Who talks more: men or women?

A few days ago I had a heated conversation with a male friend on the subject of female vs male communications’ skills. It all started because we disagreed on whether women or men are better at giving a public speech where a controversial key message needs to be delivered.

The whole conversation turned out into an interesting debate around the subject of women talking more than men, and hence, being more capable with oral words (this was my argument and not his, of course). This is a claim that I remember reading somewhere, but could not remember where.

So to prove my point I did some Googling and although I could not find any concrete scientific evidence, it was amusing to see all the different claims available on the subject.

According to an article in Psychology Today, women use about 7,000 words a day, and men use about 2,000. On the other hand, the author of the book Counseling Criminal Justice Offenders, tells us that "Females use an estimated 25,000 words per day and males use an estimated 12,000 words per day." And then, in James Dobson's book Love for a Lifetime, his "research" tells us that God gives a woman 50,000 words a day, while her husband only gets 25,000.

Whatever the case, and even without documented scientific proof, it seems that the general consensus is that women are indeed more communicative than men.

If in doubt, take a look at this video clip of a man speaking to his wife and judge for yourself!

Speaking animal

Did you know that not only humans, but also animals speak in different languages depending on where they happen to live?

The recent Swine Flu scare reminded us all that pigs oink in Mexico, as they do in most of the world. But if the Influenza had started in, for example, Albania, the source of our worries would be happily hunk-hunking away.

Dogs are amazingly multi-lingual.

While you hear them going woof-woof in the USA or the UK, they go guau-guau in Mexico. Catalunian doggies go bup-bup and man's best friend says wang-wang in China.

Slovenian dogs hov-hov, while the Ukranians haf-haf. If you go to Iceland you will hear them go voff, in Indonesia it’s a gong-gong and in Italian a bellisimo bau-bau.

And that leaves me with the annoying gav-gav coming from my neighbour’s yard and which didn’t let me sleep last night.

The little beast’s barking was loud and clearly Greek.

I truly went cuckoo, which, by the way, seems to be the only way a cuckoo goes anywhere in the world.

Is James Bond an alcoholic?

Someone, with obviously not much to do, decided to count every single drink that the famous spy drinks in the entire James Bond books' collection. The result is 317 drinks, meaning one drink every seven pages.

And if you thought that they are all Vodka Martinis, let me tell you that you are wrong. He actually drinks 101 glasses of whiskey (58 bourbons and 38 Scotches to be precise), 38 glasses of Champagne, 37 of Japanese sake, leaving the famous “shaken, not stirred” Martinis at only nineteen.

And this reminds me that I read somewhere that astronomers have recently discovered a great amount of alcohol in our region of the Milky Way. And no, I am not talking about Ireland, but about a giant cloud of methanol that measures almost 470billion kms across! Yes, I know that methanol can poison you, but still, that’s a heck of a lot of alcohol floating about.

So going back to James Bond. Is he, or is he not? Truth is, I don’t know and I really don’t care. As long as they keep casting hunks like Daniel Craig for the movie versions, he can drink the entire Milky Way and I am absolutely fine with it!