Tag Archive for: Water

h2o mp3: Water in the Ground – Catherine MacLellan

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This talented Canadian singer-songwriter provides us a perfect track for National Groundwater Awareness Week (a great idea since most of the populace has enough to worry about with the things that they CAN see.)

Water in the Ground is from MacLellan’s third 2009 release and is a melodic, clean, pure folk-influenced song that gets better with every listen. (Visit Catherine MacLellan’s website here.)

Play the track
[audio:http://thirstyinsuburbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/1-02-water-in-the-ground.mp3]

Download Water in the Ground – Catherine MacLellan
Support the people who make music! Buy the CD at amazon.com or from True North Records.

Lyrics

All the snow will melt into the stream
leading me back to where I want to be
right by your side
watching as the leaves pour out of the trees
everything’s alive, everything’s alive
never could guess you’d be the one
you said the world’s coming undone
tie em up together round and round
water from the heavens pouring in the ground

Flush with the Success of Twitter

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Debugging the Twittering ToiletWow, Twitter is overloaded with crap! Seriously! One resourceful, twitter-hating hacker has conceived and built a toilet that tweets with every flush! (We previously blogged on a tweeting water meter here.)

Declaring it “more useful and relevant than just about everything else on twitter,” the inventor has posted detailed instructions in case you’d like to try it on your own. You can also follow the Web 2.0-water closet on Twitter (@hacklabtoilet) but it appears that “John” has been “down for repairs” since last summer. (Via an article on Huffington Post about High-Tech Toilets.)

Telepene Water: Gush, Gush, Fizz, Fizz

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I hope the gas comes after the gush! From quisnovus on Flickr comes this photo of Telepene, the official water of the Albanian national football team. (Americans: surely you understand by now they mean soccer!)

Suffled how it gush from the woods of Tepelene

You might be surprised to hear that Albania has a football team. Perhaps you’re confusing Albania with the Dilbert outpost of Elbonia. Albania is a tiny Eastern European nation with a rich, conflict-riddled history reaching back to ancient Greece and Rome. Most recently it is an independent free market democracy since communism fell in 1991.

Grandeur in the Ocean Garbage Patch

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This new awareness advert from Rise Above Plastics combines the ick factor of the ocean garbage patch with the majesty of a giant whale with predictably repugnant results. (From their website, we learn that “In some places of the Pacific Ocean, the amount of plastic suspended in the water outnumbers plankton six to one.”)


Two other items on the Rise Above Plastics website that make us say, “Hey, that’s neat!”…
Above, this rapidly escalating-counter shows, in our face and in real time, the runaway rubbish rate for plastic water bottles.
Below, the site alos includes this photo of plastic shopping bags masquerading as jellyfish, which reminds us of this “Dangerous Species” poster as well as the much-loved-by-me Ariston washer ad.

San Antonio’s Mutant Ninja Sewer Turtle

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SAWS sewer turtle videoFrom this angle, I can’t quite tell if this is Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Donatello! A few mutant Ninja skills might have helped this fully grown, totally stuck turtle found trapped inside a Texas sewer pipe. The San Antonio Water System’s snaking sewer camera caught the oddball obstruction during a routine sewer line check.

It took hours of dirty digging and dismantling to free the native “red-eared slider” who was then safely relocated to a nearby pond.

Here is a screenshot from the camera video (I guess they don’t have spell-check on those rigs!) which can be seen in total on the San Antonio Water System’s Facebook page. Also, see www.kens5.com for the complete video of this story as seen on the local news broadcast.

SAWS sewer turtle rescue

SAWS sewer turtle rescue

SAWS sewer turtle

A Water Symphony Sings for Skoda

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For all the irritation wrought by boorish, intrusive advertising, let’s remember: occasionally advertising offers us some rare, aesthetic delight that stops us in our tracks.

Such is the case with this ad for Czech auto manufacturer Škoda featuring experimental Czech musician Petr Spatina. He is seen playing 597 water-filled Schott Zwiesel crystal wine glasses… arranged in the shape of a car! You might assume that since this is a lowly advert there’s bound to be trickery or illusion involved. But there isn’t. The sweet melody is real and authentic.


See more at Petr Spatina’s website goodwatermusic.com.

Is Water the Silver Lining in Every Cloud?

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After I posted the snickering, tongue-in-cheek writeup on the 1931 “fog farm” concept, Angela B. sent along (via inhabitat.com) information on this real and modern example of a “fog farm” from a sharp student with her head in the clouds, so to speak.

For her final thesis in Industrial Design at Germany’s Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Imke Hoehler designed the “DropNet fog collector” that harvests drinking water from fog, air and mist. The great features of her design include simplicity, zero energy requirement, easy assembly and portability (unskilled workers can quickly assemble it on flat or uneven ground.) It’s a feasible approach for isolated areas with little or no infrastructure.

Each unit reportedly collects 10-20 liters per day. Unlike the kooky Modern Mechanix fog farm concept, this isn’t conceived to irrigate farmland, but it can ensure a safe supply of drinking water in challenging conditions. Has Irme, literally, found the silver lining in every cloud? Or more importantly, a reasonable way to mine it?

In looking at the design I wonder…might there be a way to incorporate rainwater harvesting into the unit so that it could also collect those supplies when available?

The Smart Set Always Heads for the Beach

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I’m thinking (as I browse travel sites from ThirstyInSuburbia’s cold-gripped Midwest HQ) how people naturally seek out bodies of water. We are hopelessly drawn to it. Look at any map and note how the population clusters along oceans, rivers, coastlines or lakes. Is it part of our human nature to seek out bodies of water?

Nature or nurture? Theorized by neuroscientist Michael Crawford, our attraction to water represents another element of human evolution.

The University of North London researcher has proposed that our ancient ancestors were devotees of the sea, and that their diets were a factor in the evolution of the human’s large and complex brain. Form a 2007 article that I missed on livescience.com,

Crawford claims that when humans separated from apes and emerged from the forests of Africa, they stuck close to rivers and beaches and started feasting on fish, clams and crabs. That marine diet was packed with omega-3 fatty acids, essential fatty acids that promote brain cell growth.

It’s no coincidence, Crawford claims, that human brain growth began to increase exponentially once we left the woods and headed for the beach.

Maybe that’s our cue/excuse to pack up our big brains and small bathing suits and head for the water.  Mare proluit omnia mortalium mala!

Vintage postcard “Bathing in Lagoon, Long Beach, CA from riptheskull on Flickr, thanks!

Moral Mayhem at Vancouver’s Mini-Bars!

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Besides the Coca Cola/Dasani concession, where’s the least-likely place we’d expect to find tap water promoted during the Vancouver Olympic frenzy? Hotel mini-bars, you say?

Photo via cbc.ca: A stainless steel refillable water bottle is featured prominently in mini-bars in Vancouver's Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel to help promote the city's tap water.

Photo via cbc.ca: A stainless steel refillable water bottle is featured prominently in mini-bars in Vancouver

Well, surprise! During the winter games, Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim offers something new in guests’ mini bars that’s almost as shocking as the prices – a (not complimentary) metal water bottle for unlimited, free tap refills. The hotel was one of the first to join Vancouver’s campaign to encourage Olympics visitors to use the city’s tap water.

The bottle’s $12.95 price tag surely means the predatory mini-bar sales model is still safe. Also, we assume that tiny paper-topped glasses are still available in guest bathrooms and bedrooms. From CBC News via hotelchatter.com,

“Bottled water is a major seller in our guest rooms through the mini-bars,” said hotel manager Randy Zupanski. “I was concerned about the fall-off of those sales … but it’s the right thing to do.”