Iceland for sale on eBay
Great scenery and wildlife but financial situation in need of repair — collect in person.
Iceland, which is going cap in hand to Russia for a 4 billion euro loan to bail out its failed banks, was offered for sale as a wholesale lot on eBay on Friday.
“Located in the mid-Atlantic ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland will provide the winning bidder with — a habitable environment, Icelandic Horses and admittedly a somewhat sketchy financial situation.”

source: uk.reuters.com
             screenshot of the ebay item page
 

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland
The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

source: guardian.co.uk

this week’s quote is about taking a little time for yourself every now and then:

cartman: butters, you gotta learn to chill. live goes by pretty fast. if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, and do whatever you want all the time, you could miss it.
butters: yeah, well, i guess that’s kinda true.

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several years ago, i uploaded an x-ray of my skull to wikipedia.
today i was contacted about it:

I’m puzzled by the skull X-ray, I don’t clearly recognise the fracture at first sight… might be useful to use an arrow to indicate the fracture(s).

turns out somebody used the image on wikipedia’s facial trauma article, and now people were wondering why they couldn’t see the supposed injury.

my response:

I’m the user of this skull, so to speak, and my skull wasn’t fractured when the X-ray was taken. I was just being checked for paranasal sinus problems. Maybe that’s why you couldn’t recognize the fracture ;)

during my time in thailand, i was able to tick off several items on my virtual “i’ve always wanted to …”-list.

number four is a big one: i’ve always wanted to learn scuba diving.

scuba diving near koh tao, thailand

that’s right – i am now an open water diver. :)

[more did it's]

xkcd.com: morning routine

word.

i still have to do some working, packing, communicating and sleeping, but instead i’m sitting here, posting a picture of my preparations for tomorrow:

oh well…

i drove by a piece of roadkill today. it was so messed up, its original form was unrecognizable.

the first kangaroo i saw in australia was roadkill. when i think of it, i still remember the distinctive smell of death which came from the decomposing animal – like it was yesterday.

when entomologists want to know whether a hard-to-find species of beetle – e.g. the stag beetle lucanus cervus (de: hirschkäfer) – is still present in an area, it’s common practice to look for run-over individuals.