Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 49527
Berkeley CSUA MOTD
 
WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ
http://csua.com/feed/
2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

2008/3/21-24 [Reference/History/WW2/Germany, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:49527 Activity:nil
3/21    I had no idea that German toilets were so odd, any comments?
        http://www.asecular.com/~scott/misc/toilet.htm
        http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000212.html
        \_ Heil German John! Can you explain to us, John?
2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

You may also be interested in these entries...
2009/8/17-9/1 [Reference/History/WW2/Germany] UID:53272 Activity:nil
8/14    Entertaining Sand Animation. Story of Germans conquering Ukraine in WW2.
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
        \_ I just watched The Great Raid, it was good; surprisingly.
	...
2012/7/21-9/24 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/China] UID:54440 Activity:nil
7/21    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cold_War_pilot_defections
        This week's food for thought, brought to you by People's
        Republic of Berkeley: Did you know that many US pilots defected to
        communist Cuba?  South Korea pilots defected to communist
        North Korea? Iran<->Iraq pilots defected to each other?
        W Germany pilots defected to E Germany? Taiwan/ROC pilots
	...
2012/5/16-7/20 [Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:54390 Activity:nil
5/16    Can anyone tell me what Greece is hoping for by rejecting austerity?
        From here it seems like the austerity is a pretty generous attempt
        to keep Greece from imploding entirely.   Are they hoping the
        Germans will put them on eternal state welfare, or what?
        Also, why would an outright default mean they must leave the Euro?
        Is it just that they won't be able to pay basic gvmt services
	...
2012/6/23-7/20 [Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:54421 Activity:nil
6/23    Werher von Braun, Nazi, SS, overseer of Dora slave factory,
        is an American hero because of his contribution to
        Saturn V. What is wrong with America?
        \_ Is this worse or better than Gerald Ford pardoning
           Nixon for FuckYouAmericaGate?
        \_ "Hero" is a strong word. "Useful" would have been a
	...
2011/2/16-4/20 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:54041 Activity:nil
2/16    "Iraqi: I'm proud my WMD lies led to war in Iraq"
        http://www.csua.org/u/sl0 (news.yahoo.com)
        \_ Duh.  the best thing that could ever happen to a country is
           the US declaring war on it.  cf: japan, germany, and now iraq.
           the US winning a war with it.  cf: japan, germany, and now iraq.
	...
2010/1/19-29 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Others] UID:53639 Activity:nil
1/19    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100118/ap_on_re_us/us_us_haiti_gates
        "(US ambassador to haiti) Merten ... described downtown Port-au-
        Prince, the capital city, as resembling "Tokyo at the end of the
        Second World War."
        What kind of stupid remark is that!?  He could have said London or
        Paris or any other city on the Allies side.  "Hey Haitians, your place
	...
2009/9/14-21 [Politics/Domestic/Immigration, Politics/Domestic/SocialSecurity] UID:53361 Activity:nil
9/14    Does anyone have the controversial book Bell Curve? I know
        it has the political incorrect [and perhaps flawed] data that
        shows certain race have higher IQ than other race and I'm
        wondering how smart Russians are relative to white Americans
        and East Orientals. I can't seem to Google for this information.
        The only thing I got is the following:
	...
2009/8/26-9/9 [Politics/Foreign, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:53303 Activity:nil
8/26    Micro$oft is racist!!!
        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_microsoft_poland_picture
        Seriously, is it any different from replacing the black actor with a
        white actor and then re-taking a real photo to suit a foreign market?
        Would it cause the same outcry if, say, M$ Photoshop'ed ... I mean
        photo-edited ... the Asian man and the white woman with two blacks for
	...
