The Off Topic Topic

[Caliga]

Also, spiess, there's a booth for Argentina but for some weird reason they call it 'Patagonia'.

[Maladict]

Here I thought the Portuguese spoke multiple languages.  Can we have a soda map of Europe for each language in every country?

That one surprised me too, I expected most of them to speak Spanish as well.
And Ireland, so few Irish speakers?

[MadImmortalMan]

Pff. Like 4000 people speak Irish. Even though they try to teach it a bit in schools.

[Valmy]

Pff. Like 4000 people speak Irish. Even though they try to teach it a bit in schools.

They are required by law for a certain percentage of their radio and TV broadcasts be in Irish.  It is pretty trippy to listen to.

[Maladict]

Pff. Like 4000 people speak Irish. Even though they try to teach it a bit in schools.

Not many native speakers, maybe. But a substantial part should be able to speak it as a second language, I'd have thought.

edit: around 40%, apparently.

[The Brain]

There you go. And since almost no Irish people speak a foreign language...

[garbon]

Someone sent this to me and send it made them think of me.

My co-worker helpfully suggested that perhaps it means they want to have a baby with me.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/sarcastic-moms-caption-idealistic-stock-photos

[MadImmortalMan]

Sarcasm is our new national sport.

[garbon]

Sarcasm is our new national sport.

Those photos weren't particularly sarcastic / seemed better geared for new mothers. I'd more inclined to say something like "And then she locked him away in the closet" or "she liked imaginary children best of all."

[Razgovory]

In 1891 a man named Sylvain Dornon walked from Paris to Moscow on stilts.  It took him 58 days.  He die in obscurity cursing the Wright Brothers.

[mongers]

In 1891 a man named Sylvain Dornon walked from Paris to Moscow on stilts.  It took him 58 days.  He die in obscurity cursing the Wright Brothers.

There's a Russian who's cycled around an appreciable amount of the world's coastlines, it might only be a few percents given it's fractual nature, but he's probably done more than anyone else dead or alive.

He had some really amazing/hair-raising adventures, but because he did it just before/ on the cusp of the internet's birth, there's very little out there about him. I'll see what I can come up with.

But really someone should write a movie script of is adventures, because it embraces the aftermath of the Soviet Union, Third world civil wars and all points between, including arms traffickers.


edit:

Turns out he's still alive and still persuing it, so there's a bit more about him on the web than I thought.

Some details here:
http://englishrussia.com/2010/05/15/cycling-around-the-world/

[The Minsky Moment]

. In two field studies with a combined sample of 103 men and women recruited at two bars in Grenoble, France, participants were presented with a moral dilemma assessing their willingness to sacrifice one life to save five others. Participants' blood alcohol concentrations were found to positively correlate with utilitarian preferences(r = .31, p < .001) suggesting a stronger role for impaired social cognition than intact deliberative reasoning in predicting utilitarian responses [emphasis added] in the trolley dilemma

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/10/the-drunk-utilitarian.html#sthash.HzBvLkhG.dpuf

[mongers]

. In two field studies with a combined sample of 103 men and women recruited at two bars in Grenoble, France, participants were presented with a moral dilemma assessing their willingness to sacrifice one life to save five others. Participants' blood alcohol concentrations were found to positively correlate with utilitarian preferences(r = .31, p < .001) suggesting a stronger role for impaired social cognition than intact deliberative reasoning in predicting utilitarian responses [emphasis added] in the trolley dilemma

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/10/the-drunk-utilitarian.html#sthash.HzBvLkhG.dpuf

We built an empire on this 'spirit'. 

[The Larch]

Don't think we've had this one yet, even though it's from 2012:

I wonder if they count the regional languages of Spain for that map... 

[DGuller]

Luxemburgers are special indeed.  Their median number of languages spoken is greater than the mean number of languages spoken.