Showing Our Butts for Swain

in , /by

Hello, people of the ADD age? HELLO! What does it take to get everyone to sit up and pay attention to the plight of our oceans and waterways? How about a guy swimming 1000 miles in the less-than-pristine Atlantic, yes ONE THOUSAND MILES- from Massachusetts to Washington DC, through all the rubbish, waste, sewage and toxic godknowswhat that’s now there?

Hello? Are you listening?!? If you haven’t yet heard of Christopher Swain, here are three things you should know.

1. Christopher Swain has begun a 1000+ mile swim from Marblehead, Massachusetts to Washington, DC to raise awareness of the challenges facing the ocean while helping students in over 2,000 classrooms launch projects designed to improve the health of our waterways and our world.

2. Dirty for Swain is an awareness campaign for Swain’s awareness campaign (an initiative supported by Timberland Earthkeepers). It includes a funny video (embedded below) with some lowbrow potty humor demonstrating how some are supporting the cause by “Getting Dirty for Swain”. The website throws down the challenge, “What will YOU do for Swain?”

3. At Thirsty in Suburbia, we’re ALL IN in for lowbrow potty humor, clean oceans and challenges, so we’re “showing our butts” for Swain. That is, we’re taking on this challenge by wearing jewelry made of cigarette butts in recognition of the millions of them that are discarded and leeching chemicals on our beaches and in our oceans and waterways. (We imagine Swain will encounter many thousands of butts during his journey!)

Below, Thirsty In Suburbia interns Virginia Leonard and Martha Leonard are SHOWING THEIR BUTTS FOR SWAIN. (They both report that this smelly exercise did indeed get their attention–Good job, Giant Ant Media–you are decisively speaking the language of our youth!)

Like Yoga, But On a Floating Stick

in , /by

Looking for something unique and entertaining for today’s holiday family fun-day? We’re not convinced that this will be the newest hot trend in water sports, but it does look like fun. Gather up the kids, grab some fat bamboo poles and head out to the lake.

 From Chinatoday, some photos of odd-sports enthusiasts performing “bamboo balance.”

For those who like the concept but seek more competitive thrills, how about “Bamboo Boat Racing, ” which involves racing a “boat” that’s a single cane of bamboo with a thin bamboo oar.

Via Ananova,

Villagers from Chishui, near Zuiyi city, came up with the idea, reports News Express. They make the boats out of locally grown bamboo and hold races on the Pinzhou River.

“Participants can sit or stand on the piece of bamboo, and with a thin bamboo oar, they race and compete at other tasks,” explained one villager.

I Hope They’ve Been Chlorinating

in , /by

It’s Memorial Day weekend! That means Americans are heading en masse to the pool. Hopefully, many of that masse will take this article from cnn.com to heart, and resist the temptation to keep the party rolling non-stop by peeing in the pool.

Although urine in the water probably will not cause swimmers to go to the emergency room, it causes “more of a respiratory, ocular irritation: the red puffy eyes or a cough, an itchy throat,” said Michele Hlavsa, an epidemiologist in the division of parasitic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” A big health message is not to urinate or pee in the water.”

And it happens far more frequently than water-lovers would like to think. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted in April and May, 17 percent admitted relieving themselves in a swimming pool. Even the Olympics’ most decorated swimmer, Michael Phelps, confessed to urinating in the water to TV host Jimmy Kimmel in a 2008 interview.

And if that’s not enough to put a damper on this weekend’s pool party fun, the survey

found that 11 percent of the surveyed adults said they have swum with a runny nose, 7 percent with an exposed rash or cut and 1 percent when ill with diarrhea. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Suddenly, a 3.1% margin of error seems HUGE! But never mind, I’m being a party pooper, aren’t I? (pun score!) Dive in anyway, and here’s a soundtrack for some summer fun: “I Peed in the Pool,” a bad-taste parody of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” (You can buy the mp3 here if you’re so inspired!)

Lyrics include: I peed in the pool and I liked it, It saved me a trip to the toilet
I peed in the pool ‘stead of waiting, I hope they’ve been chlorinating

Behind the Shower Curtain: Steamy Secrets!

in , /by

“BEHIND THE SHOWER CURTAIN” SURVEY: America’s Steamy Secrets Reveal What Men and Women Really Think About in the Shower

Who could resist that headline, Water Pik? We were roped right into this promising press release, purporting to take “a peek at what really goes on behind the bathroom’s closed doors.”  Water Pik, Inc., released the findings of a survey that asked 1,000 Americans how they spend their time in the bathroom, including some not-at-all-surprising differences in male and female shower behavior.

