|
For the Americans reading this: Note that the Norway gas prize of 1.90 eur per liter is equal to about $9.70 per gallon. Americans, you can stop complaining about high gas prizes now. It's way worse in Europe.
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2013 19:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:27 |
|
|
dethslayer666 posted:Oregon Country/Columbia District was jointly claimed by Britain and the USA, until the Treaty of Oregon was signed in 1846, establishing a fixed border at 49 degrees, resulting in the world's dumbest border: Now that makes me wonder. One of those small roads to the east (Canada's 66a Street) has this tiny wooden fence blocking the border. How fast would border guards catch you if you were to jump that thing? Speaking of borders, some maps of the Dutch/Belgian twin town of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog.  The thick black line is the country border, with Netherlands to the North. Each H is a Belgian enclave within the Netherlands.  The town center. Each N is a Dutch enclave within a Belgian enclave within the Netherlands.  A photo of H22.  A photo of a liquor store with a border through the middle. In the store, I think you can choose to which country you want to pay taxes. They made the rule that a house belongs to whichever country that has its front door on its land. There's currently one building where the border goes right through the front door. It has both a Belgian and a Dutch address. Before the European borders were opened, this place was famous for its smugglers. Oh, and even now the Dutch police is checking if people enter the Dutch area carrying things that are illegal in the Netherlands, such as certain kinds of heavy fireworks. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Nov 2, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2013 07:36
|
|
|
Well, the current national government here in Holland has been planning to merge the 12 provinces into 4 or 5 regions or something, in order to reduce provincial government costs. They wanted to start slowly by merging 3 provinces (Utrecht, Flevoland and Noord-Holland) into one. The provincial governments and many others are firmly opposed to this, as this probably creates more troubles than it's worth. One other thing is the provinces they chose. Why merge Utrecht with Noord-Holland? Noord-Holland has historically and culturally a much closer relation to Zuid-Holland. Anyway, there's so much opposition that I don't think this will happen any time soon. Then again, they have been merging municipalities here since decades. Originally, nearly each village was its own municipality. Most of them have merged into municipalities that contains a bunch of villages and one (sometimes two) towns or a city. This of course caused some troubles for the citizens. For example, it's gotten somewhat harder to reach the municipal office. And if your tiny-population village is added to a city municipality, the political climate can suddenly change completely.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2013 18:18
|
|
|
ekuNNN posted:That doesn't stop some people, here's The Greatest Netherlands If you look elsewhere, you might find this map:  This map shows what a number of people want: for Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium; the little green 'hole' is Brussels which is bilingual, and nobody knows what to do with it) to join up with the Netherlands. As far as I know, a large minority of Dutch would not mind if this happens. Long ago, it was one country already, and joining together would bring economic prosperity to both parts. Most Flemish people disagree. Some want to secede from Belgium (understandable, because Flanders is the richest region of the country), but they generally don't want to join up with the Netherlands, fearing that the larger, more populous Netherlands will assimilate their culture. In any case, for some reason modern fascist groups really like this map, which is why it's sometimes considered some sort of fascist symbol, just like this flag:  (orange on top instead of red). To make things more complicated, according to Wikipedia there's also a group who wants 'Whole Netherlands' as a country which would include the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and certain neighbouring regions of Germany and France.On another note: Someone told me the other day they had seen a map or a list of countries that have been invaded by the Dutch at any point in the past. According to that list, there were only seven countries that were never invaded by the Dutch at all. The thing used a rather broad definition. For instance, the list/map said that Spain was 'invaded' because of a supposed large role for the Dutch in the Inquisition. First, I don't know if the Dutch had anything to do with the Inquisition at all. Secondly, all countries but seven? That sounds hard to believe. Does anyone have any information on this? Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Nov 5, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2013 07:45
|
|
|
In Holland, only the terms 'municipality' and 'built-up area' are defined by law. So what's considered a city/town/village? It depends on whatever people commonly call a place, there's no strict definition at all. Although, some people use the definition of historical (medieval) city rights. Often, but not always, historical cities were walled. In any case, by this historical definition, the village of Staverden (pop. 40 including surrounding farms) is a city, but the modern city of The Hague, which houses the parliament, is not actually a city, as it never got medieval city rights.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2013 22:57
|
|
|
Note the Vierländerpunkt on that map. It was a rather unique point where four country borders met.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2013 18:32
|
|
|
That's just silly, I've never heard anyone call the Super Bowl a 'world championship'. It's a national championship of the United States. There have been four American Football world championships so far, hosted in Italy, Germany, Japan and Austria. The fifth one will be in Sweden.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2013 23:22
