I remember when CETA was ratified, and there was talk about labor mobility which got me excited. Having more options on which countries to work is always better than fewer, but I ended up in the U.S. and turns out that worked out much better for me. Others may have different views.
I was once young and had romantic notions of living in Europe, but I realized that I cultivated those notions as a student, tourist and urbanist. The realities of living in Europe are more complicated. I can still deal with the downsides (would still love to live in London), but as I've moved around and lived in more places, I realized it's not incontrovertibly true that the European lifestyle is better than in North America. Just depends what you're optimizing for.
Europe is still a good destination for the well-heeled (and with a job lined up -- but that's true for almost any developed country), but if one isn't in that situation, Europe not the paradise many young people in Canada think it is. Sure you have walkable cities, universal healthcare, social safety net, train travel to tons of interesting destinations. But you also have to deal with a lot more bureaucracy, inefficiencies, and ultimately being a foreigner in a land that is not an immigrant nation like Canada is. The cuisines in European cities are nowhere near as diverse as the cuisines available in Toronto. You can't take risks and do new things as easily. The downside of the good life is comfort -- and a lack of dynamism.
p.s. looking back on CETA after 7 years (it's still not fully in effect), it looks like the effects were largely negligible to Canadians except in niche areas because of other effects that canceled out the advantages.
I am continually amazed at how many of my fellow Canadians are unaware of CETA.
I buy ski equipment from European online retailers for cheaper than from the US because no tariffs on it. It arrives here faster, and with better customer service, too.
I don't think this is an attractive option for Canada. The main downside of EFTA is that you are required to follow a lot of single-market legislation, without getting any say in it.
Considering how tightly Canada is currently coupled to the US, this would be an absolute nightmare for many businesses. Yeah you'd gain a hypothetical overseas market, but in turn you're losing alignment with an absolutely massive market right next door! That's something like 60% of your import/export, gone.
The Atlas of Icelandic glaciers is a collaboration project of various Icelandic government agencies, institutions and corporations documenting the development, and changes (retreat and disappearance) of Icelandic glacier over the past 100+ years.
Selecting various glaciers on the map makes it possible to see general information, changes in surface area and access the raw data. The map options can be used to display information, including historical borders of glaciers. There is also a substantial collection of photographs, both historical and present, showing the development of the glaciers since the early 1900s.
Thanks for posting. Judging by your name and post history, you seem to be Icelandic, or at least knowledgeable about Iceland. Maybe a stupid question, but is winter the best time to see these glaciers? I would love to return to Iceland in the winter but everyone I talked to acted like traveling during the winter was quite dangerous.
Travelling here in winter can be quite dangerous. Just this winter I left my car on a turn off on the main road from Keflavik to Reykjavik picking up my parents from the airport because there was an insanely icy section. The rear tyres were at the end of their life and it just wasn’t safe to drive. We got picked up by my father in law and drove passed five separate crashes in the space of 1km. I rolled a Nissan Patrol off the side of route one exiting Reykjavik towards the south hitting a patch of ice with good, studded tyres on, narrowly missing traffic going both ways. Driving back from a weekend away, my wife and I were driving to the back route up onto the same mountain pass. It’d been very sunny so the south facing road was clear of snow and we narrowly avoided getting hit by a driver coming down it who hadn’t noticed the snow drift on the road and was coming way too fast. They shot off into a field and after an extremely bumpy few seconds managed to steer back. And that’s just the highlights of the last ten years. I ski tour quite a bit so travel often in the winter and have seen unending stupidity and dumb decision making that wasn’t quite as terrifying. In particular common tourist routes like the Golden Circle can become impassable or dangerous to attempt if you don’t have a proper vehicle.
The trick is choosing when to travel and as a tourist you’re often uniquely compelled to try to drive in dangerous conditions. Coming here in winter is very much an exercise in adjusting plans to the conditions, taking note of the road condition information and driving very carefully.
