I went looking 'round for your obscure reference.

Most of the blogs talking about this ultimately link up to this site:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

They have lots of great stuff on this site including:

Which confirm that Antarctic ice is expanding. But it's change is not the same magnitude as the arctic change in sea ice.

(most of the blogs have been showing another graph which doesn't show the deviation from average very well. (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg)

The Cryosphere web site get their data from:

http://www.nsidc.org/ snow and ice data center. This site is chock full of information.

A possible explanation about why this is happening:

Typically, warming of the climate leads to increased melting rates of sea ice cover and increased precipitation rates. However, in the Southern Ocean, with increased precipitation rates and deeper snow, the additional load of snow becomes so heavy that it pushes the Antarctic sea ice below sea level. This results in even more and even thicker sea ice when the snow refreezes as more ice. Therefore, the paper indicates that some climate processes, like warmer air temperatures increasing the amount of sea ice, may go against what we would normally believe would occur.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/sea_ice.html Sea Ice May Be on Increase in the Antarctic: A Phenomenon Due to a Lot of 'Hot Air'?

Also at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050630064726.htm