This is a non-political post, but it may be of interest to a lot of folks out there. I guess maybe we could try to tie it to the governor's race in WA state, but that'd be a pretty big stretch.

Mt. St. Helen's erupted this morning firing ash ~25,000 ft in the air.  Here's a link to the google news listing of articles on the subject.

The USGS has stated that they do not believe anyone was killed or injured by the release. Some of the photos, particularly those showing the white ash against the blue sky, are pretty stunning.  

Update [2005-3-9 10:12:11 by Jeff in NY]: the title has been changed to reflect the situation a little better.

I ran across the following thesis (Note: this will take you to an HTML page with a easy to find link to the full 212 page, 632kB, PDF document). on plastic.com. Here's the thesis title:

I haven't read the document yet, and therefore won't comment on the quality, but after flipping through the document I'm impressed by the amount of work this student performed.