Somethings I really wanted to know:

1.What do Chinese people think of India?
2.What do citizens from NATO countries think about the military cooperation between Russia and India?
3.What do Brazilians think of cricket?

In my area of switzerland, the costs of water rised slightly, lately, because they realise people weren't using ENOUGH water, and this was somehow dommageable for the water infrastructures. :-/

So yeah, we're in a totally schyzophrenic "please consume less water but please consume more of it" double-bind.

What is the problem you see with cans, compared to bottles? Cans are recycled at least here, and their recycling is actually quite efficient and a good practice, better than e.g. recycling paper or plastic (source for this claim:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rExEVZlQia4#t=955 (at 15:55))

The personal reason for me to prefer cans to (glass) bottles is that cans weight less, make less noise and don't break as easily. And nowadays I don't even feel like a polluter, as aluminum cans are apparently recycled quite efficiently.

Finnish toilets actually seem something between the "waterless" German toilets, and those odd big bowls of water that American toilets seem to be.

This reminds me of the recent discussion here where people are bitching how the modern EU washing machines seem to use water too sparingly, causing the clothes still to be a bit dirty or leaving detergent residues to the clothes. I've had a bit similar experience, luckily my current washing machine has a button for "use extra water", which I use every damn time I wash clothes.

I got fed up sometime still seeing a bit of foam on my clothes, and also as I read some instructions how you should not put e.g. synthetic fabrics and towels to the machine at the same time, because then the machine will use too little water than would be needed for the towels (the washing machines are apparently so "smart" nowadays that if they detect synthetic fabrics in the machine, they use as little water as possible, which is then not enough for towels which soak up much more water). How about making the damn washing machines use enough water regardless?

This is something that is apparently taught differently here, than in Germany. If you want to conserve water here, you are supposed to take a shower, not use a bathtub. Using the same shower water multiple times is obviously not that feasible.

But if one insists on using a bathtub, then I guess sharing the same water with many people is one repugnant way to try to conserve water. A bit like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maU30o2D6Dk#t=523

I still don't see why water-rich areas should conserve (cold) water. It won't help the less fortunate areas at all. I find it a bit similar thinking as if you'd have to build highly insulated houses with thick triple windows in Thailand, just because such way of building may be a good idea for cold Finnish winters. The Thai houses in general simply don't need to be as energy-efficient as Finnish houses.

Nah, it is not taught differently here, it is also taking a not too long shower saves water compared to bathing. That is why that example is not making much sense except for providing "reasons" for the article.

By the way, one thing I feel many other European countries could take example is the system how the e.g. Finnish cities use the excess heat energy which is a by-product from many power plants and factories. (I think it is called "district heating", "kaukolämpö" in Finnish). My understanding is that in many European countries this heat is not re-used that much, it is just let out to air or let out to the sea, and at the same time e.g. gas is used to heat up the houses and their water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#Finland

I live in Korea at the moment. It's a big BIG issue for Koreans as Korea was essentially Japan's whipping boy for the past few centuries and were colonised for about 70 (until the end of WW2).

The Japanese government essentially denies that most of the rape, forced prostitution and mass murder committed before and during WW2 happened and is a conspiracy to damage Japan's reputation (or sometimes genuinely seem confused why Korea/China etc don't realise why it was necessary). There is a shrine for Japan's war dead which specifically includes all those convicted of war crimes. Japanese ministers continue to visit it and pay respects. The Chinese and Koreans take it as a personal insult each and every time.

Essentially imagine if Germany denied the holocaust, denied it had started WW2, denied the cultural and literal genocide of several peoples and instead claimed it was protecting Europe from Muslim imperialism (Apparently when Japan was invading South-East Asia, they were helping Asia to fight off Western Imperialism).
Then on top of that, the German prime minister and other senior ministers regularly visit shrines commemorating all the dead Germans (including Hitler, the SS and all the other war criminals).