As a foreigner myself, the winter is my favorite time of the year in Iceland. The landscape is beautiful and the glacier lagoon is quite full of icebergs and excursions like [into the glacier](https://intotheglacier.is) or snowmobiling are very enjoyable on a clear day.
30 days on either side of the peak of winter (21st of December) daylight is limited and that can make seeing things more difficult. The sun rises not very far from the horizon between 11am and 4pm but enjoyment of most activities will primarily depend on what you plan on doing and how lucky you get with the weather. It’s very unpredictable, even hour by hour, so you’re at the mercy of nature to have good visibility from frequent snow storms.
As a tourist in Winter, you’re probably best to be taking guided excursions from Reykjavík and not backpacking the highlands or driving the ring road in a camper van. Those activities could in fact be very dangerous if you aren’t prepared.
Thr ring road is usually well kept so, if you some experience driving in winter conditions you are fine. I don't recommend the camper van, mostly because I don't like winter camping myself.
Not Icelandic but been there a couple of times. In winter you can actually go on the glaciers with guided tours (costly but nice), in summer there are a couple of spots you can drive towards them in a normal rental car.
They are nice everytime of the year so, and quite spectacular. Road conditions in winter can be trickey, but manageable.
My opinion, you have to visit Iceland at least twice: once in winter and once in summer, it is completely different! In case you want to go to the highlands, go in August or late July. A Dacia Duster rental will get you there. Winter trips can be shorter so, in summer you go around Iceland or cross it which takes more time.
Not GP nor an Icelander, but I literally just left Keflavik this morning, my first time in the country. Had a great stay there. My Airbnb host said that August to April is peak aurora borealis time, but May to August is the warmest weather - likely 50-60°F most days. He said 8-10 days for the ring road is good. Don't do much less than that or you'll be rushed.
Unelaborated nihilism is the most useless of all arguments. If we were to take your point to extreme, we wouldn't get out of bed because everything will disappear one day. So, for a claim like this to contribute something to the conversation, one needs to explain why uselessness of this thing overpowers usefulness of other things.
...and come back again, only to disappear once more whereupon they reform in the next cycle. This has happened many times already and it will continue on its way until the sun heats up the atmosphere enough to boil off all water/Iceland succumbs to some massive volcanic eruption/etc.
Realise that according to the prophesies of doom you are quoting you would have been dead many times over, many years ago. Seeing as how you're still around to tell us those glaciers will meet an untimely end those prophecies - and with that your claim - do not carry the weight they are often given.
This looks like a cheaper way to get most ebooks and you can ship the books direct from Amazon. If enough people did this, maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational.
>maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational.
Why don't you think it's rational? Note that the cost to print and distribute a printed book is only about $2 of its cost. Or don't you think authors, editors, etc. should be able to earn money?
I frequently see Kindle pricing as higher than print. If ebook prices were 2$ less, I'd be more inclined to buy some. If they were 50% less, I'd buy 10x more. If the author got a higher cut, I'd also be more inclined to give these middlemen my money. As it is, I buy used print books most of the time...
Book pricing can be weird at times but Kindle is usually cheaper than new print. But, yes, more than used. Though I'll often buy Kindle for fiction anyway because I don't really want physical books. (And, to be honest, I read a lot fewer books than I used to in any case. I'm definitely time/attention limited rather than money. Ebooks could be free and I wouldn't read a lot more.)
Weird. The few lines on preview page look like Danish, except "runet" which looks like English "run" with a Danish past participle ending. I don't see anything that looks French.
I would read the next to last line as: "you have run ashore?"
>Virtually all words are of Germanic origin. There are some possible explanations for this fact. The French component may have disappeared by the time it was recorded, but the pidgin preserved its name. It is also possible that the Frenchmen who went there were actually Flemish-speaking fishermen from the area around Dunkerque, France.
But why? Uranium is not terribly uncommon. If you own a home, the top meter of soil in your yard likely contains several kilograms of it.
Ample economical uranium supplies are relevant if there is large demand for uranium for power production (weapons programs can get more expensive uranium from wherever). But that's not where the world is going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...