EnviroGirl on Tap Water
Welcome, EnviroGirl, our Guest Blogger on Blog Action Day, and thank you for being our Guest Blogger!
Thanks, Intlxpatr, for inviting me to be your guest blogger.
Intlxpatr knows that I am passionate about drinking tap water, as well as encouraging others to do the same. I’ve almost always chosen to drink tap water over bottled water, primarily because it’s cheaper that bottled water, and it’s readily available (just turn on the faucet!).
Over the last year I’ve learned that there are even more reasons to drink tap water (at least in the U.S.). So I’ll quickly share with you a few reasons why you should save your money and drink tap water. If you want to do more research on the topic, I’ve included a few links below.
Why you should choose tap water over bottled…
1) Tap water is tested stringently for chemical and microbiological contaminants. It is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and must comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Bottled Water is often regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and does not fall under the Safe Drinking Water Act. (All water in the U.S. falls under the Safe Drinking Water Act.) This means that it is not tested as rigorously as tap water. In addition, your community water provider is required to send you a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) every year. The CCR should inform you of the quality of your tap water and if any contaminants have been detected. Try finding this information on the label of a bottle of water.
2) Bottled water is not only more expensive to purchase, the environment costs are greater too. Bottled water must be shipped to your location, which means more fossil-fuel emissions into the air. After the water is consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed of. If the bottle is not recycled, it will be tossed in a landfill where it will take about 700 years (plastic bottle recycling facts) to decompose.
3) Clean drinking water is a valuable resource. Recently, droughts and pressures from population growth have created water shortages. In communities experiencing water shortages, bottling water has become a hot topic because it depletes local drinking water supplies. Water use restrictions may be imposed on the community, while the bottled water company is still packaging and selling the amount of water it was permitted to use (For example – http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-bottledwater1307oct13,0,6642058.story). This also leads into the importance of conserving drinking water resources and implementing creative strategies such as water reuse (Info on water reuse – http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/recycling/index.html ).
Again, the information above regarding water quality is for tap water in the U.S. In countries that do not have adequate sanitation it is not advisable to drink tap water. If you live outside of the U.S., the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commission are two organizations that have water quality standards that many countries choose to adopt. You can search online to determine if your country follows any of these standards and if your tap water is safe to drink.
Links:
U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act:
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/sdwa/basicinformation.html
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Drinking Water:
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/
World Health Organization – Drinking Water:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/en/
European Commission – Drinking Water:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-drink/index_en.html
Website for Water in the Middle East:
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/env/water.htm
National Resource Defense Council – Bottled Water Q & A:
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp
Plastic bottle recycling facts (U.S.):
http://earth911.org/recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/
Idiot Custom Paint Job
I couldn’t resist. I carry my camera with me, and this was too good to pass up.
Just a car? Look again. You may not be able to see all the pink sparkles sprayed on, but they twinkle and sparkle in the sun. And this is a GUY driving a pink sparkly car.
But whoever he hired to do this – or did he do it himself? – was a genius. He also sprayed the tail lights and the back windsheild – did you see that?
Idiots!
Picoult and My Sister’s Keeper
I don’t know where I got the idea that Jodi Picoult wrote girly books, maybe because when you go to a bookstore there are so many of them? I just assumed they were romance and passed right by until several months ago, in a small used book store, I found one that was in the book club section, and those are usually pretty good reads. I bought it, but put off reading it, assuming it was an easy read, maybe I would read it on an airplane one day.
For some reason I moved it up, maybe I had heard a review or something. It moved to the bedside group, the “in line for immediate reading” group. At a time when we were particularly busy, I finished my other book and this was next, and I thought “Oh well, yes we are busy, but this will be light reading.”
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This book, My Sister’s Keeper, is not light reading. It is a book a lot like We Need To Talk About Kevin one of the most terrifying and unforgettable books I have ever read. It is a book about motherhood, and parenting and tough choices. It is a book about how sometimes your entire life is yanked, and all the focus is on one area, to the detriment of others. It is a particularly tough book if you are a mother.
