Actually, to speak French is not a requirement to enter the French Foreign Legion. A lot of the soldiers learn French during their training.

50% losses is much too high. A normal network in a developed country would be around 20%, and that is including all water losses (i.e., undermetering, illegal water use, etc.). Only physical losses represent a real waste of resource and these should not be more than 10-15%.

I do not know the situation in the US, but if you really have 50% physical losses, you are worse than places like Indonesia or India.

And in China ...

I sure hope all the guys than can do that will die before me!

I am quite sure it is possible to predict when the next one will be won, yes. Who asked which piece of rock will cause the fire?

I have never met anyone who couldn't manage it in a few days, but if you think it is too hard, just bring your own utensils, what's the big deal ?

And GP is trolling, in China there are spoons available everywhere you can have soup ...

I will ask my driver tomorrow morning.

Cremation was introduced by the communists and is now prevalent in modern China.

I am not sure whether they cared about preservation. The important part is to be buried whole.

In China, most of the organs for transplantation are harvested on such condemned. It will take time to develop other means of obtaining them (considering the cultural reluctance, I do not think 5 years will be enough).

In traditional Chinese culture, it is important to preserve the body whole for the afterlife. I think the belief is that any deficiency is passed over to the afterlife.

Still, I have to think consciously about it each time because 12 PM is not after 11 PM.

Read about the Great Gatsby Curve : http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/the-great-gatsby-curve/

The same thing happens in India. I sometimes get a little caramel to replace a rupee (2 cents at the current exchange rate).

Do not forget health consequences. I am OK with waiting some more and have time to check that we are not creating the next asbestos ...

Right now I get 30 kbit/s. It is painful even to read Slashdot, and I feel snubbed by the options.

It is on a 3G key and sometimes I get much faster connection, around 1Mbit/s. I am not sure if it is because of a cap or because of the crumbling infrastructure.