There was a rather beautiful lava flow last night, and there are two videos on this site that aren't especially impressive visually but which convey the accompanying sound track rather well! You might need to turn your volume right up, especially for the first one.

Both sound like a heavy downpour with occasional thunder, but the 'downpour' is of volcanic ash and the 'thunder' is the sound of explosions from the volcano.

You know, I am getting very weary of the apparent determination of some people to think only the worst of anyone who's religious. There is a lack of generosity about it that I find both disturbing and alienating. A tribalism too. We are quick to spot it when it's the religious who are doing it: we know how divisive religion is, how harmful to any sense of human unity; and we are quick to spot it and mock when the religious interpret everything done by an atheist in the worst possible light and refuse to ever give us the benefit of the doubt. These are some of the characteristics of the religious that I find least attractive and, frankly, they are no more appealing when done by atheists.

Please don't let us fall into the Us and Them trap to the point where anything done by 'Them', no matter how easy we'd find it to understand in one of 'Us', automatically puts 'Them' in the wrong.

I'm not going to comment any more on this thread. I have spent much of the last four-plus years arguing against the religious when they claim that atheists are fundamentalist or dogmatic or unreasonable - but I have to say, too often these days I can see exactly what gives them that impression, even though there is nothing in atheism per se that should lead to that. It worries me deeply.

Ciao.

Looks as if the lava's beginning to flow now.

The view of Etna suggests the activity is quite limited so far!

Yes, I think it has been so far, though it does seem to be hotting up now (pun intended). The descriptions I've been seeing seem to suggest that there have been some very big explosions indeed, felt quite some distance away on the Italian mainland. And there was a stunning image on the webcam ten minutes or so again, clearly of a major explosion of gas, even though there didn't appear to be any lava as yet. Things are definitely picking up!

(Not sure whether that link to the image will work or not, as it links to Facebook, but I'll give it a try!)

Comment 4 by Jonathan Dore
Looking quite explosive about 5 minutes ago!

Yes, things seem to be hotting up nicely now. A couple of the fumaroles have joined in now too, from the look of things.