Ash Wednesday

Arni Saeberg. Bloomberg News.

I've seen this photograph of the volcano a few times

from different sources.

A cool photograph I saw from the New York Times

Ragnar Th Sigurdsson

Artic-images.com

FocusOnNature

I know I should read the news more often, especially since tv news can only convey a fraction of the information a newspaper article gives. I'm too entrenched in getting quick updates via CNN videos and podcasts (including GPS, which I've mentioned previously, and Reliable Sources). I'm also a huge fan of the Daily Show, which I watch regularly at lunch, because at least Jon Stewart shoots straight... unlike so many newscasters from traditional news media. Since I am in the international relations department, most of my friends are more up-to-date with the day-to-day global affairs than me, unless it was on the Daily Show... a lot of us watch the Daily Show. I will still glance at the New York Times (mostly because it's free for now) for real news, but I don't read the actual articles often. This should be a resolution for me- read 4 articles a day. I used to read the news a lot more, but I was probably unemployed then.

Last Thursday I glanced haphazardly as I usually do at the CNN front page and read a volcano had erupted the previous day underneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. The article mentioned a volcanic ash cloud floating towards Northern Europe that would force planes to stay grounded since silicates in the ash would melt in the plane engines and cause them to flame out and stall. Thankfully, I actual read enough of the article so that I didn't look stupid in class when someone started complaining about his cancelled flight. Even though I'm finishing the last bit of my essays, I'm grateful that at least I'm not traveling anywhere, especially in France where there's a rail strike going on during this fiasco (c'est typique). I found some stats while glancing through a couple articles: the ash cloud has affected 6.8 million passengers thus far; the aviation industry has lost $1 billion, so it has cost the industry more than the 9/11 aftermath; this volcano is one of Iceland's biggest ones and was dormant for 2 centuries. Here's another interesting tidbit- German Chancellor Merkel left San Francisco on Thursday but got diverted around due to the closed airspace. After a road-trip across Europe, she finally made it back to Germany on Sunday.

I kept looking in the sky last Thursday to see if it looked different with the ash cloud. It looked just as cloudy as Scotland normally does. I even half-expected to see a thin layer of ash on the ground, but it looked normal. By Friday the sky was crystal clear even though the planes were still grounded. I'm not sure if anyone else in Scotland saw anything different. I did read that a thin layer of ash had covered parts of Britain.