The main character, Anna, was conceived so that her stem cells, from the umbilical cord, will be used to help her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. Family life is chaotic, to say the least, as the vigilant parents’ attention is constantly on Kate, who suffers frequent relapses.
Picoult uses the voices of Anna, Kate, Jessie – the brother, a pyromaniac, Brian (the father), Sara (the mother), Campbell (Anna’s lawyer) and Jesse (Anna’s guardian ad litem) to tell the story.
Anna has approached Campbell, a lawyer, to achieve medical emancipation. She loves her sister, she has shared a room and her entire life with her sister, she has given stem cells, she has given bone marrow, she has been through several medical procedures to keep her sister’s cancer in remission, but at 13, she balks when expected to give one of her kidneys is a last ditch attempt that even the doctors have little expectation will succeed. She hires a lawyer.
Sara is a mother you would love to hate. You would love to grab her by the shoulders and say “Pay attention! You have THREE children, and two of them need your attention, too!” but something holds you back, and that something is the serious doubt you have about how you would handle the same situation. In extreme circumstances, people make the best choices they can, and when you are in extreme circumstances day after day, things start to fray, and then they start to fall apart. This family is past the fraying part, and we hold our breaths hoping they won’t fall apart.
It’s not a hard read because of the technical terms; this is a book where a 13 year old knows all the vocabulary of cancer, and we learn it, too. It flows naturally in the book.
Kate has acute promyelocytic leukemia. Actually, that’s not quite true – right now she doesn’t have it, but it’s hibernating under her skin like a bear, until it decides to roar again. She was diagnosed when she was two; she’s sixteen now. Molecular relapse and granulocyte and portacath – these words are part of my vocabulary, even though I’ll never find them on any SAT. I’m an allogeneic donor – a perfect sibling match. When Kate needs leukocytes or stem cells or bone marrow to fool her body into thinking it’s healthy, I’m the one who provides them. Nearly every time Kate’s been hospitalized, I wind up there, too.
None of which means anything except that you shouldn’t believe what you hear about me, least of all that which I tell you about myself.
Aha! We are reading a book with an unreliable main character!
It is a hard read because we all have families, and we all face tough decisions. There is a part of us that says “thank God we are not in this situation” and another part that says “there but for the grace of God . . . ” It is a tough book because we don’t know who we will become when life-changing circumstances hit us, we don’t know what choices we would make, because we are afraid, and because we don’t want to find out.
There are some surprises, though, and you will want to keep reading. There is a lot of love here, in the cracks between the tragedies. My Sister’s Keeper has three sets of sisters, and a lot of focus on that very special relationship. The men, too, come off well at the end.
Not an easy read, but a book that will stay in your heart for a long time.
Blog Header
My friend and frequent commenter, Abdulaziz, created a new blog header for me. I don’t have a customizable header with this format, and while I have looked at the customizable ones, I don’t understand enough to make the leap. But I want to share with you what he created, using the photo Adventure Man and I took last week.
Isn’t it beautiful?
“Could be Very Fatal”
Last year, six officials resigned from Kuwait Air when an assistant pilot without proper credentials was promoted to pilot in spite of having failed the qualifying test. I wrote about it HERE.
This is from yesterday’s (1 october 2007) Kuwait Times. No, it was not in the crime section.
Assistant Pilot Promoted Without Proper Qualifications
KUWAIT: An assistant pilot at Kuwait Airways was recently promoted to become a captain pilot despite the fact that he had failed the tests qualifying him for the promotion for the maximum times allowed. Informed sources stressed that such a mistake of having incompetent and inexperienced pilots fly civilian flights could be very fatal.
The sources noted that his promotion could cost lives of at least the 300 passengers all because of this man has an influential wasta (backer). The sources explained that this particular promotion had been tried upon several times and that it only got through during the transitory period after the resignation of the previous board of directors and before appointing the new board.
“This inexperienced pilot has already started flying to various destinations,” warned the sources expressing astonishment of the approval of the Civil Aviation Authority of such a promotion, particularly since it was the highest control over following safety precautions by various carriers.
