Quote:
Originally posted by ulfie@Jan 19 2004, 10:13 AM
I thought Reagan outlawed trees...
There was a great special on Discovery last night about volcanoes. It was mostly about the Krakatoa explosion in 1883. The explosion was so massive it was heard over 1000 miles away. It dumped so much ash into the atmosphere that the world's temperature dropped and it took 6 years for it to return to normal. It killed over 40,000 people. That's some of the fun we have to look forward to.
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Only those trees that couldn't be exploited for commercial purposes* ...
I haven't seen that particular Discovery Channel show yet, but I will look out for it. If that kind of thing interests you, check out the book
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester. It's a well-written book that covers the geology so that even the science-impaired can understand it. It also includes a number of eyewitness accounts, and talks about it the way the western media covered it (because of the completion of some underwater telegraph cables, it was one of the first natural disasters reported around the world in "real time"). The history of the islands even gets into the relationship between the Dutch and Islamic fundamentalists.
* Please note - that was a joke. It should not be interpreted that I believe that President Ronald Reagan was a participant in any sort of vast right-wing conspiracy, although it admittedly sidesteps the issues of criminal obstruction of justice and/or other high crimes and misdemeanors.