Word: volcano
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rarely could a place have been so inaptly named. High on Mount Etna is a lodge for skiers and hikers called Rifugio Sapienza, or the Wisdom Refuge. Anyone with an ounce of wisdom wouldn't have built it on Europe's highest and most active volcano. Etna began blowing July 13, and last week burning lava came within just yards of the refuge and nearby stores...
...History warns that revolution lurks within these "contradictions," but history also reminds us how beleaguered regimes have traditionally dealt with the volcano inside. The classic prescription is to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels," as Shakespeare's Henry IV told his successor. It is hyper-nationalism and xenophobia that fuses regime and people, rich and poor, losers and winners in one Great National Whole. Jingoism is the traditional antidote against discontent and revolt, and the Chinese have been made to lap from this fount aplenty. Remember the week-long war of the aroused masses against the U.S. diplomatic compound...
...Champs Elysées or the Côte d'Azur. Since 1946 the island has been a French département, like the country's 99 other local administrative units. Yet you don't have to spend long in the shadow of Réunion's active volcano to realize that the island is a long way from Lyons. Despite the French Republic's much-vaunted ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité, Réunion is a place where First World and Third World meet...
...campaign song ricocheting off the walls of the surrounding buildings at earsplitting volume. Grossat reeled off a few statistics about his town: 40% of the people are illiterate, unemployment runs at 41%. As Réunion's voters filed into the polling booths, local papers warned of a volcano alert. In the event, it didn't blow. But one of these days it just might...
More precisely, it was as if a dormant volcano had just erupted. Nobody has a clue to what the new landscape is going to look like when the ash settles--like how much you will be shelling out for your tunes, though at first it's less likely to involve micropayments (99[cents] per Morissette single) and more likely to be subscription-based services ($9.99 a month for an Alanis buffet...