Iceland: Land of Fire and Ice

Sitting astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
The only place where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises above sea level.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Divergent tectonic plate boundary) attracts tourists.

Volcanic Activity

  • Volcanic eruptions are far more frequent on convergent tectonic plate boundaries (Cascade Mountain Range & the Andes) than on divergent tectonic place boundaries (Iceland); however, eruptions do occur along divergent boundaries.  Recently and eruption broke through the icecap in Iceland.

Iceland’s Eruptions

  • Ash and roughly thirty-story-tall lava fountains shoot from a half-mile-long (0.8-kilometer-long) rupture in the icy cap of southern Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced AY-uh-full-ay-ho-kul) volcano early Sunday.
  • The geology of Iceland, though, is anything but normal. The volcanic island lies just south of the Arctic Circle atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where two tectonic plates are forever pulling apart. Magma from deep inside Earth rushes upward, filling the gaps and fueling Iceland’s volcanic eruptions, which occur about once every five years.
• From a different angle, Eyjafjallajökull’s “lavafall” appears unobstructed by billowing steam, revealing the glowing yellow ribbon cascading down the rocky gorge on March 26, 2010.
• Lava spraying high into the air draws crowds of tourists to Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano on March 27, 2010.

• When the eruption started on March 21, hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes, due to fears of flooding, which could have occurred, had the volcano’s heat melted too much surrounding glacial ice.
Cooling lava flows
Tourists check out the cooling lava

Comparison

  • These eruptions tend to be much less violent and destructive than those of strato-volcanoes that form near convergent boundaries.
  • 1980 when Mt. St. Helen erupted in the Cascade Mountains, nearly half of the mountain was blown away.
  • In Iceland the magma comes up to fill in a gap created by the separating of the two tectonic plates.
• Not far from Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the much larger Mýrdalsjökull glacier (check the map on the next slide) hides the fiery, gently sloping Katla volcano that lies under the ice.

Eruptions on Iceland

An incandescent basaltic lava flow winds its way downslope from a vent at Krafla volcano in Iceland in 1984. The flow originated from an 8.5-km-long fissure that was initially active along its entire length. The fissure was produced by rifting along the mostly submarine Mid-Atlantic Ridge where it rises above sea level and cuts across the island of Iceland, forming an accessible natural laboratory for studies of episodic eruptions at this oceanic spreading ridge.

Krafla Volcano – Iceland

An incandescent basaltic lava flow winds its way downslope from a vent at Krafla volcano in Iceland in 1984. The flow originated from an 8.5-km-long fissure that was initially active along its entire length. The fissure was produced by rifting along the mostly submarine Mid-Atlantic Ridge where it rises above sea level and cuts across the island of Iceland, forming an accessible natural laboratory for studies of episodic eruptions at this oceanic spreading ridge.

Iceland Info.

  • Area: 103,000 sq km
  • Coastline: 4,970 km
  • Terrain: mostly plateau interspersed with mountain peaks, icefields; coast deeply indented by bays and fiords •Land use: –arable land: 0.07% –permanent crops: 0% –other: 99.93% (2005)
  • Natural resources: fish, hydropower, geothermal power, diatomite

Demographics

  • Population: 306,694 (July 2009 est.)
  • Age Structure: 0-14 years: 20.7%
  • Population growth rate: 0.741% (2009 est.)
  • Urban population: 92% (2008)
  • Infant mortality rate: 3.23 deaths/1,000 live births
  • Life expectancy at birth: 80.67 years
  • Adult literacy: 99%

Economy

  • GDP – per capita (PPP): $39,800 (2009 est.) –$42,800 (2008 est.) –$42,600 (2007 est.)
  • GDP – real growth rate: -6.3% (2009 est.) –1.3% (2008 est.) –5.5% (2007 est.)
  • GDP – composition by sector: –agriculture: 5.2% –industry: 24% –services: 70.8% (2009 est.)

Reykjavik –Capital City

Reykjavik
Roundup of Icelandic horses
The Gullfoss (Golden Falls) Waterfall in southern Iceland.
An eruption of the geyser Strokkur.
A river with volcanic black sand banks meanders to the sea through farm fields near the southern coast of Iceland.
Looking across the plate boundary from the European Plate to the N. American.

I am not the author of the words nor the photographs. I give thanks to the person who compiled the info about one of the most beautiful places I’ve had the honour to visit, already!

Iceland is simply magical!

The profit war

Is this true? Or just appears to be?
. . . Of course the holy money speaks first! ! !
This fierce war had to have an explanation.


https://www.dn.pt/mundo/fuga-de-informacao-pfizer-cobra-12-euros-a-ue-por-cada-dose-de-vacina-13154969.html


IS ASTRAZENECA DANGEROUS?

