Sunday, September 25, 2005

Iceland: Europe's Largest Desert

The BBC had an interesting podcast this week:

World Stories: The Biggest Desert in Europe

(I am too retarded/lazy to figure out how to provide a link. You can go to the iTunes store --> podcasts and search... easy to find).

Q: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?
A: Stand up.

Even though the pictures of Iceland look like tundra, it's technically 1/3 desert. They have a huge soil erosion problem. Circa the Vikings, Iceland was green. One man talked about why he spends his retirement (airline pilot) planting trees for a forest he will never see. Paraphrasing and fixing his use of "mortuary" when he meant "obituary" ;).

Someday when I die, maybe someone will write an obituary about me. They'll say, "he changed the landscape". I'd rather that instead of, "He flew some drunken Icelandic to Majorca".

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