Saturday, January 10, 2009

I'd Like to See It Before It Explodes

I saw a headline earlier in the week mentioning the thousands of little earthquakes that have occurred in Yellowstone Park since Monday, and immediately thought of the passage in one of Bill Bryson's fine books mentioning that Yellowstone's remarkable geology is a product of North America's largest volcano. Bryson is one of my favorite airplane authors, but I occasionally find myself wondering if he's just making stuff up.

In this case, he's not. The story here goes into some factual detail, but the general argument, that people who think THE END IS NEAR are idiots we should all point at and mock, seems dangerously childish. A volcanic eruption of that size, in that location, would be a disaster of near biblical proportions for those of us living in North America. It isn't keeping me up nights or anything, but it seems wrong to mock people who are pointing to an actual threat.

1 comment:

Karen said...

Here's a half-hearted "Heckle, Heckle..." (Because you provoked us on Facebook). I'm enjoying reading this. KG, live from Bogota.