Eat Less, Live Longer, Feel Younger

It takes me enough time to get from home to work to enjoy some radio time. Yeah, I'm old fashioned that way. I love listening to serious conversation on the radio. As a matter of fact, ever since my communications studies in the last century I've loved radio. Not the talk radio type that N-American readers might know. To me that's just like listening to static. No, the radio I like is the stuff that's created and delivered by the likes of BBC Radio 4, Radio 7 and the World Service. Say what you will about the British, but they do know how to create world class radio services.

So on my way to work I learned that by eating less. Being on something called the calorie restricted diet. Which is essentially staying below 30% of the daily recommended calorie intake. You can live longer and stay younger while you do it.

"It involved reducing calorie intake by 30% while maintaining nutrition and appeared to impact upon many forms of age-related disease seen in monkeys, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy."

Read the full news item here

Corruption

The head of state used their influence to divert government property and contracts to family and their close political allies. Funding from abroad flowed straight out of the country again and into the pockets of a selected group of people. These selected few created a few strong business groups that dominated the markets they operated in. The state would take a "hands-off" approach to regulation and corruption grew. The ruling party would appoint judges based upon their relation to the close knit political power circle. This went on until the economy collapsed, leaving the country loaded with external debts, but few if any actual paying investments. The elite mostly fled the country, while those left in the country lost faith in the institutions. What followed was the recurring story of despots and internal unrest as the general population suffered through sever reduction in social services in order to pay the external debt. Leading to a vicious cycle of poverty and conflict.

This is the all to familiar story of many developing countries. Never thought I'd say this. But now I know why Iceland wasn't a developed society along the lines of the rest of the Nordic countries. Instead we are a developing country without strong internal democratic institutions and rampant corruption.

For some of the facts on the situation faced by Iceland and why we've joined the debtor country group - look right here

If you read Icelandic here are the 3 articles that you should read:

Dýrt fyrir ríkið að selja banka

Icesave

Um smjörklípukenninguna og seðlabankastjórann

A Beautiful Day In Iceland

The weather was amazing when I walked out the door this morning. Sunshine, a light breeze and according to the thermostat in my car 29 degrees on the Celsius scale. Yeah, if you're still in the ancient Fahrenheit scale you'll have to do a bit of conversion. This doesn't happen often here. But today is a beautiful day. Wandering the interwebs I found this photo which seems appropriate.

Headache

This was a strange day. It was difficult to get up and out of bed. That's not what was so strange. But then after a couple of hours at work, I had this really bad headache. It was strange. Felt really bad. Bad enough that I ended up taking a painkiller and it still stuck around. I usually don't bother much with painkillers. Often enough it's enough to get some water and a breath of fresh air. This time around it didn't help. Not even with the more than a little freshness in the air. If you're sweltering in the summer heat. We're chilled up here. Finally got rid of the headache after I got home.

Summer tasks

Last night I did the lawn thing. So most of the grass around my home is shorter. All part of the summer stuff. The great thing about the Icelandic summer is that you can do this sort of thing late at night and it's still daylight. I'm glad I did my bit to keep our lawn in shape.

Lunch break

Today I went to apply for a new passport. A few weeks ago I went to the Netherlands without it and found that travel in the Shengen area is just like domestic travel. But I want to have a valid passport and since I can't find mine I needed to get a new one. Turns out we've just updated our passports. Now mine will not only contain an RFID chip, but it will also contain my fingerprints. So lots of details for anyone who would be able to steal one of those things and break into it.

Anyway I thought I could easily do it during my lunch break. Not quite as it turned out. First of all there's only one place to do it. Which is not quite next door to my current work place. Then when I got there. The nice numbered queuing system wasn't working. This I only found out after waiting for 15 minutes. When I asked how long it usually took and if it was fine for me to go out and get lunch and come back. The system is broken and we are waiting for IT people to come and fix it. Ah, the IT people need to fix the system and there's no way to deal with customers while it's broken. Actually they figured out within 5 minutes that they could, but by then someone else had gotten in front of me. So I had to wait. For another 5 minutes. It then took about 3 minutes to get the details about the new passport, take my photo and for me to sign and give up my fingerprints. Another couple of minutes and I could cancel out my old passport. What fantastic efficiency. The girl who took my application was really sorry. "I was just having my lunch break"...yeah me to.

The not so lost art of writing

Hey I'm back from my blog hiatus. My urge to write has returned. Will post stuff. Back to my old idea of 3 min non stop writing flow. So today I'm thinking about art and creative stuff. How I can stumble upon something so amazing that it literally takes me away from the daily grind for a few moments. Today I found this amazing little site I want to share with you. Electroboutique is run by a bunch of Russian artists. I've come to love Russian contemporary design. I think some of their web stuff is the most ozom use of the medium I've seen. Often minimalistic but there's a beauty in their use of the form. Quite different from the often bloated sites I see out there.