|
|
|
DarkCrawler posted:I mean, DRCongo alone, jeez: Still strange to think that all that land was owned by tiny little Belgium.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2013 14:34
|
|
|
^^^ Well, those 419 scammers need a lot of bandwidth for their fraud.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 22:36
|
|
|
 There's less people in North-America and Europe than I thought. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 1, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2013 20:08
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:There isn't any US diplomatic presence in North Korea and Iran because it would be dangerous to send Americans to those places. North Korea wouldn't respect American diplomatic immunity and the Iranians have a history of not respecting American diplomatic immunity. True. A little while ago some American war veteran decided to visit North Korea for whatever stupid reason and he got arrested over there. According to the news, the American government actually had to ask Sweden (I think?) to request North Korea to release that man, simply because there are no American diplomats in North Korea. ... I don't know how the story ended. The poor guy is probably still being held and tortured over there.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2013 09:30
|
|
|
I think the map makes sense if you think of it like this: The majority language of the UK is English. Of those people who do not speak English as their first language, the largest group speaks Welsh. Apparently in Austria there's a lot of people who have Turkish as their first language, more than any other minority group. I'd expect that to be the case in more European countries, but I guess I'm wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2013 23:13
|
|
|
Darth Various posted:Probably just straight ripped from the CIA World Factbook without much thinking. It lists Turkish as the second most common language in Austria and Portugese and Mirandese as the two official languages of Portugal. Well, that would explain it, I guess.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2013 23:33
|
|
|
computer parts posted:It's not really related to gun ownership either: Well, the shootings map seems to relate to population density, and this gun ownership maps shows percentage so it's not really comparable. More people = more schools = larger chance for a shooting, simple as that. E: I don't know that much about population density in America (except that most people live in the northeast and southwest), but is it possible that the person who said CO has had the most shootings, meant most shootings per capita? Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Dec 23, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2013 09:58
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Taking the piss? No way are you American withak posted:This is the devil beating his wife, right? I only know because I heard it in a song and was totally confused for a while. Interesting. Here in Holland I heard the phrase 'kermis in de hel' which means 'funfair in hell' for rain while the sun shines. I wonder if that's historically related to 'the devil beating his wife', and I wonder what it is called in other countries. Also, I speak Dutch, so I can read Afrikaans if I take my time, but I don't think I ever heard an Afrikaans song. The text was surprisingly understandable. As I understand it, the Afrikaners took Dutch a few hundred years ago, threw out all idiotic rules that makes my language so difficult to learn, changed a bunch of other things over time, and made the new language their own. Very interesting to compare the two languages. For instance, Afrikaans has the term 'aftrekplek' for a rest stop next to a large road. In Dutch 'aftrekplek' would mean a place for male masturbation. Signs like that are often photographed by Dutch tourists. Related: 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2013 08:27
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Wait wait. "Aftrekken" is Dutch slang for masurbation? I guess I'd better watch myself then if I visit the Netherlands and I'm wearing snow pants or something that I need to take off. "Hou op! Ik trek dit af!" We don't say 'draadtrek' at all and the word for taking off pants and such is 'uittrekken'.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2013 23:51
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Ahh okay. We say 'uittrek' if you're pulling something off over your head like a shirt or something. It's 'aftrek' if you're pulling something down to take it off like pants or socks. Well, we have naaien as slang too. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 10:06
|
|
|
 A map of Germanic languages spoken in Europe. Legend here See that brownish spot in the North of the Netherlands? That's the province of Fryslân (Frisian spelling), where Frisian is an important language. It is the country's second official language. I don't know too much about it, but I do know I can't understand much of it. It sounds like a really really strong dialect, but I'm guessing the differences between Dutch and Frisian are larger than those among the Scandinavian languages. Interestingly though, the Frisian language is the closest 'living relative' to English (not counting sorta-dialects that evolved from modern English). The languages parted around the time of Old English, but the proto-English/Frisian was already far apart from proto-Dutch by then. If you look closely, you can find a few similarities between Frisian and English that are different in Dutch. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Dec 27, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 23:08
|
|
|
