The Genesis of Idiocy

Here is a great posting from Elizabeth Royte illustrating how truly people believe there is a sucker born every minute, and how, as directed by the Almighty,  you must take advantage of those suckers:

New charity water on the scene: this time from Israel

Great stuff from the story of stuff project

From the likes of "build it and they will come" comes the manufactured demand for bottled water.  Free market, indeed:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0&feature=player_embedded

It's a wonder that the public, especially that portion of our public with family members serving in the middle east, has not outright condemned the bottled water industry for increasing our dependence on foreign oil in such a frivolous manner.

Underground Rivers - new book

 (Note from Thorn:  I have downloaded this but haven't gotten my teeth into it yet, but it looks interesting enough to pass on the word.)

Richard Heggen, Prof. Emeritus of Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico with a courtesy appointment to OSU's Institute for Water and Watersheds, has put on-line his book, Underground Rivers.

http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html

It's a whole lot more than you think.

CHAPTERS
1  Greek Mythology
2  Greek Philosophers
3  Roman Encyclopedists
4  The Church, the Arabs, and Back to the Church
5  The Concept of Circulation
6  Subterranean Engines
7  Superterranean Metrics
8  Hydrotheology/Theohydrology
9  Hollow Earth Geophysics
10 Underground Rivers in Classic Fiction
11 Boys Club
12 Waters of the Hollow Earth
13 Underground Rivers in Metaphor and Poetry
14 Underground Rivers in the Fine Arts
15 Groundwater Science
16 Karstology
17 Lava Tubes
18 Subterranean Geophysics
19 Dowsing
20 The Biology of Underground Rivers
21 Plying the Waters from Above
22 Constructed Waterways
23 The Dangers
24 The Rio San Buenaventura

When It Comes to Drinking Water, DEQ Confirms: 'Reduce First, then Recycle'

Here is the latest from Oregon DEQ on bottled water versus reusable/refillable bottles.  

(Note from Thorn:  I found this to be somewhat of a "duh" moment but the "controversy" was that it was more resource intensive to manufacture, wash and refill a reusable bottle than to use a single use bottle and recycle it.  In technical parlance, DEQ has performed a life-cycle analysis and found the life-cycle costs of reusable bottles are significantly lower than bottled water bottles.  Folks may think that they can reuse the bottle that bottled water comes in but I caution those persons that there are studies showing that these bottles do start leaching petrochemicals into the water after being washed, frozen, etc.)

If you think it makes more sense to drink tap water in reusable bottles rather than to keep buying bottled water and recycling the containers, you’re absolutely right.

A recent DEQ analysis of drinking water delivery systems confirms that it’s best to reduce or reuse first, then recycle.

The DEQ study compared dozens of scenarios and examined a range of environmental effects across the entire life cycle of single-use, five-gallon reusable and tap water delivery methods.

Among the conclusions:

• Buying and then recycling a typical bottle of water reduces energy consumption by 24 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent over the entire life cycle, compared to buying then throwing way the same water bottle.

• However, consuming the same quantity of water from the tap in a reusable bottle reduces energy consumption by 85 percent and greenhouse gases by 79 percent (compared to buying bottled water and disposing of each bottle).

“The most important message for consumers is: reduce first, then recycle,” says DEQ solid waste policy analyst David Allaway.

“Drinking tap water and recycling single-use bottles are equally effective ways of keeping waste out of landfills and incinerators, but DEQ’s study shows that most effects on the environment from bottled water occur from manufacturing and transportation, not disposal … If you have single-use water bottles, please recycle them. But it’s better to avoid them in the first place."