Word: volcano
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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...
There are records of the 11,000-ft. volcano blowing its top since classical times. This year's performance is the most spectacular eruption since 1992, when lava flows threatening the town of Zafferana were diverted by controlled explosions. This time, residents of nearby Catania, a city of 380,000, have been using umbrellas to protect themselves from a constant thin drizzle of ash. The local airport was closed for three days...
...entertainment, but they are a real threat to the 6,300 people who live in Nicolosi, a town at 2,300 ft. So far, the lava has stopped about 2.5 miles away. Those who live on Etna seem to like the excitement. "We have a love affair with this volcano and this mountain," says Nicolosi Mayor Salvatore Moschetto. "Even in the past, when eruptions have ruined some property, we just start over again...
...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...
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...