First of all, is there a general language / language history discussion thread?VitalSigns posted:Nah, the second that Dutch people got away from it all and landed in Africa we immediately started dispensing with gender, irregular (strong) verbs, complicated spellings, and all that nonsense, so it's pretty obvious that the Dutch don't like gender either but they keep it around just to irritate foreigners. Carbon dioxide: confirm/deny? Let me just describe the situation in Dutch. We have three genders, masculine, feminine and neutral. However, we only have two definite articles, de and het. De is used for masculine, feminine and plural words, while het is used for neutral words. All diminutives (often ending on -je) are neutral. Like in German, we have the word 'meisje', which means (little) girl but is often used for girls in general. It's a diminutive so it gets 'het'. Its root is the word 'meid', which is a big girl. Meid is a feminine word and gets 'de'. So that at least clears up why 'meisje' is a neutral word. While the difference between masculine and feminine words doesn't matter for the articles, it does matter when referring to them. A masculine word gets 'he', a feminine word gets 'she' and a neutral word gets 'it', unless you're talking about something with an actual gender like a cat or a girl. However, in this case we very often default to 'he' for any word gender. 'He' sounds neutral (not the gender, just... neutral), while 'she' in certain cases sounds like you're specifically giving the object female characteristics. I just looked up a bunch of common words in the dictionary, and all feminine ones I could think of had 'f(m)' as gender. That means it's officially/originally feminine, but using them as a masculine word is fine. So, the masculine/feminine thing exists but is not that important in practice and most people won't even hear if you get that 'wrong', as long as you default to 'he'. Good thing is that in speech 'he' is even accepted for neutral words. The difference between de and het (and die and dat, which mean 'that' as in 'that book') are still big, though. Getting it wrong sounds weird to us, and the erroneous 'de meisje' is actually associated with the way Arab immigrants speak Dutch. It's even used to make fun of them. Now, I've read an article by a linguist who said that languages evolve, and in the future, we will completely get rid of 'het', leaving only the article 'de', and immigrants are starting that future. Of course, language does evolve but it's hard to predict in which direction. Many Dutch people seem to have a kneejerk reaction saying that using 'de' instead of 'het' sounds weird and the language should stay the way they learned it in school because that's the only correct way. I understand their reaction, but language is changing all the time in small ways, whether we want it or not. We'll just have to wait and see. By the way, I hated learning German in class. I couldn't get the hang of German word genders, and on top of that they have grammatical cases which change the article and the word ending, there were just way too many combinations. Except for some archaic idioms, Dutch got rid of grammatical cases in the last 100 years, and like in English, the function of a noun (direct/indirect object) is denoted by its place in the sentence. But don't worry. We still have plenty other incredibly difficult spelling rules. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Dec 30, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2013 10:04
|
|
|
That reddit poster said that the result is the top map, the bottom map is something he photoshopped together using a real map and the results. So no, nobody drew Italy that well. Some of the original maps: http://imgur.com/a/1w6fC  Did you know that North America actually looks like an eagle?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2013 20:08
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:So long as we're sharing WWI maps, not many people remember the third side in the conflict. That map is clearly a fake. The Netherlands were neutral for the entire duration of that war. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2014 10:58
|
|
|
It was just pointed out to me that he kinda looks like Gabe Newell.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
Redczar posted:
This projection makes the line that goes over the North look really weird and stretched. I wonder what happened to those ducks. Did they get stuck in ice for the winter?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2014 09:06
|
|
|
I'd expect there to be a big empty area in the desert. Did those tribes really live in those areas all the time or did they move in the summer?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2014 15:06
|
|
|
 Netherlands. Dark blue are the parts of the country that are currently below sea level. Light blue are the parts that are between 0 and 7 meters above current sea level. And yet, folks in Amsterdam and Rotterdam still have dry feet.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2014 21:20
|
|
|
Yes, such as the horrible horrible location of the original prime meridian through Paris. Wait, why did we change that, again? E. ^^^^^ I think there is. I read somewhere that they added a religious law saying that while in orbit, pick whatever direction you feel comfortable with. I mean, the ISS orbits at 28000 km/h, you'd be spinning around like crazy trying to keep up with the position of Mecca. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2014 21:29
|
|
|
Wikipedia posted:In recent years, Muslims from North America have used two rules to determine the direction of the Qiblah. According to spherical calculations, a Muslim praying from Anchorage, Alaska would pray almost due north if determining the Qiblah. However, when one looks at the world on most Mercator map projections, Mecca appears to be southeast of Anchorage. The shortest rhumb line (line of constant bearing) from most points in North America to Mecca will point toward the southeast, but the distance to Mecca along this route on the actual surface of the earth is longer than the great circle route. Oh by the way, the inside of the Kaaba (the small building in the middle of the Mecca mosque towards which muslims pray) is cleaned once every few years. I read that if a muslim needs to pray while inside the Kaaba, there is no preferred direction, either.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2014 21:37