Cache (3788 bytes)
www.asecular.com/~scott/misc/toilet.htm
Words: An online journal German Toilets Whenever folks who have lived or traveled in Germany gather for a beer, sooner or later one subject is sure to rear its ugly head: what is the deal with those toilets? Other European toilets - well, the ones that aren't merely holes in the floor - work much like their North American cousins. They are shaped a little differently, but the basic principle is the same: the excrement either lands directly in the water or it slides down a steep slope into the water, before being flushed away. The excrement lands on a bone-dry horizontal shelf, mere inches beneath one's posterior. Repeated flushings are required to slide the ordure off the shelf into a small water-filled hole, from which it hopefully disappears. German toilet I do not understand the purpose of this toilet. It does not save water - you must flush it eight or ten times to remove every last scrape and smear. The only conceivable explanation is that Germans love to inspect their stool, so the German toilet of necessity features a built-in stool inspection shelf. I wouldn't be surprised if the more expensive models include a digital scale: "Mein Gott, zwei kilogram!" Further research has revealed that the German toilet is in fact designed to facilitate stool examination. This is a wise, healthy practice, argue Germans, a person's best defence against intestinal disease, water-borne parasites or worm-riddled, undercooked pork sausage. While this made perfectly good sense around 1900, thanks to improvements in public health the whole shelf business should have become obsolete shortly after World War II. For the wave to reach one's bottom, one would need to eject a hefty pellet at tremendous velocity. We've had innumerable bad experiences with German toilets. In Berlin, we lived on an upper floor and the water pressure was too weak to push a healthy-sized log off the shelf. After a few minutes' fruitless flushing you'd be forced to grab a wad of toilet paper and give the horrid thing an encouraging nudge. Then followed a lengthy bout of brushing and cleaning to remove the skid marks from the porcelain. At the other extreme, in Munich we lived in a basement suite where the water pressure was too high. Worse, the shelf was actually slightly concave, forming a shallow bowl. The first time I flushed the toilet the water came rushing through so forcefully that a small chunk of poo launched off the lip and shot out over the floor. I swore you could feel a kick as the turd ricoched off the underside. The German toilet's shortcomings are not limited exclusively to Number Twos. It is almost impossible for males to urinate while standing without soaking the bathroom. There is a technique, but is tricky and requires a certain degree of penile agility: bestride the toilet and direct the stream vertically down into the hole at the front of the shelf. If you are sufficiently flexible and accurate, it's relatively clean, though it makes one hell of a noise. The alternative, of course, is to pee sitting down - the dreaded Sitzpinkel. Herein lies the source of much gender conflict, for German women have become increasingly militant in their efforts to encourage or enforce the Sitzpinkel Rule. It's not uncommon to see little stickers on the underside of toilet lids, reminders to less civilized males that they really need to embrace their feminine side and sit the hell down. An American friend was once at a party where, on his way to the bathroom, he was accosted by the hostess who demanded loudly in front of the other guests that he not pee standing up. The male counter-reaction has been predictably lame, only a few sad jokes here and there. Me, I've made promises, I've tried to be good, but somehow the instinct not to Sitzpinkel runs very deep.
Cache (8192 bytes)
www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000212.html
Poland Dispatch: New Year's Eve In The Village From New York, a weblog of original humor by Brian Sack. Subject to all the flexible quality standards of internet self-publishing. jpg Next to the infamous Squat-hole toilets of Asia and southern France, the German Poo-Shelf Toilet is undoubtedly one of the least pleasant methods of waste removal - assuming you're like most folks and don't feel the need to get to know your waste. It finds itself here in western Poland because this region was once part of Germany until the Germans got all riled up and tried to take over the world. They're better now, but the legacy of their doody-tech remains. The Poo-Shelf comes from a period in German history when Germans were less interested in world domination and apparently more interested in spending quality time with their feces. That, or they were prone to accidentally eating their wedding rings and needed a toilet that allowed them to conveniently rummage through their dung before dispatching it to the abyss. Those must have been fascinating times and I'm quite glad I wasn't born in them. Perhaps they're quite rare and I was simply lucky to stumble upon such a specimen. All I know is that upon encountering the German Poo-Shelf Toilet, one is forced to solemnly contemplate the reason such a horrible mechanism exists, and what demon designed such a thing. Rather than whisking your waste away, the GPST simply lets it sit there, mere centimeters from your rump, so that you might think about the brief time you had together. When you're done reminiscing - or when the odor of a pile of poop begins to negatively affect the ambiance of your bathroom - you simply pull up on the flushing mechanism to send your creation on to the Great Beyond. However, if the flushing mechanism doesn't work - well, you're on your own with a shelf full of poo and a toilet designed so as to render the plunger useless. It should also be noted that any gentleman who chooses to stand up and use the German Poo-Shelf Toilet for the purpose of bladder-emptying can be expected to enjoy as much splash-back as one might get from say, peeing