Ed the Volcano

Everyone here is talking about the volcano.

There are even a few fairly good jokes running around the internet:

"It was the dying wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes should be spread all over Europe."

I'm not sure, but I think on the Grand Coolness Scale of Science, volcanoes have to be second or first. Neck and neck with dinosaurs, at least. Maybe not every kid wants to be a volcanologist when he grows up, but at least there still are some volcanoes.

For our small but interesting "All Scientists are at Least Slightly Crazy" file, I remember watching a nature show on tv when I was a kid that featured a segment in which a pair of geologists in Hawaii went out onto an active lava flow (that looked none too steady underfoot to me), holding a sheet of corrugated roofing material as a heat shield and with nothing more than asbestos gloves on, scooping lava samples into an empty coffee can with the claw end of a hammer. I couldn't decide at the time if it made me want to march right out and become a volcanologist, or if it put me off going to Hawaii for the rest of my life.

As Dale Price pointed out on FB a few minutes ago, it seems that the journalists of the world have grown weary of typing out "Eyjafjallajokull". I suppose it is better for print/net writers. Imagine being the guy in front of the camera trying to pronounce it.