The Week has a fun feature about the North Pole. It reminds us that the fictional St. Nicholas lived in modern day Turkey, and it was an American cartoonist in 1866 who came up with the idea of a fat elf-like Santa (not the Coca-Cola corporation as your know-it-all uncle might tell you) living at the North Pole. Supposedly, nobody saw the North Pole in person until 1908. And on the less fun side, the article covers thawing permafrost, melting ice, and enormous fossil fuel reserves that are believed to exist under the Arctic ice cap, which on addition to their planet-poisoning potential just may be worth fighting for.