Ok, some of them look good. The rest, the über-manliness, I guess it's a bit tongue in cheek.

I hope.

@Gauldar
Exactly. At least, the Eiffel tower is useful as an antenna.

Moreover, the metric system is from French origin. Anything coming from this country is too wussy to be useful for America. For example, temperature in Celsius. The numbers are way too small compared to Fahrenheit. A body temperature of 98.6 °F is manlier than 37°C.

ha ha. Yes, it's B.S. I'm happy to see so many people mentioning it. I live in France, and there, you buy your eggs by numbers. The same is all EU countries. And you will always do. And we have never heard of anything like stupid laws to prevent it. And you know how we love to berate against stupid EU laws, especially concerning food. Yes, sheer BS. Period.

320,000 is the population of whole Iceland.
Reykjavik population is "only" about 120,000 hab.

@Erock

Come on, these "ethnic food" sections are not there to represent one nation gastronomy. They are either for the "exotic" feeling or to provide some nostalgia-products for expatriates. In this case, American people in Berlin. Most of the time, in generic supermarket, you only find processed canned or dried product: long shelf life needed because of the low turn over.

If you want BBQ, burgers or hot dogs, they are pretty ubiquitous in Europe. And speaking of Germany, remember, hot dog sausages are not called Frankfurter or Weiner for random reasons...

@Rich
Doritos and soft drinks are no longer "American Ethnics", you found them everywhere.

Anyway, there is nothing surprising. In some key areas in France, you found "English ethnic" food section where british immigration is important. You found HP brown sauce, mint sauce, creamed horseradish, Marmite and so on.

Mmmmh, indeed, it would be quite efficient, evolutionary speaking. Embedding this kind of behaviour is very beneficial for the whole species, and thus, each individual creature. I guess it's instinct, I doubt that tortoises are evolved enough to learn this kind of action.

Daawwwww..., they are so cute !!!!

Wait, they are just juvenile lagomorphs. These rodent-like animals spawn like vermin and endanger whole ecosystems. Even in their normal ecosystem, they have to be culled by predators or humans to avoid problems.

These ones are even too small to make a proper meal. And I guess they carry parasites.

"Two female strangers in a public restroom would share more personal information in five minutes than you guys talked about in a week!"

That's very Anglo- or Americano centric.

Can you stop playing with food, folks ?

Justin> All this chain store convenience crap are American, and now international, you have to admit it.
I perfectly agree that real American cuisine is rich, varied and can be delicious (and I am French). But this fast food turd is prospering because of the sheer laziness of the American people (and now, everybody in the world, McDonald's is very successful in France, we even have KFC, now)

Mmmmh, massive amount of food colouring !

Seriously, the sight of this stuff makes me queasy.

I am not even shocked.

If you don't want to see corporate fast food joints close to touristic area, first stop patronising the ones next to your home.
No excuse, no exception, no "it's convenient". Period.
This kind of turd is spreading because these big companies have money to open new locations and because they know it will work.

Ranting is useless. Boycott works.

Alex and zeytoun> English is not a difficult langage (for people speaking another indo-european language, at least).

English is messy, but not difficult. Yes, its phonetics is complex, but French, for example, is not really straightforward, too. English grammar is quite simple, compared to German, French (again) or Scandinavian languages.
The only real issue is vocabulary: English vocabulary is extremely rich and comes from very different origins, which makes "structured" learning difficult (i.e. etymology is complex). However, if you stick to basic, everyday vocabulary, it's easy, and moreover, you just have to know a few common phrasal verbs (what you call "compounds words").

Some languages are easier to learn than others, because of shared origins. For example, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French are Romance languages. If you speak one, learning another one is easy. You can even decipher a (not too complex) written text without having learned the language.

For somebody speaking a really different language (Asian, for instance), English is not more difficult to learn than other common European languages.

Hmmm, Thorium reactors are not a new concept, but are technically very difficult to engineer:
- de nuclear decay of Thorium produces some isotopes by-products that impede the initial nuclear reaction. You must get rid of them during the reaction if you want to make it run continuously.
- that's why there is this idea of dissolving the Thorium in hot fluoride salts: in the liquid state, it is much easier to filtrate the "bad" isotopes. However this process is complex.
- finally, there is the good old engineering problem: which material to use to make the reactor ? Sadly, no one knows, at the moment. Forget the idea of the "magic alloy", "unknown-yet-but-soon" wonder ceramic or metal or anything mystically working because you have "nano" in the name. Materials science doesn't work like this, especially in heavy industries with strong security issues.

Thorium reactors are a good candidate for the future. But more for the years 2050's. At that time, we will know if fusion reactors are feasible (that means: ready for production in the years 2100's).

Of course, if there is still a humanity...