|
|
|
Every year during the pilgrimage, they walk around it a certain number of times, touching the walls if they can. Let's be clear, I'm not a muslim so I can only tell you what I heard. It seems that muslims scholars have 'decided' that a) the Kaaba is just a focal point for their prayers. It's not something they pray 'to', because they only pray to their God. And b) as one of them said while discussing the orbit thing "praying is not supposed to be a gymnastics exercise and God does not expect us to do the impossible". So basically, they have to pray facing the building when they can, but other than that the details do not matter all that much.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2014 21:52
|
|
|
^^^^^ I forgot what that rule exactly was, but I think it had to do with magnetism. So, did you take the fact that the geographic North pole is at the magnetic South pole of the Earth in consideration? (That's why the North of any magnet is attracted by Earth's geographic North. It's magnetic South.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2014 22:58
|
|
|
I do not trust the validity of those tables. I mean, it seems they used stats from their own little list of (English language, possibly specifically North-American) porn sites. What if, say, only a dozen Nigerians visited those sites in the 6 month period they analysed, because Nigerians have their own porn sites in their own country? That would explain why there are some oddly specific search terms. It also means any fun stereotypes derived from those maps don't have to make sense. e: f;b
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2014 22:41
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:My mistake, the 'blackonblackcrime' thing actually is a porn site. You forgot to note Ireland's number one...
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2014 23:09
|
|
|
reignonyourparade posted:Afghanistan has a bunch of nearby peoples and then bizarrely "Dutch bitch." Could this be caused by the relatively large Dutch military presence (a few thousand troops) in the Afghanistan war?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2014 10:04
|
|
|
Got this from another thread:John Dough posted:The Netherlands has detection loops installed in the asphalt of most major highways. These measure vehicles travelling over them, and are used to monitor traffic remotely. Because they consist of multiple loops, one pair can determine how fast a vehicle is travelling over it. This way you can detect traffic jams, and this information is also available in real-time. Traffic organizations, news agencies and (maybe?) navigation software use this to warn people about stopped traffic and suggest alternate routes. The maximum speed on most highways in the Netherlands is 130 km/h, on others it's 120 km/h or lower. However, it seems there might be some 'false' results caused by the loops being unable to detect separate vehicles driving close together. 200 km/h during rush hour is rather unlikely.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 00:30
|
|
|
You folks talk about this as if there's an official membership to the group of Nordic countries and being a member gives you political advantages. Isn't it just a name? Or is it actually a group of closely cooperating countries like the Benelux?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 17:27
|
|
|
You can just drive from Germany to Denmark, you know. Also, from Denmark across the Øresund bridge to Sweden.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 18:57
|
|
|
Well, this is certainly a map someone made. (It seems based on the older "Map of the internet" by xkcd.) (Original size.)
Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 31, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 22:48
|
|
|
I have no clue about the actual situation there, but looking at those two maps, one thing I would like to note is that if two counties have an equal number of Latinos, the one with the lowest population total would of course automatically see a larger Latino percentage.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2014 22:57
|
|
|
Let's have some maps. Names of Brazilian states in Portuguese and Tupi Guarani:  And their literal translations in English:  As I understand it, Tupi Guarani isn't easily translatable into English, so some of these translations are subject to dispute. The map makers chose the most plausible or most accepted translations.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 18:32
|
|
|
When I visited the US, the few cargo trains I saw were REALLY long REALLY slow beasts, making you wait a very long while for a level railroad passage. Do cargo trains and passenger trains share any railroads over there like they do in Europe? Edit: ^^^^^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_long-distance_paths
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:27 |
|
|
The page I just linked suggests they use existing national trails and otherwise popular paths, so it's indeed not surprising if you recognize some of the paths. Did you know there's also European cycle routes?  I hear Route 12, or the North Sea Cycling Route is quite popular. The countries are actually putting some effort into it to make it work. It's actually a circuit around the North Sea. Starting from England, you cycle along the coast to Scotland, take a ferry to the Orkney and then Shetland Islands, take a ferry to Norway, cycle southeast until you end up in Sweden, cross to Denmark, and then cycle along the coast to Germany, Netherlands and Belgium (where you could cross over back to England). fermun posted:They do share rails, but freight has right-of-way over passenger. Here in Holland, afaik the central rail operators try to schedule things so trains don't have to stop/brake more than necessary. I don't know if there's any kind of priority other than "get everything where it needs to be in time". Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Feb 15, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2014 00:27
|
|