SURVEY SAYS…..
Women
Men
Think about “to do” lists in shower
64%
48%
Average minutes in shower
14
12
Admit to showering with another adult for “intimacy”
55%
66%

Now, I could have told you this without asking 1000 people, but “Women use shower time to contemplate chores, problems and weight. Men spend their shower time thinking about work, sex and day dreams.” So, women spend about 2 minutes longer in the shower, but that’s just because we’re reviewing our long, arduous list of chores! (I’m not sure how men cover sex and work in a brisk 12 minutes!)

Men and women did agree that low water pressure is the No. 1 bathroom pet peeve, and also agreed that they would rather pay bills than clean the shower.

More fabulous shower facts:

25%
 People who sing in the shower
89%
 Take more showers than baths
50% Moms
28% Dads
 Use the shower as a time to escape
53% Moms
27% Dads
 Rush out of shower to take care of their family
60%
 Turn off water while brushing teeth
46%
 Reduce shower time to save water

I for one applaud Water Pik for doing some research that matters! This will allow them to develop useful products to enhance our shower experience. Like, how about a waterproof shower pen tablet, so we gals could jot down all those chores and “to do” lists?

And, now that you know that 25% of us are using the shower spray as a pseudo-microphone, would it be a huge leap to have it function as a real, working mic? That way the entire family could enjoy our wet rendition of “Moon River!”

California’s Big Squirt: Fertile Farmlands and Tourist Meccas!

in , , /by

An out-of-the-box engineering idea from the October, 1951 issue of Modern Mechanix, via blog.modernmechanix.com,

CALIFORNIA’S BIG SQUIRT

THE parched deserts of Southern California need water to transform their barren soil into fertile farmlands and tourist Meccas such as those existing elsewhere in the state. So far the problem has remained unsolved. But Sidney Cornell, a Los Angeles construction engineer, thinks he has a solution. He wants to construct a series of geyser-like power plants one mile apart to shoot water from the mouth of one into the funnel of the next, as depicted here by MI artist Frank Tinsley. The water would arc over hilly sections, have a flat trajectory over plains. Its velocity would approach 400 mph. These stations— 400 in all—would cost about $300,000 each.

I can’t imagine what I can add to that, except to say that Sidney Cornell has certainly never used a garden hose in the wind!

Ingenious Drain Hack: You’ll Thank Me Someday

in , /by

Thanks for the tip, Angela & Diane, I just wish I’d known of this trick years ago before losing untold numbers of earrings, coins and other stuff down the drain. I fear, though, that in my house this operation might bring up some nasty and undesirable matter along with the object being retrieved!

sd

Green to the End: To the Afterlife via Resomation

in /by
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Resomation remains: ashes to ashes, dust to dust

We’re all going to die eventually, and after all our “green” efforts while living, wouldn’t it suck if our last earthy impact was less than environmentally friendly?

Enter “Resomation,” the “environmentally kinder alternative to burial and cremation.” And guess what, it’s a water-based process, so we can float out instead of being burnt out or covered up!

According to the website of the Scotland-based company, “instead of fire, Resomation uses a water and alkali based method to advance the natural process of decomposition. The Resomation process takes no longer than cremation and the funeral ceremony will be the same.” The term Resomation is derived from ‘Resoma’ which is Greek for  “return of the human body.”

Illustration via spluch.blogspot.com

Illustration via spluch.blogspot.com

Among the environmental benefits are reduced energy usage, no mercury contamination and a process that’s an acceleration of natural decomposition. (It seems that mercury enters the cremation cycle through silver amalgam dental fillings. Who knew!)

And get this: a low carbon footprint! Your final passage will occur with fewer CO2 emissions than if you were cremated. Alas, like many of these “green” solutions, there is a tradeoff as I would imagine you’ll march out of this life with a bigger water footprint!

Via ecogeek, the process works something like this:

Within a tank called a resomator, the body is immersed in a 1:21 solution of potash lye and water. Gas-powered steam generators build up pressure within the tank as the temperature rises up to around 170 degrees Celsius. Thanks to the pressure (and despite what the general news media would have you think) there is no boiling, only a chemical reaction that completely liquefies everything but the bone ash in our bodies. When the tank is opened, only the bone ash and any implants or prosthetics the person had remain.

