Somehow, fear as a motivator has fallen out of favor. Back in the day, though, scaring the tar out of kids was a perfectly acceptable method for keeping them in check. This 70s-era water safety clip from the UK was designed to educate by terror, with a creepy grim-reaper type character lurking in the waterways, ready to “trap showoffs and fools.” I’ll bet this put a damper on waterside playtime for the young Brits of the time!”
Go ahead and lose yourself in the hysterical site translationparty.com, which translates your English phrase to Japanese, back to English, to Japanese, to English ad infinitum. This is one of those internet oddities that will have you missing deadlines and falling behind. Following, just a few of my time-intensive efforts:
Grass is dumb, so don’t waste too much water on it—it’s too stupid to notice! There’s an oddly malevolent outcome in this offbeat spot from the creative-minded conservationists at Denver Water.
Water Factory by Giuseppe Marcesa
Who places the greatest faith in the ultimate power of science? All the non-scientists, of course! This is why many people don’t worry too much about climate change, water scarcity, fossil fuels, or whatever. Because deep down, we’re SURE that SCIENCE will eventually crack the code with a huge discovery that will fix everything. (Just a matter of money and desperation, correct?)
The right brainers of the world might understand this, but the science-ignorant populace (myself included) have a nagging stupid question: Why can’t we just manufacture some water, cooking up a new mashup of hydrogen and oxygen that will spill forth plentiful bounty from the advanced process water factory?
For the answer, we turn to Why can’t we manufacture water? at howstuffworks.com.
Water is made of two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen atom. This seems like pretty basic chemistry, so why don’t we just smash them together and solve the world’s water ills? Theoretically, this is possible, but it would be an extremely dangerous process, too.
To create water, oxygen and hydrogen atoms must be present. Mixing them together doesn’t help; you’re still left with just separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The orbits of each atom’s electrons must become linked, and to do that we must have a sudden burst of energy to get these shy things to hook up.
Since hydrogen is extremely flammable and oxygen supports combustion, it wouldn’t take much to create this force. Pretty much all we need is a spark — not even a flame — and boom! We’ve got water. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms’ electrons’ orbits have been conjoined.
But we also have an explosion and — if our experiment was big enough, a deadly one. The ill-fated blimp, the Hindenburg, was filled with hydrogen to keep it afloat. As it approached New Jersey on May 6, 1937, to land after a trans-Atlantic voyage, static electricity (or an act of sabotage, according to some) caused the hydrogen to spark. When mixed with the ambient oxygen in the air, the hydrogen exploded, enveloping the Hindenburg in a ball of fire that completely destroyed the ship within half a minute.
There was, however, also a lot of water created by this explosion.
STOP RIGHT HERE A MOMENT. Naive question: precision-minded scientists, haven’t you assured us that there is the same amount of water on earth today as there was when the earth was formed? Did the Hindenburg crash, in fact, “create” water? Annnyyywaaayyy….
To create enough drinking water to sustain the global population, a very dangerous and incredibly large-scale process would be required. Still, over a century ago the thought of an internal combustion engine — with its controlled repeated explosions — seemed dangerously mad. And as water becomes scarcer, the process of joining hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms may become more attractive than it is currently. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention.
Why, it’s not such a repulsive idea really! After all, the toilet and shower drain to the exact same place, and if you’re healthy your urine is sterile. Remember that just one less flush per day could save you in excess of 1,000 gallons of water per year!
Environmental group SOS Mata Atlântica is advancing the idea among Brazilians with a charming PeeSA spot that features people big and small, young and old, human, alien and animal, doing their business while doing their personal hygiene routine. Cute! (But please, don’t follow this up with a yellow-mellow, brown-down public service campaign!)
Now that we’re soooo bored with the all clever branding and unusual bottles, leave it to Japanese toy company Bandai to freshen bottled water consumption with their new “magic pet” micro-toys, little sea creature gizmos that swirl and swim about inside your bottled water, producing several minutes of pure entertainment. Choose the Jellyfish, Squid or Octopus. And importantly, be sure to sip rather than gulp lest you choke on your $6 investment!