This is the question that is constantly being asked and that has come to discredit the vaccine, which in fact is very dangerous for the pharmaceutical industry. The big problem is not its danger to our health, but its costs, which are much lower than those of the competition.
Eva De Bleeker, Secretary of State for the Belgian Budget, committed the distrust of revealing the amounts that the European Union is paying for the unit cost of each of the different vaccines. She published the following cost table on her social networks:
Astrzeneca – 1,78 € (each vaccine)
Modern – 14,7€ (8.25 times more)
Pfizer – 12€ (6.74 times more)
Cure Vac – 10€ (5.61 times more)
Sanofi / GSK – 7.56€ (4.24 times more)
Janssen – 6.90 € (3.87 times more)
As expected, there was an immediate protest from several laboratories who claimed that the “confidentiality clause” of the contract established with the EU was not respected.
Eva De Bleeker hastened to erase what she had published, but it was too late, her writing had already been copied and widely circulated.
Then came a huge campaign to discredit the vaccine that committed the heresy of being much cheaper.
The campaign lasts… It lasts and will continue to last, until most countries stop using it or only use it in increasingly restricted groups.
It should be remembered that Astrazeneca was developed following procedures, which have been tested for a long time, and are followed in the common anti-flu vaccines that are modified every year to adapt to the new strains that appear. A fragment of the virus that has antigenic power (it generates the production of antibodies that will fight a future infection) has no pathogenic power (it does not cause the disease) is injected.
Other vaccines used new, untried technologies, some based on mRNA. And that they had, obviously, higher production costs but that do not justify the huge price difference.


Let’s wait for the scenes in the next chapters.

Natural Wonders by accident

  1. A path with history
    (Dark Hedges, Ireland)

It is a single stretch of road near Bregagh Armoy in County Antrim, Ireland. The beeches that protect the road have grown too close together, competing for the light. The trees were planted by a family to decorate the access to their Georgian mansion many years ago. Today, the road is one of the most photographed postcard in Ireland.

  1. The Gerlach Desert Geyser
    (U.S.A.)

Everything was pure aridity in the Gerlach area, near Nevada, until a group of men decided to drill insearch of water for their livestock and crops. What they found was thermal water that, since then, emanates from the rocky terrain, initiating a sedimentation process capable of forming a natural sculpture that looks more like a fantasy landscape. Today, it’s almost a tourist attraction, but it was all an accidental fluke.

  1. The wonderful remains of an ancient mining exploration
    (Las Médulas, Spain)

In the region of El Bierzo, in the province of León, there is an incredible natural place, although the curious mountain shapes were originated by the gold mining carried out by the Romans in that place.

  1. Tunnel modeled by train passage
    (Ukraine)

This time, nature adapted to the passage of man in the form of a train. In a dense forest, along a railway track, a tunnel was formed that fits the train, a leafy gallery known as the “Tunnel of Love“!

  1. The landslide that gave birth to a paradise of scale
    (Texas)

This time, the “accident” did not involve the hand of man, but the tireless work of Nature for hundreds or thousands of years.

A little over a century ago, in an area near Austin, Texas, an underground river (after having eroded a cavity for thousands of years) caused a landslide that gave way to a small sheltered oasis, with calm waters, a waterfall and vegetation which is seen as a completely unusual place.

The pool (Hamilton Pool) is surrounded by huge limestone slabs and decorated with stalactites, mosses and some bushes that grow hanging between the rocks. Today, it receives hundreds of visitors, especially in summer.

Taken from a PowerPoint presentation that can be found here https://fdocumentos.com/document/maravilhas-por-acidente-58a740fba27bc.html.

A big thank you to Linito for amazing work!

Time goes by

Rare photos of celebrities

Olga and Tatiana Romanova
Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II 
Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera and André Breton
Dalai Lama and The Pope
John F. Kennedy
Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy
Barbra Streisand and John F. Kennedy
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand
Jill St John (Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever), Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon
Lana Turner and Ronald Reagan
Nicolas Sarkozy
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider
Yves Montand and Edith Piaf
Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl
Jane Seymour and Freddie Mercury
Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury 
Liza Minnelli and Michael Jackson
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley and Tom Jones
Dustin Hoffman
Gérard Depardieu and John Travolta
Louis Armstrong in Egypt
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini
Photographer Richard Avedon and Sophia Loren
Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese
The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Yoko Ono
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Linda and Paul McCartney
Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski
Ike and Tina Turner
Vera and Vladimir Nabokov
Pablo Picasso
Ernest Hemingway and Fidel Castro
Jean-Paul Sartre and Che Guevara 
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr. and Marlon Brando
Clint Eastwood
Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood
Natalie Wood
Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire
Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire
Pelé and Sylvester Stallone
Michael and Kirk Douglas
Uma Thurman and Mikhail Baryshnikov
Vaslav Nijinsky and Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin and Gandhi
Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein
Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly
Ian Fleming and Sean Connery
James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor
Johnny Cash and Ray Charles
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates