My first computer. Not been without a computer since then.

Thanks Clive!

@6
I understood fair bits of that sentence.. then again my native language is Icelandic..

For example "geardagum" we spell "gærdagur" although its meaning is usually yesterday and not "days of yore" as in Old English.

Paper money is quickly vanishing, Iceland has its stated aim to be the first paper-money-less economy, and we are almost there, we all use credit/debit/prepaid cards. Having paper-money on you is an anomaly.

Shockingly, in quite a few places in the world we don't need to clean and treat the water. It comes pretty pure out of the ground.

The downside is the relative lack of sunny warm days to use the water for such activities.

Must be due to me being European and liberal minded but I think those are all funny and wouldn't be bothered if my kid wondered about these.

As an onion-hater myself I particularly like the onion assassination one.

#30 Lauren O, the "fish jerky" or harðfiskur (hard fish) as we call it, is simply fish left out to dry in the sun and wind. And it is a delicacy although it does smell quite strongly.

It is also VERY different from the shark discussed here, that stuff makes your eyes water and your nose to reverse itself.

There are over 360 species of sharks. Not all of them are dwindling, same goes for the whales, some are in danger of extinction and others breed like rabbits.

Graflax (to use the icelandic and not scandinavian spelling) is pure and utter awesomeness!

A toast with a piece of graflax and traditional graflax-sauce (mustardy with herbs) is something everyone should taste and most will like. Our dutch guests loved it and I've yet to see someone refuse it!

It is much better than smoked salmon (reyktur lax) by far.

Whilst Paskettis guess is decent enough, it is not how this "delicacy" came to be (personally not a fan of it).

Icelanders had no good method of storing food, no salt-mines and no efficient way of getting salt from sea. The only storage choice left was to just let the things dry up (dried fish, now that is a delicacy, we call it harðfiskur (hard fish)) or rot and ferment (see shark above and various other dishes, such as fermented stingray which is a tradional Dec 23rd dish), also some sort of a pickling mechanism for meat. With short summers and long winters, a lot of dry, pickled and rotten food was consumed.

This is why we currently have a wide choice of restaurants in Iceland, hardly any of them serving traditional food from the days of old.

Kids can use anything as "justification" for beatnig someone up. A name isn't THE deciding factor for getting beat up, it's just another thing they can grab.

It's not like they don't give those with normalish names nicknames, name a daughter a rather normal Ally and she could become "Smelly Ally" because someone doesn't like her.

Up in Iceland we do have a list of "allowed names" actually, you can apply for a name being added to the list and then a committee will decide upon if it is allowed.

The list includes some really weird old names that are legendary for being bad names.

That looks awesome. I'd install it in every school there is today if I could.

Well you didn't say a damn thing about my post except quote two pieces of it.

As for junglism music style, it has to be 90s or its gone soft!

Ayn Rands books promote what I refer to, loosely translated to english, as junglism, probably what your Darwinism concept covers.

In her writings (I've read pretty much everything, might be missing an essay or three) we do not encounter anyone but those that want to work and those that don't want to work.

Had the human race been a fervent believer in Rands objectivism from day one, we would still be flinging rocks and depending on nuts as a major nutritional factor.

Nowhere in Rand's world is there a place for the unfortunate ones, are you born with a defect? Tough luck for you, you lazy bugger, get out of my way!

Shockingly it seems that all those that are not of the Rand persuasion are something called "collectivists". That term seems to be supposed to cover everyone else and be a dirty word on the scale of a "communist" (which seems to be a dirty word as well).

I feel foolish looking back and noting that I actually thought Atlas Shrugged was "right" back in my late teens, when I was at my most selfish stage. Having re-read it since it stung me again and again just how backwards and a throw back to the lower animal lifeforms it is.

Most of the successfull species are those who employ some sort of collectivism, be it us humans who created settlements, gave up certain freedoms to form communities so that we and our descendants could prosper, or be it packs or clans of various mammals and insects who maintain a social structure, tend to their sick and protect their young.

Some species do eliminate members if they are no longer productive, some species are prime objectivists and many of those are top of the endangered species lists.

Rands writings don't make allowances for anyone who doesn't get a full set of cards to start playing his way in life, nor do they make allowances for those who have the stack depleted before they even set off.

Rand only sees "hard-workers" good people and "lazy-sods" bad people. It is a good philosophy to promote to a species you want to see going extinct within few generations. At worst it leads to a great culling.