– That’s certainly a relief: The Basque people have probable been a bit hesitant to visit Westfjords in northwestern Iceland for a while now. It looks like an absolutely beautiful place, but the Basques—the indigenous ethnic group of northern Spain and southwestern France, have not been welcome there for some time. That’s because until recently, the law in that part of Iceland required killing any Basques in the area:
Basques wanting to visit the dramatic fjords of north-western Iceland need no longer hesitate after the district of Westfjords repealed a 400-year-old decree to kill any Basque caught in the area on sight.
“The decision to do away with the decree was more symbolic than anything else,” said Westfjords district commissioner Jonas Gudmundsson. “We have laws, of course, and killing anyone– including Basques – is forbidden thesedays.”
The edict was issued in 1615 after a storm destroyed three Basque whaling vessels on an expedition in Iceland. Eighty members of the crew survived, said Gudmundsson, and were left stranded in the area. “They had nothing to eat, and there were accounts of them robbing people and farmers,” he said.
The brewing conflict between locals and the whalers prompted then-sheriff Ari Magnússon to draw up a decree that allowed Basques to be killed with impunity in the district. In the weeks that followed, more than 30 Basques were killed in raids led by the sheriff and local farmers. “It’s one of the darkest chapters of our history,” said Gudmundsson, noting that the incident known as the Slaying of the Spaniards ranks among the country’s bloodiest massacres.
(h/t Doug Coulson) Obviously, the law would be unenforceable in the Iceland of 2015 (one hopes), but it’s still a welcome gesture to issue a formal repeal. If nothing else, it gives a little perspective on something like Mississippi ratifying the 13th Amendment (the one that abolished slavery) in 2013, 148 years after the end of slavery.
– Dial-up time machine: An 83 year-old man in California was shocked to receive a $24,000 phone bill, due to his modem accidentally routing him to a long-distance AOL dial-up number whenever he logged on to the internet. Luckily, AT&T fixed the problem and dropped the long-distance charges. (h/t Jonathan)
The reason I mention this story here is because it is 2015, and this story features:
- AOL
- Dial-up internet access
- Long-distance charges
Some of us live a charmed online life. Keep that in mind.
– Veganism, you’ve gone too far this time: I’m not sure if this counts as vegan, because it uses animal (specifically, human) DNA:
San Francisco-based iGem group said it found a way to make cheese proteins using genetic sequences found in mammals.
The DNA blueprints are inserted into the yeast, which creates cheese that is vegan-compatible because of the lack of animal products.
Some of the DNA strands are from humans, because the developers hope milk proteins made from our own species will mean less chance of allergic reactions.
(h/t Marco) Who knows, maybe it’ll be good. It’s not like the process of making cheese isn’t totally gross if you stop to think about it. The only thing I’m pretty confident about is that this stuff will be expensive. Why, you ask? Did you see “San Francisco” in the description?
The “human DNA cheese” piece was just to get you warmed up for this one:
– No, not the Heimlich maneuver: From China, we have the story of a very dedicated zookeeper who helped a monkey beset by constipation pass a peanut by………licking the monkey’s butt.
Here is an album of emergency monkey GIFs, which might help get that image out of your mind. Or might cement that image in place. I wouldn’t presume to know your mind.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what I meant about the Heimlich maneuver, it’s from an extremely bad joke.
