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Chaiten in Chile erupting in January 2009. Even after over a year of activity, Eruptions readers are still captivated by the volcano. Thanks for sending me your questions about volcanoes and volcanism. I'll try to tackle some hear - but as always, keep the questions coming! Send them to For ...
In April, I wrote a piece chastising Madeline Bunting for her willful invocation of the Courtier's Reply, in which she attacks atheists for criticizing the beliefs actually held and practiced by billions of people, rather than the beliefs of a tiny minority of theologians and pundits like herself ...
The Q&A post will be coming over the weekend (there's still time to send me a question!) Icy cold volcanoes (well, geysers) on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. In the meantime, here are a few quick hits: Mt. Cleveland in the Aleutians had a small eruption. The plume was only ~15,000 feet / ~3 ...
A rug, to quote The Big Lebowski, can really tie a room together. The Dude (or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) opted for a pretty run-of-the-mill carpet – a classic Persian or Oriental design, if I recall correctly. Here is an example of an exciting subgenre that is ...
We usually don't cover good news here at Waq al-waq, which I'm sure is just as much of a commentary on us as it is on Yemen. In fact, I can't remember every writing about anything positive in Yemen on this blog, but the times they're a changing. Particularly since Yemen discovered a new reservoir ...
News Yemen is now reporting that al-Watani editor, 'Abd al-Raqib al-Hadayani, has been released although more than 40 people are still in custody after today's events in al-Dhala'. Naba News, which has gained quite a following in recent weeks, has some pictures from today. It is quite the ...
I caught a bit of the video of the protests in al-Dhala' this morning on al-Jazeera streaming video. Al-Tagheer is reporting that at least seven people were injured. Meanwhile the editor of al-Watan, 'Abd al-Raqib al-Hadayani, was arrested for covering the protests in al-Dhala', which the press ...
Busy busy analysing on the multicollector ICP-MS today (but not busy enough to miss this). Here's your weekly volcano news roundup from the USGS/Smithsonian GVP. Highlights (not including Sarychev Peak) include: Continued dome growth and degassing at Bezymianny in Russia. Starting next ...
The nineteenth-century German theologian Rudolf Otto, in his book The Idea of the Holy, popularized the term "numinous", an adjective describing the sense of mystery and wonder that purportedly stems from the presence of a deity. According to Otto, the sense of the numinous had two main ...
After a long day of reading about the Yemeni civil war - the one in 1994 not in 1962 - I treated myself to a quick scan of the pan-Arab daily papers, which I usually save for a morning treat with my coffee. But I couldn't resist today. There isn't much, particularly since al-Hayat continues to ...
If there's one thing pretty much everyone can agree on when it comes to legacy infrastructure, it is that, by and large, it doesn't really work anymore. American interstates have become tangled messes of gridlock. City streets yawn with potholes. New York's century-old aqueducts supplying water to ...
A few quick news bits ... and thanks for the questions so far. Keep 'em coming! Tungurahua, Ecuador erupting in 2006. Ash fall from Tungurahua (in spanish) in Ecuador is affecting the farm towns around the volcano. Farmers in Manzano, a village nearby, fear the ash is significant enough to ...
Al-Sharq al-Awsat is reporting that the Huthis and Yemeni security forces are clashing in the north. The fighting, which is being described as heavy, comes as Yemen has arrested more than 40 people for questioning, as the government attempts to locate the six remaining hostages. This is a ...
Irrespective of whether it’s entirely mythical or merely missing, the ‘lost’ island of Atlantis is one of the most sought after pieces of real estate in history. The oldest source for the stories of a once mighty land now vanished beneath the waves are two of Plato’s Dialogues (4th century BC ...
Via Making My Way (a great atheist blog, although its author doesn't update often enough!), this amazing historical fact. I wrote in "Red Crimes" about how communism, demonized by religious apologists as an atheistic ideology, was more in the nature of a political system: willing to work with ...