I was a fisherman in Alaska for a few years and it amazed me how much we threw away. I believe what we wasted on the Bering Sea would make Iceland look innocent. The idea is to get them overboard alive during thew live tank sorting process after haul back. It never works that way in the industrialized food process. Enjoy those Fish n Chips. Where ever you are.

“But a report by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game now shows that 750 million pounds of fish–too small, or the wrong species, or out of season – are casually thrown back into the water each year. The fish are dead by then, of course; the trauma of being netted, hauled from the depths and then dumped is almost invariably fatal.”
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17973836.html

As for your banking comment , a dog in New Jersey got a credit card in his name. The tax payers picked up his defaulted loan I’m sure , after he went nuts at Petsmart.

Tommi Burger VS McDonalds– Tommi wins. Is he still around?
Hlolla Bar VS Subway –Hlolla wins hands down. Are they still around?

The local food is so much better. There was another burger one called Winnys. Very good.

Let’s not even talk hot dogs. Mmmmmm.

I found Siggi Skyr at whole foods. It’s just as good as the local skyr. It’s made by an Icelander in Chenango County , NY. Very good.

Or I could go to the nearest gas station and get a greasy hamburger swimming in sauce or a plastic pylsur that has been laying in a pan of hot water for three hours, a microwaved bun, shrivelled up oinons, all covered with fat-laden sauces and served by a spotty teenager with little respect for basic hygiene and even less for good customer service.

Funny, that’s always how I feel about McDonald’s.

I sometimes get a hankering for that sort of synthetically-produced, artificial, fat-ladden, arterie-clogging, heart attack-inducing and overall just plain unhealthy food on occasion; I don’t feel guilty about it or anything, either, but nevertheless, I think this is interesting and certainly not unwelcome news.

And of course, smaller burger joints that use locally-produced/-grown ingredients etc. are preferable, anyway.

“McDonald’s sourced the ingredients for its fast food menu mostly from Germany, so the collapse of the krona savaged its bottom line. But doesn’t that mean that McDonald’s, operating with a business model that couldn’t adjust to currency shifts, should be the one hiding its face in shame?

I understand the symbolism here, which suggests that if even McDonald’s can’t make a buck in Iceland, then Iceland’s economy is totally fubared. But let’s turn that around. McDonald’s specializes in producing the lowest possible cost Big Macs and Fries by economizing on such a huge scale that it has warped the entire structure of global agriculture and food production away from anything remotely resembling healthy sustainability. McDonald’s only “works” in the context of a system that wreaks intense environmental havoc and sacrifices family farms in favor of industrial agribusinesses.”

the whole article: http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/10/27/mcdonalds_in_iceland/index.html

I look at the closing of McD here as a step toward solving the problems. Local ingredients, new jobs, money staying in Iceland…

I do think most Icelanders are realistic about what is happening – certainly it is hard not to be if you’ve lost your job, have a mountain of debt, etc. And the people I know whose mortgages are higher than the value of their homes are perfectly aware of this.

But you have to examine this in a historical context. The Icelandic nation has faced far, far worse than this. In centuries past the population of this country was nearly wiped out on three occasions. We had natural disasters, famines, disease – you name it. So while this economic crisis is certainly grave, it’s fairly lightweight compared to all that. Nobody has died as a result of it. Our homes are still intact. Most people here – 93% of the population – still have work. And we’re returning to a set of values that is much more realistic than the insanity we had during the boom years. Our export sectors are doing very well with the devaluation of the currency. Yes, we have massive debt, and it sucks bigtime – but we’ll survive.

So all in all, most Icelanders are in pretty high spirits. It’s in the nature of the people here to be optimistic and to face adversity and that’s what we’re doing.