Hallowecano

It's that fucking time of year again when the impossible task of Halloween costumes is upon us. Obviously you don't want to wear one of those costumes that involves as few items of clothing as possible but you don't to want to wear a costume where no one knows who the fuck you are, the perfect example of this dilemma can be seen in mean girls. My personal examples of misjudged halloween costumes are Maggie Thatch and Pussy Riot member. However if you want a nice scary costume that is easy to do then why not dress up as a volcano? The best and easiest way to do this is have massive orange hair, then you can wear some kinda grey capey thing and you're an instant fucking volcano. The bonus is that any erratic or volatile behaviour can just be part of your volcanic act. Here are two of my fave singers who have got the eruptive hair thing down.

I've written about my love for both Cyndi Lauper and Bjork lots and lots before so I won't do it any more but all I will say is that Cyndi is massively underrated. Anyway happy Halloween especially if you're a volcano. 

I've got a new a computer and it's really fucking exciting

As the title may suggest - I've got a new computer because I have been led to believe that the point of having one of those job things is that you can get money to buy cool shit like computers- which is pretty much what I've done. So far since having the computer all I've done is watch football and I'm really gonna try to not just use it as a TV and radio hence this post. This post is based on cool shit from the internet, which I can now see through the beauty of my lovely computer. First is this, which is basically really great photos and everyone loves a good volcano picture. I think this Etna one is my fave.

I've also been looking at this website which I have seen before but it has loads of volcano holidays which I want to go on. This is especially relevant as me and my family are semi-seriously talking about going on a holiday, obviously this has massive potential to be fucking horrendous and in my vast experience the way to make something not fucking horrendous is to involve shit loads of volcanoes. As my parents are some of the few people who actually read this I think that we should all go on a round the world volcano tour which coasts under €9000, basically a bargain. Any volcanic holiday would obviously be good but a round the world one would be my first preference. Now I'm pretty sure I've got some episodes of the archers and pointless to catch up on. 

Eruption update

Sinabung was one of the first volcanoes of the week, way back in September 2010, (amazing that this format of VC has been going for so long) and has since been erupting sporadically (trying to up my clueless references). Before this the volcano had been dormant for 400 years. The volcano is in North Sumatra which is one of Indonesia's biggest islands and has been severely deforested (but that's a topic for later). In general the eruptions haven't been particularly plinian or explosive (VEI = 2) but they have been really fucking ashy. This is really shit because it means that communities have to be evacuated and relocated with crops being destroyed. Constant raining ash must just be so depressing, just seeing endless grey skies and having to protect your homes and families. There was a more violent phase to the eruption in January and February this year which killed 17 people. At the moment the eruption is continuing and the alert level has been raised this week.

See really grey ash

To me it seems that volcanic activity has been increasing lately, but whether this is true or not is in doubt. Obviously no one really knows if it is and there are loads of conflicting theories and I haven't read them, but it is actually really interesting and if I can be bothered I will research it. To summarise possible theories are it's part of climate change/ general planet in crisis shit or that its do to with globalisation/ access to information shit. Which is all very interesting. 

Death Reporting

Since the Ontake eruption the death toll has been rising (to over 50) with more and more tragic stories of those who didn't make it down from the volcano. What has made this even more eerie is that many of these reports have come directly from the victims through phone photos etc. This is one of the many consequences of new technology and probably not a good one as it allows people to obsess, which obviously you would do given the chance. Receiving messages from the dead seems new and like a massive drawback of modern technology, but is it actually so new and just that the methods have changed? I know that Pliny the Younger did survive the Vesuvius eruption (he is dead now) but it is his accounts that have been useful for volcanologists and is often considered the first recording of an eruption. And maybe that's a comforting way to look at things that actually the videos and photos are probably really useful for studying eruptions. Probably when people die in such tragic circumstances then everything would make it worse, knowing what they were doing just before they died but so would not knowing what they were doing.

Easter hotspot

A dear friend of the volcano club asked me the write about Chilean volcanoes and after some brief research I'm decided to focus on Easter Island. Which being not being mainland Chile may not be want was wanted but fuck it, it's my blog (aforementioned dear friend is a fan of VCs 'insane amount of swearing'). I didn't really know much about Easter Island apart from the obvious 'blah blah blah shit loads of massive heads blah blah blah how the fuck did they get there blah blah', but there is actually way more interesting stuff than all that bollocks. Such as the island is volcanic and has really interesting vegetation, I suppose that this is quite obvious it being in the middle of the Pacific. The map of the island is very pleasing because it's a nice triangle shape and the three corners have volcanoes in, presumably how the island was formed. All the volcanoes on the island are extinct, the largest is Terevaka, top of the map and is under 4000,000 years old and according to wikipedia easy to walk up, which sounds like a laugh. The island (and volcanic activity) is the result of being between the Nazcar and Pacific plates creating the Easter hotspot, which it's what I'm going to call the VC Easter weekend event.

As I'm sure everyone is aware Easter Island is in the middle of fucking nowhere, the closest inhabited island is Pitcairn which is also in the middle of fucking nowhere. Around 6,000 people live on the island, the island was probably populated around 1000CE with people travelling by canoe from around 2,000 miles away (most probably because they were absolutely mental). After settling the island went through a period of habitat degradation and deforestation (where was REDD when you needed it, little forestry joke for you there), this was caused by clearing and the introduction of the Polynesian rat. Many of the indigenous trees are now completely extinct or extinct in the wild like the toromiro tree which they are trying to reintroduce to the island. Birdman or Tangata Manu cults existed on the island, where members of each clan had to collect the first tern egg of the season from the 3.9 hectare island Moto Nui (bottom left on the map) and swim back to Rapa Nui (Polynesian name for easter island), the winner got to do loads of cool shit for the next year. To get back to the island the contestants had to climb the Orongo volcano and then lead a procession to a beach on the west or to another volcano on the east of the island. The practised was stopped by Christians in the 1860s, then the islanders went through a really shit time with Peruvian slave raiders and small pox. The indigenuous population decreased by 97% in 10 years. There were over 800 statues or Moai found on the island which are made from volcanic ash or tuff (which is easy to work with).  Islanders didn't get Chilean citizenship until 1966. 

Toromiro tree (above) and Rano Raraku (below)

So that's some shit about Easter Island which is pretty cool, there is more interesting stuff about the island like the indigenous rights movement and its the only place they've ever found Polynesian script. But I can't be fucked to write about that now. I might write about more Chilean volcanoes as they do look interesting or more Pacific islands soon.

Encyclopaedia Plates

These plates were taken from an old set of national encyclopaedias which are full of amazing pictures. Obviously the main reason for keeping encyclopaedias is for the pictures, I have 14 volumes with all the text taken out (cos who can be bothered reading) as well as all the plates from a children's encyclopaedia including shit loads of colour ones. I really want to make something with them but it's quite hard to think of stuff to make where paper is the best material to use, I did make a wallet but predictably it fell apart. But I will try and preserve these ones for scientific interest, I use the term scientific very loosely.

I really like the bottom left picture here, it looks like some kinda sci-film set. As you may be able to tell from other recent posts, I'm really into geological profiles at the moment. 

 I really hope that railway still exists.

 This is my favourite page, I particularly like the bay of naples.

Really like the paths of lava shown here but 'Dykes of Slaggy Lava' - way harsh, Tai. 

It's really nice seeing little things like this which remind me why I like volcanoes so much and make me want to write blog posts and stuff which I've been neglecting a lot recently. That's the great thing about volcanoes that are linked to pretty much everything so I'm always seeing interesting things like this.