The growth of an immersive universe that is “part game and part soap opera and part shadow economy.”

The writer travels with his father to Iceland and Greenland:

It usually takes a week of traveling with Ed Tower before I’m seized by the tantrum-pitching impulse and can barely resist the urge to punch myself again and again in the face.

The volcanic ash cloud from Eyjafjallajokull has caused travel chaos and misery. But we were lucky. An eruption in the future could wipe out the human race.