Ahh, fuck it.

I can't get a proper link.

Try play.com, they ship free to Germany and the box you are looking for is 20,50€.

Any Latin experts know what's the best translation for "Order of the Kings", "Council of Kings" and "Society of the Gods"?

-edit- Oh yeah and 'Manifest Destiny'?

A question for our Russian GOGers:

Russian men get their middle name after their father, but what about the women?

For example Maria Ivanovna has father Ivan, or mother Ivana?

The women too. Maria Ivanovna has father Ivan. The difference is in the last letters (varies slightly for different men (farther)'s names).

Not an US resident but have friends over there; the whole thing is leftover from before the ethylotest (the device used to detect the amount of alcohol in breathable air) was widely used and became reliable.

They used to make you walk in a straight line (in some places it's still done) and spell things backwards to see just how drunk you are. It's still a viable method, though you can't actually figure out the exact quantity of alcohol that person drank and if he is above or below the allowed limit.

How is making someone say the alphabet backwards anywhere near reliable? I can't do that even when I'm sober...

Because you're not actually looking for that, you're paying attention to how they slur their speech.

You also don't do that by itself. If you can walk in a straight line and touch your nose and don't slur when trying to say the alphabet backwards there's a high chance that you're sober compared to someone who can't do those things.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/theres-too-much-water-in-germany-but-that-wont-stop-people-from-sharing-bath-water-1411957801

Question to Germans: are you really that fanatic for saving water, and for what purpose? Are you afraid you might run out of it?

I can understand saving of hot water better (saving energy, unless you heat it all yourself with solar power or something), but cold water too? Is there a drought in Germany?

I'm asking this too because when I visited Germany as a kid, I recall the toilets were a bit odd already back then, using minimum amount of water.

Note: what the article says about turning off the water while brushing teeth or shampooing your hair, that I don't find that odd. I do that too, even though I don't feel any special need to conserve water. But the other things, like re-using bath water etc...

No the average German is not that fanatic about saving water, at least no one among all the people I know is. Of course water saving is always an important topic and honestly in my opinion most of it is based on the fact that you pay for the water by liter used, so saving water means saving money.

So of course most people do things like turning water off while brushing teeth etc, things you and probably most people find normal.
The reason for the article and finding fanatics to tell their tales about reusing bath water, using water from brushing teeths to water the flowers etc are just the typical populistic bullshit. There was a problem in some cities since pipes were build too big so more water should have been used to flush the water through them correctly. And this is why some newspapers and internet portals made up this "German are water saving fanatics" shit, it was even in some German newspapers. And like always, there are some people who do too much to provide "evidance" for that.

((German, just living in Swiss since 1 year ago^^))

Let's say it like this: the idea that the environment needs protection is very strong here. So resources should not get wasted. Maybe there was a shortage at some point in history (maybe after the war - I can only speculate) and this event is still imprinted in the cultural memory. Not only water is used much more efficiently than in other rich countries of the world also plastics and other packaging is collected and partly recycled. If you waste resources excessively in general you are a bad guy here. And germans definitely love this super-efficient LED bulbs or super-efficient fridges or other low energy consuming domestic electronic devices (somehow this doesn't hold for cars though). For food this cultural memory also still exists: just be reminded that during 1914-1918 almost a million germans starved to death and after second world war kids got an orange as a christmas present (my parents told me). So I still find it difficult and despicable to throw away food because I bought too much or because I ordered too much. It's something my parents gave to me.

So maybe it is a cultural inherited behavior coming from a time where you had to be super efficient and not wasting any resources.

Or maybe it is just a general cheapskate-ness or if you want to say so: natural austerity. After all a penny saved is a penny got. Water still costs money. Using a water efficient toilet - sure, this is always the better alternative. Sharing still hot bathing water - also saves time. Using water from the kitchen to also water plants - why not. All this are reasonable measures. Still it's not that extreme. Probably only a minority does it all but a majority will at least does some of these things.