on a coffee table. The toilet, in all aspects aside from cigarette butt and chewing gum disposal, is utterly useless. Those who believe in intelligent life in outer space often say that any culture advanced enough to achieve space travel would probably not make themselves known to us until we too have reached a certain level of civilization. I take that to mean the elimination of war, and every German Poo Shelf toilet currently in existence. Although stopping warfare is a tall order at the moment, I encourage every able-bodied soul to grab a sledgehammer, get to Germany, and start swinging. cgi/202 It appears that the Banterist has been doing some traveling: Next to the infamous Squat-hole toilets of Asia and southern France, the German Poo-Shelf Toilet is undoubtedly one of the least pleasant methods of waste removal - assuming you're... I haven't quite gone through this site yet, but one line jumped out at me as pretty funny: The Poo-Shelf comes from a period in German history when Germans were less interested in world domination and apparently more interested in spending quality ti... HOW TO MAKE FABULOUS NON-SEQUITURS LIKE A REAL MSM JOURNALIST WHERE ARE THE HUMAN SHIELDS WHEN YOU NEED THEM? THE GERMAN POO-SHELF TOILET, THE ANTI-BIDET HOW TO HAVE FUN IN CHINA --------... Firstly, this update comes from a whiny pommish tourist, currently living in Australia: Thanks for making me laugh this morning, your toilet piece had me in stiches. January 4, 2005 11:25 AM I thought the GPST was a purely germanic treat until I encountered it all across East Central Europe. After a number of encounters I came to calling it simply the "poop n view." I'm still trying to figure out a shorter name for the "don't touch that handle or a stream of icy cold water will shoot straight at your bung hole; use the OTHER handle" toilet I've found in Bosnia and Turkey. January 4, 2005 1:16 PM The German Poo Shelf Toilet isn't a Polish anomaly. My Dutch ex-girlfriend had one in her house in Dordrecht, Holland, and if anything you're understating how incredibly DISGUSTING those things are. You forgot, for instance, to mention the *sound* that one's fecal waste makes as it hits the shelf. That horrible *plopping sound,* amplified and altered by the shape and consistency of the bowl to give what should have been a sodden *plop* the faintest hint of a metallic *tung* sound. January 4, 2005 10:48 PM The worst part is when -- and not to get too graphic here -- you have a lot you want to ... If you're dealing with a Poo Shelf featuring less-than-robust water pressure, you end up with an unmovable mass, one that simply sits on the shelf, silently mocking you. January 13, 2005 2:46 AM I sent a link describing the poop-shelf technology to a friend in Berlin last year, inquiring as to the possible reason for this phenomenon. His reply: --- The question of the toilet is VERY EASY to anwer. As practically every German is health-insured, we tend to go to the doctor (as recommended) at least every two years for a throrough (and practcally cost-free) check-up. For that, you will have to bring some of your, er, feces in a specialized container the doctor will give you. So how do you get at your, er, sausage if it is swimming in water? So a light ochre means liver trouble of some kind and so forth. January 23, 2005 5:49 AM I have not seen these but have seen the squat holes in korea... I can tell you though that this reminds me of leaving someone an "upper-decker". usually done to people you don't like, you drop your leavings in the tank of the toilet.. that way the place stinks for days before someone figures it out. January 28, 2005 9:39 AM Typical "German" toilets are called "Hochspler" ("high flush") while their international counterparts are named "Tiefspler" ("low flush"). So when you build a house here in Germany, you normally have the choice for one of these two types. March 8, 2005 7:55 PM Ok, as a German living in the United States I have had discussions about this topic before. I think our German toilets are masterpices of engineering design in terms of health and safety! I find it difficult to use public toilets, because of my fear of other people's leftovers splashing agains my butthole. Putting ridiculous amounts of toiletpaper down to avoid the splash of death usually results in a clogged toiled, which, for a true German, is too unorderly to leave behind. The only remedy is dilution by flushing the toilet 5 times before you use it, which, again, goes against my German nature because it wastes water and destroys the World in general. March 23, 2005 5:01 PM This picture up there looks like an old East-German Toilet, specially because of its brown color. I had one like that till 2002 and those things are awesome. No doubt I'm in the US right now and had this discussion before, too. I think its nice because you can see what you have done and no butthole splashes which are always cold... April 19, 2005 6:24 PM I have one of these babies at home, and i live in West Germany. Since on the subject of bathrooms, what about carpeted bathrooms in the US and the UK? And that does not have to do with those toilets being "American", but simply with the type of toilet, as someone called it correctly earlier: "Tiefspueler". If I come across one of those in Germany I feel exactly the same. August 21, 2005 5:02 PM After this cross-cultural back-and-forth I, as an American who lived briefly in Germany, must offer my two cents. No one has mentioned the most hazardous of pitfalls the GPST represent (and oddly enough, "poop-shelf" is exactly what we had dubbed it)... Any true American uses copious wads of toilet paper (the stuff does grow on trees after all) to assure full cleanliness, much in the same way we became objects of ridicule for showering daily. As you can imagine, with a steaming pile a mere 4 inches (10 cm) from your buttocks, there isn't a lot of room to stack, despite every fiber of your being telling you to cover that reeking mess up. One is left with the choice of stacking, and then r...