So I went by Starbucks today. The line wasn’t quite as long as I had seen it on previous occasions. I went in. What struck me right away was how noisy it was inside. Mind you they’re located inside a busy train terminal, with nothing but a delimiting glass panel wall, so it’s not going to be a quiet, cozy café. But they clearly had done nothing to insulate from the noise. Which is just as well, because most of it was coming from inside the Starbucks. There was music blasting, and five staffers yelling orders over the music. It was literally as noisy as MacDonalds on a busy day. So much for ambience, none of it. Those stories about people hanging out in a Starbucks – those places must be categorically different from this one.

As I was pondering this, the line advanced and soon I found myself making my order. And that’s when I noticed how poorly organized the staffers were. First I made my order to the girl leaning over the cake counter. She proceeded to yell it down the line to the production division. Then I approached the cash register and had to repeat my order to another girl. “A large caffè latte.” “Was it a venti?” “I have no idea, I said large.” I refuse to speak their pretend language.  The girl who had taken the order chimed in to clarify. I forked over cash and, strangely enough, did not receive a receipt. Are they saving on paper?

That’s when I got in line behind the six previous customers who were still waiting to get theirs. Clearly, they were backed up with orders.  My coffee was ready before all of theirs was. But the girl in production had no idea whom it was for, because there were no receipts to work from. The orders were filled, but how to match them with customers? So she asks every person in turn “what are you waiting for?” That was the third time I had to say my order.

All of this somehow distracted me from noticing the beating I took on the coffee. €3.95 for a large caffè latte? That’s hilarious. At MacDonalds you can get a meal for a little over 5 bucks. Maybe they could justify the price if the café was a great place to hang out. Or if the coffee were especially good. Or if they were especially well organized and efficient.

Complaining about rain seems to be some kind of ingrained human reflex. But if (almost) everyone is doing it then surely not everyone has a case? Before I moved to the Netherlands I heard people say it rained here all the time. That doesn’t agree at all with my observations. But what’s a lot? Compared to what?

I know, facts!

The World Weather Information Service has climate information on 1000+ cities around the world. I decided to do a little data mining. All conclusions to follow are based on that data. Just for kicks, I should mention there are very serious methodological problems with this exercise. First of all, they say countries don’t necessarily use the same definitions for what’s a rainy day or measure precipitation the same way. So you’re not really supposed to compare cities. Secondly, when placing cities on a world scale, sampling is everything. And nothing is known about the criteria by which cities are included in the list. We’re not gonna let petty details like that stop us, though.

I should also mention that “rain” as used here also includes snow where applicable.

Is it rainy here or what!

So is it rainy here? Let’s compare it to the control point: Trondheim. And let’s throw in some other data points too, for good measure.

• Cities with a reputation for rain: Bergen, London, Seattle, some town on the Spanish north coast (found A Coruna on the list).
• Cities known to be dry: Los Angeles, Zaragoza (turns out to be the driest city in Europe)
• Other cities: Berlin, Dublin, Milan, Paris, Stockholm

The first number is the total annual precipitation. The second is the number of rainy days.

city            mm/y   days
Bergen          2250   235
A Coruna        1008   171
Seattle          945   122
Milan            943    86
Trondheim        892   216
Amsterdam        780   185
Dublin           733   129
Paris            650   112
London           611   145
Berlin           571   106
Stockholm        539   173
Zaragoza         317    79
Los Angeles      305    27

Download this code: rainy_cities

Bergen’s reputation is well justified, it turns out to be the rainiest city in Europe. Rainy London, on the other hand, is a complete myth.

No, not like that, use *all* the facts!

But what do random cities tell us about the big picture? Not much. Let’s see how countries place on the overall ranking. Here we see the span they occupy in the list, from the rainiest city on the left to the driest on the right. (Spain refers to mainland Spain.)

The Netherlands place smack in the middle. So to say it’s a rainy country is an obvious exaggeration, it’s pretty much average. The very narrow span is probably due to the small and uniform geography. Norway, on the other hand, is definitely rainy, occupying the space in the rainy portion of the list. Bergen is most rainy, Oslo is least. As for London, it’s actually the lower end of the UK span, further diffusing its rainy reputation.

If you like staying dry the very best place to be is Luxor in Egypt, where precipitation is a minuscule 3mm annually. At the other end is Quibdo in Colombia, with an incredible 8m of rainfall and 305 days of rain.

But you didn’t…

I know, but this isn’t supposed to be comprehensive. If you want to do further work on this data you can get the list I generated:

• climate_raindata.gz

So I’ve been sitting here all this time, twiddling my thumbs. Obama or McCain, tough choice. I was waiting for a sign. A sign, you might say, from god. It came. Obama and McCain both had rallies in Pennsylvania. McCain canceled his, Obama didn’t.

“A little rain never hurt nobody”, said Obama, as McCain headed the stampede to the nearest shelter. Damn right, Barack.

Europeans, take notice. Rain is water. Most of your bodies are water already. You’re carrying around water bottles to counter balance dehydration. Stop being so schizophrenic.

Disclaimer: I am not a special interest contributor to the Obama campaign. Obama merely chose to point and laugh at people who are scared of rain for the fun of it.

Quick, what’s the most important quality a foreign language can have? If you said “easy to use” you’d be right. All other concerns are trumped, because other values of a language can never be appreciated unless you can learn it first. And apparently Norwegian ranks first on ease of learning for speakers of English (fun to know ). The ranking is of course highly unofficial, but what the heck.

Exhibit A:

Scandinavian verbs have some of the easiest conjugation you can find in Europe. Present tense is made by adding an -r to the verb, regardless of who’s doing it. That gives us:

ha – to have

jeg har – I have
du har – you have
han har – he has
vi har – we have

Such simplicity is brilliant (and unheard of).

The full rationale is here. A few selected gems follow.

Norwegians understand 88% of the spoken swedish language
understand 73% of the spoken danish language

Swedes understand 48% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 23% of the spoken danish language

Danes understand 69% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 43% of the spoken swedish language

Norwegians understand 89% of the written swedish language
understand 93% of the written danish language

Swedes understand 86% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written danish language

Danes understand 89% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written swedish language.

Hah, suckers! More succinctly:

“Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish”

Norwegian + phonology – vocabulary = swedish

Norwegian – phonology + vocabulary = danish

Why? I have no idea. It’s a symptom, haven’t found the cause yet. The transformation is practically asymptotic, that’s for sure.