It's good from an ecological point of view - after all the ecological footprint of mankind is an often discussed concept nowadays and I'm proud to say that here public opinion was probably a bit ahead of the curve on this important topic. Whenever I travel abroad I'm surprised how popular beverages in cans still can be - here cans lost in favor of bottles during the 1990s mostly.

On the other hand some things are probably outright stupid. You can do overshoot in everything and drive it to the extremes. Collecting all that plastics when then at most are recycled to 40% or less and the rest is burned, doesn't make a lot of sense. One has to keep the balance. But going back to inefficient toilets? Why? I don't see any advantage in this and cannot understand any potential fascination with outdated and inefficient devices.

Some things I don't understand from your question. Are you talking about cold water in baths? I usually do not bathe in cold water.

And about the potential drought in germany. No there is probably not that much chance for it and we could spent more water if we wanted too (which would still cost more money though). Weather extremes have increased lately, so sometimes there is too much water (coming down). So I think this peculiar behavior is expression of a preference of efficient resource usage driven by the desire to save money as well as a generally imprinted cultural awareness that resources (on a global level) are scarce and one needs to use them as efficient as possible and of course there is also some overshooting beyond what is reasonable going on there. Some things will be stupid.

But there are regions that could use efficient water management technologies. Many regions in the US (Midwestern for example) use more water than is refilled by rain every year and consequently the ground water levels are going down. You don't need to be a prophete to predict severe problems coming up. And then there are even more unfavorable regions on earth. I think these can definitely profit from our knowledge for whatever reason we acquired it. So no going back to inefficient toilets for noone - I hope.

Not that fanatic. I think nearly nobody is reusing bath water. But saving water, even if it causes problems? Yes, we are...

I spent nearly two month in California this year and there is a serious drought and I was always amazed how strange it is to see, that the government is trying to convince the people t save water and what this means. There is always water in the gutter, because someone is watering the lawn in the middle of the day and the sprinkler is aimed at the sidewalk or someone is "cleaning" the driveway with a big hose and and a lot of water instead of just using a broom... For me as a German the amount of water wasted with this simple things was ridiculous - and there is a drought...

Oh, I forgot how fun this thread is.
Regarding drinkable water, you have to realize that today we usually pay water the price it is to get (from open-sky sources, subterranean reserves ...) and not at the price needed to get clean water from salty/unclean water.

Then you have to realize that most water on earth is salty and the biggest drinkable reserve we have is melting away in the "big saltiness". So the natural reserve we have are precious, and most importantly, it doesn't 'regenerate' : a chemical spill on top of a well (or just continuous pollution) just ruin it for the decades to come.

Long story short, water will be one of the most important resource for the end of the century (if you look closer, you can already see people fighting over Kashmir for the control over the sources of the Himalaya). Once most natural sources of clean water would have dried, you will see the price of water going way north.

Thanks for all the answers. Probably it is partly exaggeration in the newspapers, and people just wanting to pay as little as possible for water.

Yeah, but I don't see how saving water on water-rich areas helps the drought areas elsewhere. I know how e.g. the situation in Israel is, I recall in the past they bombed some channel in another (Arabic) country, as they were afraid they might stop the main water supply to Israel. Still, I don't see how e.g. me saving water in Finland helps the poor Israelis.

About bottled water: I can understand it in areas where tapped water is not drinkable. E.g. I think in Thailand it is common that the water the is pumped into the big water containers is simply some unclean water from a nearby lake, at least in the rural areas.

It doesn't help but it doesn't hurt either. I think there is simply no reason to ever go back to inefficient toilet technology (for example) once you have an efficient version of it as long as you don't get obsessive about it. I estimated that about 1% of the average income in germany is for the supply of cold water, so the potential to save money is probably very low. In the end I guess it is just one of these inexplicable eccentricities that sometimes happen.

In other regions though efficient usage of water is a lifesaver.