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Sorry about the delay with updates, I am actually at a meeting filled with volcanologists (of all things), so updates might be a little sporadic. A lot of news today about Okmok erupting in the Aleutians. The Alaska Volcano Observatory had this to say: The eruption at Okmok continues based on ...
In 1989, Swedish author Herman Lindquist published Rapporter från Mittens Rike (‘Reports from the Middle Kingdom’). The title of the book is ambiguous, as it refers to the well-known epithet for China that has come to symbolise its insularity and self-centredness in previous centuries. In this ...
Okmok Caldera in Alaska's Aleutian Islands erupted today, sending an ash column to at least 30,000 feet. Very little news has been released about the eruption so far beyond this information about the eruption column and some bits about precursor seismicity. A number of flights to Unalaska Island ...
Some news of a series of small eruptions at San Cristobal in Nicaragua. Ash from the small explosions drifted to a town near the volcano, however officials for Ineter in Nicaragua say that there is little chance of a large eruption. San Cristobal is one of the seven active volcanoes in ...
In May, I wrote about the freethinker Giuseppe Verdi and my experience attending a performance of his operatic masterpiece, the Requiem. At the time, I had one other thought: strange as it sounds, and despite the fact that its composer was no friend of orthodoxy, Verdi's Requiem was one of the more ...
Just a brief note that the USGS has officially pronounced the eruption that started in 2004 at Mt. Saint Helens over. They lowered the alert level to "normal" after months with little to no signs of activity. The new dome that grew in the crater formed by the 1980 eruption is 125 million cubic ...
Llaima (Chile) is experiencing an increased tempo in its current eruption. The National Emergency Office in Chile is reporting that the eruption has begun to take a more explosive character, with pyroclastic material being shot hundreds of meters from the main vent. Although the officials have ...
Even before the publication of his breakthrough book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson has consistently used his Long Tail blog as a way to generate conversation around the themes found in the book and point out interesting new examples that he has ...
The New York Times published an article last week, Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen, about a stunning act of courage and feminism: in the nation of Yemen, a 9-year-old girl named Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali, on her own initiative, sought and obtained a divorce from the abusive, violent 35-year ...
Kilauea is busy keeping geologists and tourists alike wondering what the volcano will be doing next. The current report on the volcano tells of a new fire fountain at the Thanksgiving Eve Break-out "rootless cone", about 6 miles from the ocean. The fire fountain started on Sunday night ...
In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a famous observation: that the speed of computer hardware (to be precise, the number of transistors that can be packed onto an integrated circuit) tends to double every two years. In the four decades since, Moore's law has held true with remarkable ...
To commemorate the Fourth of July, here's this month's Poetry Sunday. American readers will likely recognize today's poem immediately, as well they should: it's engraved on a plaque mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. But what may not be as widely known are the freethought sympathies ...
There are some nice videos of the current eruption of Kilauea (after some tedious commercials via the link at the top of the article) with lava spattering and lava reaching the sea on the 4th of July. Not much description of the eruption in the article, but it sounds like it is just the Hawai ...
Mississippi is the fattest state in the Union, with 30.1% of Mississippians being obese. That’s almost one in every three inhabitants. Not that the Magnolia State (in red on this map) should be singled out for its massiveness. It is surrounded by four of the eight other fattest US states (in ...
Today, Mike and I collaborated on the best bug ever filed. You can see it in it’s original glory here, or read the “edited for ease of reading” text version below: —— So I was chatting with one of our clients yesterday, and he brought up a really good point: We need a way to bend space-time, to ...