Why yes, it is quite hot out, isn’t it? If you absolutely must open hydrants (thereby endangering the neighborhood by lowering water pressure when it might be needed to put out fires (or take showers for that matter), and basically treating clean water like it’s an infinite gift from the ass of baby Jesus and not a precious resource that must be cleaned and treated before it can be used again and therefore ought to be conserved), why the fuck can’t you share hydrants? Two on one block and one on each of the surrounding 3 blocks, flooding the streets. This always used to upset me when they showed clips of kids running through hydrant spray on Sesame Street and let me tell you, it’s far more upsetting to see it in person.

There are so many 311 calls about open hydrants that there is a special 311 Open Hydrant Complaint subset which directs callers to a 311 purgatory of waiting for an operator. I waited 11 minutes then gave up.

These people are not even using the hydrant caps that make a controlled spray, just completely removing the caps so the water gushes directly into the street. And then are unwilling/unable to close them again. YOU ARE IGNORANT AND WASTEFUL. I wish you lived in one of those countries where women have to walk for 3 hours to a water source and then lug 40 lbs of water back to their homes EVERY DAY.

Love,
Cari

Giving people access to safe, potable water.

This stuff is great. It doesn’t smell heavily of pesticide (or really of anything) so you can spray the shit out of your mattress and linens and not have to leave the room. If you know anything about bedbugs, you know they are ridiculously difficult to get rid of once you have an infestation. Like, way worse than fleas. Like people have to throw their furniture away.

For more info: bedbugs on Wikipedia, bedbugs in New York and bedbugs at Fox News (ha ha!).

7 MPG. Ha ha ha ha.

Evangelicals point to mutualism and say, See, proof of Intelligent Design. And it truly is a marvelous, even miraculous, thing.

But I firmly believe that things like mutualism is proof of evolution, that these beneficial associations exist because they have enabled these species to survive. Without the perpetuation of the species, there are no beneficial associations.

We can point to the shrimp and the goby as a success story, but if we look at the innumerable species of animals who exist or have existed, we see many, many failures. Unintelligent Design, if you will.

As with people, history is written by the winners.

As such, if we’re channeling the current administration, we are now required to say that this is just further proof that the international community is a failure. They ruined the UN, now they’ve ruined the Nobel Peace Prize. Shit, it was bad enough when they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter, but now you’ve given it to a liberal who’s actually still a relevant political figure!? What’s next? An award for “Most Abortions Performed in 2007″!?!?

Sheesh! Calm down “Administration”. How about we just offer congratulations, and hope that this endorsement of Gore’s efforts will add to the already justifiably high profile of an important environmental issue.

Cheers!

Now, you might be saying “Hey, Fiji water tastes amazing!” We tend to agree, but for that, we can refer you to an old post which enumerates the environmental costs of that sense of amazement.

All we can say is that the more we hear about all of this, and the more we hear politicians bicker about whether the problem really even exists, the more our antennae are drawn to potential solutions. So go check out this list of 20 ways to reduce your carbon footprint (at least 10 of which are pretty easy to do). Perhaps you remember when recycling wasn’t a part of your daily life….that ought to be evidence that changes sometimes come from a groundswell of efforts.

This all reminds us of something we read recently detailing the true cost of Fiji water. It’s all particularly sad, when you realize that bottled water is really no safer for you than tap.