J'accuse: Pompeii Revisited

The Pope, the smoke, the cloud, the bang, the hunters and more this Ash Sunday.

The dastardly cloud of volcanic ash has spread across northern Europe at the speed of an Internet virus. The volcanic explosion in bankrupt Iceland is threatening to cause an economic crater continent-wide, as thousands of people are grounded from flying, hundreds of airports are shut and the weekend skies in the north of Europe are suddenly devoid of those magnificent flying machines. (I read a joke on Facebook that states that the Icelandic alphabet has no “C” so the English and Dutch got what they asked for when they requested “cash”.)

It’s quite a bummer, I guess, having your travel plans foiled by force majeure – force majeure here being the billowing into the atmosphere of tons of particles of volcanic whatever. The interesting bit is that the inability to fly is not caused – as one would expect – by problems of visibility but by something much more worrying.

Apparently, the particles emitted into the air by active volcanoes can cause sufficient damage to the engines of a plane to render them inoperable. The first time this happened was in a flight off Indonesia in 1982, when a flight captain was forced to inform his passengers that all four engines of the plane were not working and that he was doing his damnedest to land them safely. This particular captain managed to somehow land his plane and win medals for his valorous move – in the meantime every flying manual worldwide had a little bit added: in case of volcanic ash in the air… stay on the ground.

Vesuvius

In 79 AD, the explosion of Mount Vesuvius buried the bustling Roman town of Pompeii for good. When the town was accidentally rediscovered in 1592, it was found buried under more than 20 metres of ash. That’s a lot of flight cancellations, when you think about it. The incredible preservation work of the eruption in and around Pompeii tends to have the effect of making you forget that you are walking through the streets where a tragedy of epic proportions occurred. Everything, from the markets, to the theatres to the whorehouses, was inundated in lava and ash.

It is ironic how such a tragedy could become an ideal goldmine of information about Roman life. One minute they were the citizens of Pompeii enjoying daily life at the height of the Roman Empire and the next minute they were exemplary statues immortalised in lava. To be fair, they had had their fair share of warnings from as early as 62 AD (around the time Paul of Tarsus hit our isles) – when a 7.5 Richter scale earthquake had delivered the warning blow. Many inhabitants fled Pompeii after that massive quake but others chose to ignore the warnings and life went on – until 79 AD when the explosion spared no one.

Which is what we risk closing our eyes to every time another fireworks factory explosion rocks the foundations of houses and we rush to read the news in the hope that the latest nonsensical boom has taken no victims or casualties. This namur (hobby) business really gets at me every time the usual suspects turn up on comment boards with the logical leaps of “motorcycles can kill too but we do not ban them”. The problem with all these firework factories is that they don’t only pose a risk to those who have the daring hobby of dabbling with life and death (with the pathetic assumption of the connivance of patron saints) but they also pose a risk to those who live close to their ‘factories’.

It sounds so empty to ask the same question again and again, but do we choose to go on with our lives as though nothing has happened or do we heed the warning signs? More than that, which of the political parties will put a clear project on their agenda to tackle the problems of health and safety that are related to our explosive national hobby?

Orion

One hobby of ours that seems to be under a (confused) regime of control is hunting. The latest decision to allow spring hunting for a relatively short period pleased nobody at all. Very few of Malta’s 15,000 hunters registered for the temporary right to kill – this was to be interpreted as a form of protest against the numerus clausus that was imposed under the government’s interpretation of the directive. If my memory serves me well, when Pope John Paul II first came to Malta he attended a gathering at the church of the modern day Orion where a retinue of hunters let loose their guns in a sort of 21-gun salute – Saint Julian’s style. Will they gather to receive Benedict in such a manner?

Poor Benedict. His two-day holiday on the island of Paul is beset with the iniquities of mischance. The whole paedophile business was not enough; he then had Cardinal Bertone in Chile blaming paedophilia on homosexuality (as against celibacy). Some people never know when to keep their mouth’s shut. Mayor Schembri of Luqa decided to lighten up things for Benedict by calling for the removal of a (suddenly) offensive monument. One of the best comments on my blog this week speculated on the possible heading for the Luqa council meeting agenda: “Matters Arising”. You just have to laugh.

Laugh is what I did with a little experiment involving J’accuse. Following the Dissett programme this week, we have been having a heated-ish discussion as to whether the popularity of certain blogs is due to their being run by capable owners or because they tend to choose to deal with food for the masses. What J’accuse did (with a little help from my friends) was to clone The Times website and present a fake article claiming that the Pope’s visit had been called off. I posted links to the fake Times on the blog and Facebook at 10am, sat back and waited.

Less than two hours later, the ‘article’ had achieved viral status, the timesofmalta.com site had issued an official denial and J’accuse hits were shooting through the roof. The item even made the evening news on PBS. Anyone harbouring doubts as to whether frivolous/scandalous news can get around fast should think again. There IS a reason that the Luqa monument story was the second most read item on the BBC world news website throughout the day it was released. QED.

Blogs are tools and will remain so. What we put in them is up to whoever chooses to adopt the tool. J’accuse chooses to be a purveyor of quality blogging for discerning surfers since its inception (2005) – we’re not in it for cheap thrills, even though we have shown that we could be, if we wanted to (without causing any harm, of course). Meanwhile, Austin Bencini seems to have woken up and smelt the coffee with his “prophetic” announcement that blogs will play a huge role in the next election (we’ve been pointing that out since 2006). I sincerely hope that Austin and The Times will be better equipped to tell the difference between blogs and the Internet by then.

The heat is on

Finally, do follow the UK election online. You will be watching the first real European election to be fought out with the full force of the new media. Visit www.akkuza.com if you are interested in regular observations and interaction on the matter. There’s also the mega-trial in Naples that has brought the ills of Italian football back to the surface. That’s another forum this “ju29ro” (juventinovero) blogger is very interested in following. It seems that we have proof of what I have been saying all along: not that Juventus was innocent, but that the whole system (11 teams on 20) was guilty. Inter-cettati will have a rough time swallowing all their Pharisee finger-pointing of the last four years. Their victory on the pitch in the return leg is a cheap prize they will do well to savour before running off to hide their heads somewhere (just after they get the beating they deserve at the hands of Messi and friends).

I am off to sort out the latest purchases for my World Cup 2010 sticker album – there are some hobbies that are hard to kill off and football sticker collection is one of them. Have a nice weekend and may Benedict’s blessings be bountiful for each and every one of you.

This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.