Every few years, the Japanese government releases another education book that further plays down it's role in history. Though, to be fair, the Korean government also tries to do the same thing (the Korean government treated it's people as badly as the Japanese did after independence). And so do the Chinese.
Additionally, I've heard that Japanese compulsory education ends before Japanese imperialism started, and those who do choose to continue with history (a minority), get the heavily airbrushed version.

As an American, I can attest to this. I am appalled by how badly we waste water. We have rivers that run completely dry hundreds of miles before they used to and people are out watering their lawns.

Yay for Germans! I had no idea you guys were conservationists. I hope it starts rubbing off over here.

Yes I agree. It doesn't help them much. In this case I guess it is just a cultural preference. We prefer to save water although we don't have to. It's just a fun activity that gives satisfaction... It seems there is no better explanation.

Btw. just now it's raining here and I'm drinking some tap water since the quality is so good and the taste is reasonably good. I wish we would have a bit more sunshine more often. All that rain can become a bit depressing sometimes.

But compared to dry regions of the earth my little inconveniences are very little indeed.

(My washing machine is very energy and water efficient (AA on both) and I never had problems with soap residues on the clothings. I also wash towels and synthetics separately.)

Even cold water cannot be taken for granted. Refining river water to clean drinking water still requires energy and other resources, so saving cold water is still important. If we were just pumping river- or rain water as it is now it wouldn't be worth the fuss. Germany (and most of Europe) also doesn't use fluorides or chlorides (except for public baths) so the water has to be refined more.

The economically preferred way in a developed country like the US would be to put a reasonable price on the consumption of water so that in the long run the usage and regeneration of water is balanced. That should give automatically a lot of incentive to use water efficiently and intelligently only for the most important issues. To me it seems like a lack of long-term thinking. So if someone is still watering the lawn, water is still to cheap. Of course not everyone can pay a lot more, so there must be a kind of a lower limit on the volume which stays cheap and only if you use more water it gets expensive. But I think by putting taxes on resource consumption you can change peoples behaviors a lot. Sustainability should be the goal.

I have a question for the globe, but I don't know how to ask it without sounding like an idiot.

What are common pick-up lines in your country? Or are they really not any different from anywhere else? The reason I ask is that I still flirt with my girlfriend every now and again and she loves pick-up line humor.

A friend's father is engineer and head of a company specialized in planning, building and maintaining water- and sewage infrastructure in city/town scope. A few years ago when I was doing some software developement for him he confirmed that the excessive saving of water is creating problems and those grow by the year.

The first problem is that when not enough drinking water is used, the water literally rots in the pipes - it's not sterile after all. Yes pipes too big for today's demands can be part of the problem, but exchanging a whole city's infrastructure is far more costly (and inconvenient) that just using enough water to keep it flowing fast enough.

The next, and even worse, problem arises with the drainage. Due to the water saving, the drainage pipes are becoming clogged by the none-water stuff. So basically the "super efficient toilet technology" leads to our shit just sitting there and rotting in the pipes instead of getting flushed away. People should flush their toilet 2 or 3 times to generate sufficient "flushing power" - defeating the purpose of the water saving technology.

So what happens is, the pipes get all clogged and stinky, germs multiply and expensive technology and chemistry is used (i.e by said engineer) to clean the pipes and sewers. This of course is done (among other thing) by pumping huge amounts of water through them. And this in turn adds to the cost of drinking water and sewage.

He always says: "In our region water needs to circulate for the system to keep working." But the EU wants to regulate shower heads so all of them are water saving in the future.

Zombies anyone? "Must....Saaaave...."

I buy and drink it allll the time when I'm in Spain. Sure it's not as good as the home made stuff but hot damn I like it.

Well before I talked to that engineer/friend's father I totally was into "saving water is important" since I care a lot about environmental issues. It's kind of said that these things often turn into mindless dogmas that are not questioned anymore. Like "Biological food is good" - a statement that is not wrong per se, but can lead to bad consquences like South American countries using their fields for Bio food for the western world (going there by plane haha...) and cutting down the rainforest to make space for growing their own food.