Following, some screen shots from their website, but if you visit the site yourself, be sure to catch the mesmerizing movie! (As far as I can tell, these are available only in Japan.)
Imagine that your city dump is located at the bottom of a river, unseen below the surface… and that same river is the main source for your community’s drinking water. Most people would be shocked to realize how common this scenario actually is.
We need a wake up call, and the people of the Clean River Project in Lowell, Massachusetts answered the call with their July 25th “scavenger hunt” cleanup on the Merrimack River. The competition challenged people to see how much “stuff” they could collect from the river with scoring on a points-based system. (There were prizes for both “small boat” and “large boat” categories.)
Competitors dove in and hauled up cars and car parts, engines, a dishwasher, a couch, a tar and gravel roof (ugh!) and many other nasty polluting items from the river that supplies drinking water to Lowell, Lawrence and Methuen (home of the Methuen bottle tree, which was NOT pulled out of the river!)
After the cleanup, the debris was recycled or properly disposed of. I believe I would have preferred that all of it stayed there for a bit, the entire mountain of rusting, smelly, soggy crap, along with some signage explaining where this mess had been…and where it was headed. That’s my idea of compelling public education.
Congratulations to the hardy competitors! Video (with front-end advertising) and screenshots from necn.com.
If water is life, then there’s hopefully still a little left in this sad, abandoned building. From englishrussia.com, a tour of a once-proud structure heaving downward into a pool of natural forces on the way up.
Amazing photos of water running through this abandoned house
It looks like a regular abandoned house standing in the downtown of Rostov-on-Don city, but if to inspect it closer one can see mini-waterfalls and lakes all through this house. After many years staying abandoned water sources from underground found their way up and formed this naturally formed water park. Streams are in constant movement and the water is always clean.
The orginal post also contains this fascinating memoir contributed by a commenter:
This is like 10 minutes from my home and i used to climb/play/swim there when i was little…brings lots of fun memories, there were also thick ropes hanging from the supports of roof (as there was no roof to speak of) so you could swing back and forth and drop into water.
The water came from mineral spring so it very clean and cold.
BTW this group of buildings (there are like a whole isle of them) is in the port on the river. There are also abandoned port/factory buildings nearby (many, many of them) but these on the pictures don’t seem to be factory related.
It was a nice place to go exploring with my friends when i was a kid just to get away from the city noise. It was beyond unsafe to downright scary because of all the unstable bricks. I’m amazed it is still standing, guess no one cares.
We’re workin’ hard to educate the general public on nuances in the world of water language! The Visual Water Dictionary attempts to cut confusion on water words and terminology with easy visual references. (Thanks to Kristy Henry for suggesting today’s entry!)
1. In wastewater treatment, a mixture of activated sludge and water containing organic matter for activated sludge treatment in an aeration tank.
Thirsty in Suburbia desirability grade: B (points deducted for general grossness.)
This Mixed Liquor looks like this:
Mixed Liquor in a wastewater treatment plant
2. Alcoholic beverages which contain alcoholic liquids that are distilled, not fermented, and one or more other ingredients. Note: may or may not contain water.
Thirsty in Suburbia desirability grade: A (dependent on individual use/misuse).
This Mixed Liquor looks like this:
Preparing Mixed Liquor Beverages
In our ongoing mission to educate and inform the general public on nuances in the world of water language, a new feature: the visual water dictionary, which will attempt to cut confusion on selected water words with easy visual references.
1. a fertile tract in a desert where the water table approaches the surface.
Thirsty in Suburbia desirability grade: A
This oasis looks like this:
Huacachina (Peru)
2. A British rock band that occupies a big chunk of space on my iPod. No relevance to water.
Thirsty in Suburbia desirability grade: A-
This Oasis looks like this:
UK band Oasis
3. A Middle Eastern bottled water brand featuring a cute palm tree “i” in its logo.
Thirsty in Suburbia desirability grade: C- (Points gained for tap water scarcity in arid desert locations.)
This Oasis looks like this:
Photos: huacachina from thecontaminated.com, oasis bottled water from johnallan199on Flickr.