———————————————————————-
Last night, over dinner, Adventure Man looked at me sadly. We were discussing my blog, and I had asked him if he had any concerns. He said his only concern was for my safety. I asked him if he saw anything that made him uncomfortable. He said that he worries about my quoting newspaper articles, he has a concern in could get me in trouble.
I have promised I would not comment directly on the articles.
I am willing to bet that there is a possibility that there are unqualified pilots flying for other national airlines, in countries with less of a free press than Kuwait has. The difference in Kuwait is that the newspaper can report this and maybe the person writing it will not be fired for holding the airlines ACCOUNTABLE for providing safe flights for their customers.
“Red” Vinegar
There is a vinegar used often for salad dressings, for marinades, for braising, called wine vinegar. It doesn’t have any alcohol in it, it is just vinegar, but usually in the Middle East you will find it called red vinegar.
So when I found it at the co-op, I grabbed it. It was dimly lit in there, but I could see that it was indeed red.
Can you see how red it is? Hmmmmm. . . . it’s sort of an odd color of red for wine vinegar . . .
In fact, the color is so wrong that I check the labels – and it is indeed, just “red” vinegar:
I’m not even going to use it. It’s not the same. It’s not the real thing. I don’t need red food coloring.
Phone Fees to be Lowered
(for my non-Kuwait readers, Kuwait has a monopoly on all the communications in the country, and the phone rates are the highest I have experienced anywhere in the world. Most people who can subscribe to internet phone service providers like Skype, Vonage, etc. and use the internet connections to stay connected with family, friends, and to do personal financial transactions by phone. Kuwait claims they are losing millions of dinars in revenue, and continually tries to monitor and crack-down on illegal internet telephony.)
This is another tiny article from the Kuwait Times, September 26th.
Kuwait: Undersecretary for International Services at the Ministry of Communication Engineer Hameed Al-Qattan said that the ministry will offer outstanding call service fees over the Internet in order to stop the theft of international calls. Al-Qattan said that the announcement of this service will be in October and it will lead to a 50% reduction of international call fees from it’s present price.
I don’t have the figures. But I believe that most of the internet call services are charging between $16 (around 4KD) to $30 (around 8KD) per MONTH depending on the number of minutes you sign up for. Most of the calls to the US / Canada are free up to X number of minutes. Calls to foreign countries cost pennies per minute. They are charged to your credit card monthly, and the cost is a pittance. It’s laughable.
The call quality is not always so great, but hey, it’s a connection, right? And you are not paying an arm and a leg.
So Kuwait is going into competition with all the international internet call companies?
They will provide “outstanding” call service fees?
How cheap do those call service fees have to be in order to be competitive with the providers people are already using?
Will they also provide “outstanding” connections, better than the current internet connections we are dealing with?
Stay tuned!
On the Horizon
Just another beautiful Kuwait sunrise – oh wait! What is that deep colored band on the horizon? And is anyone else having terrible allergy problems these days?
We Share the Road
Look closely. Look at the third set of wheels back, second set from the right. I know, I know, it is very difficult to see the tread. That’s because there is NO tread left on this tire.
Other tires on this truck were already shredding. Look, the one just in front of the bare-tread tire had some kind of exterior coating kind of thing on it, like a whole tire patch of some kind, also shredding. He is carrying a heavy load load. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
To my left is a police car.
I can’t remember? Is Kuwait the #1 most dangerous country for driving in the world, or the #2?
National Punctuation Day
Under Who Knew, or maybe under Who Cares, comes something I got in my e-mail from A Word a Day:
Nine out of ten emails seem to contain at least one typographical error,
better known as a typo. Never before have so many words been mangled. Is
it caused by carelessness, keyboard clumsiness, or just plain ignorance?
The U.S. will celebrate its fourth annual National Punctuation Day on
September 24. Let’s make it a worldwide affair, when we name and shame
offenders, and return faulty emails to their senders, with mistakes
highlighted in red. More about this in The World’s First Multi-National
e-Book: http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/world_punctuation_day.htm
And a question. In blogs, I can see that punctuation marks are used in informal Arabic usage, but when someone is writing in classical Arabic, do they use the same punctuation (like periods, exclamation points, quotation marks?)
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