. I used to do a lot of stuff on a 300 baud modem...

... it was better than Morse Code!

And then came Lenna...



A friend and I were experimenting with very primitive (by today's standards) scanners. She spoke German and often had German magazines about and these had nude photographs we could experiment with.

Posting photos on the internet wasn't really a thing until 1200 bits per second modems became common, and even then you could walk away and have dinner while you were uploading or downloading a photo.

You could still have fast internet on an island like Tristan da Cunha, but DU posts would be difficult. You'd have to have a trusted reader in fast internet land to send you links to stuff that might interest you.

Bulk information could be delivered by ship on hard drives, let's say all of Wikipedia, which is "...4 and 6 TB for the copies of the Primary database, and perhaps 27 TB for the images and media." (wikipedia) And yes, that includes photos of naked people.

I think it's funny that people say they want to live on Mars when there are plenty of very uninhabited places on earth with much nicer climates. Say, for example, the South Pole...

[KamaAina]

14. Wouldn't this be a good app for Iridium?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation

The Iridium satellite constellation is a satellite constellation providing voice and data coverage to satellite phones, pagers and integrated transceivers over Earth's entire surface. Iridium Communications owns and operates the constellation and sells equipment and access to its services. It was originally conceived by Bary Bertiger, Dr. Ray Leopold and Ken Peterson in late 1987 (and protected by patents by Motorola in their names in 1988) and then developed by Motorola on a fixed-price contract from July 29, 1993 to November 1, 1998 when the system became operational and commercially available.

[hunter]

15. Too expensive I'll bet.

.

[csziggy]

18. Back in those 300 baud days there was a program for CompuServe called TapCIS

TAPCIS (The Access Program for the Compuserve Information Service) was an automated MS-DOS-based software application that sped up access to, and management of, CompuServe email accounts and forum memberships for PC users from 1981 until 2004 when advances in CompuServe technology rendered it obsolete. Written in Borland's Turbo Pascal, TAPCIS was shareware and retailed at US$79.

At a time when subscribers paid for timed access (as well as long distance calls in some countries) and had to spend time online reading and replying to messages, the TAPCIS autopilot took its users online with a single keystroke, bypassing the Windows interface "WinCim" while it sent all pre-written email and forum postings written offline, received new messages, downloaded requested files, and logged off CompuServe.

Since the program also was able to issue administrative commands, it was the preferred tool for dozens of CompuServe System Operators (SYSOPS).[1]

TAPCIS was written by Howard Benner, a marketing executive from Wilmington, Delaware.[2] Benner joined CompuServe in 1981 and soon after he authored and published TAPCIS. Benner died of melanoma in June 1990, aged 44; however, a community of TAPCIS users continue to maintain their own website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TapCIS

Back then we paid for time on CompuServe by the minute. TapCIS reduced the online time to an absolute minimum. You'd make a pass, download all the new message headers since your previous visit, offline, mark the threads you wanted to download, make another online pass to download them, then spend however much time you wanted offline reading the threads and responding to the messages. Then another pass to upload your responses.

I monitored more than a dozen forums but only spent a few minutes a day online - unless I was uploading photos. The day that TapCIS was no longer supported was when I cancelled my CompuServe membership. I think I was up to a 56k modem by that time.

I miss the convenience of being able to keep track of which threads I was following and where in each thread my responses were. Rather than having to wade through a forum or having to post a message in each thread I wanted to follow, TapCIS kept track for me.

I still have the original 5.25" floppies my original version of TapCIS was shipped on plus the 3.5" that held an upgrade. I don't think TapCIS ever made onto a CD - for one thing it was a very small, efficiently written program and still fit onto a floppy up to the end.