Ecogeek interviewed the company founder, Sandy Sullivan, and got the actual numbers:

…an average cycle in this tank of three hours will consume around 90 kWh, while a cremation will consume 250 kWh. According to Mr Sullivan, the total carbon footprint of a resomation is 18 times less than that of a cremation.

"Peace - Burial at sea" Joseph Mallord William Turner (1842)

This seems like a great idea to me, but frankly, more detail than I’d like. (I didn’t need to see a schematic drawing of a human chemical cooker.) My notions of passing on are more conceptual and romantic… like a burial at sea. Wouldn’t that be even greener? (We’d follow EPA rules that call for “flowers and wreaths consisting of materials that are readily decomposable in the marine environment.”)

It’s Shit You Drink: Back-Alley Indian Water Bottlers

in /by

We’re generally trusting souls over here in our U.S. ivory tower but elsewhere in the world, trust not when it comes to  your drinking water supply.

In the memorably titled story “It’s Shit You Drink in Bottled Water,” The Times of India Amedabad reports on widespread scamming there in the packaged water business with nauseating details that have us squirming here in suburbia. (This is nothing new in India.)

Laws governing packaged water from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) are stringent and include requirements that every bottle cap be wrapped with a coloured plastic seal with batch number and date of manufacture. But law does not equal compliance and dozens of back-alley bottlers fake the ISI marks and seals on dirty bottles filled under filthy conditions.

(Hmmm. That Plywood Water seems a little less amusing.)

If that seems bad, you could have a look at something badder, like this photo by Engineers without Borders from Uganda, contrasting bottled water against a sample of the local drinking supply.

Before we get carried away bellyaching about the evils of bottled water, it’s helpful to have a look at this bagged drinking water from Ghana. I suppose this is slightly more enviro-friendly than bottles! But I highly doubt that those in Uganda lucky enough to have access to it are congratulating themselves on how green they are.

We Ivory Tower dwellers have much to be grateful for as we “celebrate” Drinking Water Week. Maybe now would be a good time for us count our blessings and cut a check to our favorite water charity.)


Bottled Water + Solar Power = Scare in the Air

in , /by

Nervous flyer? Then here’s another thing to worry about when you’re airborne: Is dangerous bottled water perched up in the cockpit, ready to ignite?

“Doomsday Jim,” this blog’s eyes and ears in OZ, tips us to this story. From the Courier Mail Queensland,

A bottle of water caused a fire in the cockpit of a Airbus A320 passenger aircraft as it was about to land at a Queensland airport.

According to an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report, the pilots were lining up on the runway when they smelled smoke last month.

It was coming from the cover of a log carried in the cockpit to record inflight defects in mechanical, navigation, electrical, hydraulic and radio equipment.

The incident was reported to the bureau, which investigated and concluded a water bottle was to blame.

“The sun was shining through a water bottle at the side of the cockpit,” the ATSB report said.

“The bottle was focusing the sunlight like a magnifying glass on the cover of the cabinet defect log, which began burning.”

One reason I love Australian news media is their mastery of the subtle-but-clever news story punch line. And in this story, it’s a winner!

The bureau did not say whether the water in the bottle was used to douse the fire.

Water Crisis Leaves an Indelible Impression

in , /by

It’s one thing to say you’re touched and moved by the world water crisis, but it’s a whole different level to be moved enough to put it in ink. On your arm. Permanently. JesseFulton on Flickr explains why he got this incredible indelible tat:

The short story behind the tattoo: a few years ago, I went through a period of being very unhappy and feeling sorry for myself. During this time, I came across a photograph of a woman in Africa drinking water from what was essentially a puddle of mud because she had no access to clean, drinkable water. As I stared at that image, I realized just how lucky I was and how good my life actually is.

That photograph has stuck in my head ever since and the tattoo is a reminder to be grateful for everything I have and to not take anything for granted.

(I later found out that the photo is actually the cover for the book “Design for the Other 90%” and the woman is using a product called the Life Straw.

You know, tattoos are for life. And the sad thing is, even if Jesse is young today I’ll bet that many years from now…even long after we’re all gone… there will still be a need for “The Life Straw” and this tattoo will still be appropriate…which makes this both a depressing and beautiful statement.