Sometimes people are stupid.

April 17, 2000 12:36 PM

Sometimes people are stupid. Every glass of water you drink has been through a million kidneys; this is no different.

More to the point, it's exactly the same as the drinking water in New Orleans, which is processed from the Mississippi river and contains the output of the sewage treatment plants from St. Louis among many other cities, not to mention industrial wastes and farming run-off.

Speaking as a Californian, I think most of my fellow citizens are idiots.
posted by Steven Den Beste (13 comments total)

Idiots is right. What am I missing here? Doesn't just about everybody drink water that's been 'reclaimed?' Where do these people think water comes from?
posted by owen at 12:46 PM on April 17, 2000

Soylent Green is People!

oh...um....nevermind.

This is pretty funny, considering that urine is sterile, and women wear lipstick made with renderings from cow colons, and lets face, it, fish and birds and other waterlife crap in the lakes and rivers we drink *all the time*.
posted by sperare at 12:53 PM on April 17, 2000

Hey, waitaminnit, I live in Sherman Oaks, and I've already been drinking my toilet water. This time they'll purify it? Cool.
posted by Awol at 12:53 PM on April 17, 2000

Yes. My dog will be elated, he can finally drink right from the sink.
posted by bvanveen at 1:04 PM on April 17, 2000

I just realised that if I see a link that contains the phrase "people are stupid", I click on it without second thought. I'm a sucker for the whole "people are stupid" phenomenon, I guess.
posted by Succa at 1:50 PM on April 17, 2000

Speaking about being stupid and being in California...

You're not surprised, are you? I mean, we did pass PROP 22 here...
posted by jca at 1:51 PM on April 17, 2000

And just where do you think Detroit discharges its sewage, eh? Not to mention Toronto? Milwaukee? Duluth?

That's one of the reason why this is so stupid. We here in Southern California are already drinking processed sewage, from Grand Junction CO. (Here in San Diego most of our drinking water comes from the Colorado River.) This proposal would be no different functionally -- just more explicit.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:35 PM on April 17, 2000

Isn't the reason why they invented beer? So people could get drunk and argue over things like this. Just let me know what website has a petition for this to become law in CA. I just wonder if the stupidity travels from the West coast to the East or do most of the crappy ideas flow from Washington D.C only?
posted by brent at 3:15 PM on April 17, 2000

Now explain to me why people spend 35 cents at a vending machine outside the supermarket for a gallon of "purified" water...
posted by wendell at 3:47 PM on April 17, 2000

They invented beer because the water was unhealthy to drink otherwise. Throw a little yeast in it, cook it for a while, and let it sit, and eventually, the percentage of alcohol increases. Get enough alcohol, and everything nasty dies.

That's why monks have been making beer for centuries. The practice was an ancient (and much more fun!) cousin of your Britta.
posted by jeremy at 3:57 PM on April 17, 2000

Steven mentioned New Orleans, which always piques my attention because I'm a native (but I escaped to California). The strange thing about the water is that is was voted for something like 8 years in a row as the best tasting water in America in some nationwide survey.

Of course the disturbing point is that the Webster definition of water is "a clear colorless odorless _tasteless_ liquid". So what makes it the best tasting? Chemicals, baby... Oh, and you can bet that there is no 5-year purification process going on down in the Crescent City...
posted by fooljay at 4:07 PM on April 17, 2000

Oh, I'm just joking about detroit. I just wanted you to know that even with all that fresh water, I'm sure our acceptable fecal matter "parts per million" count is too high to think about... Not to mention we have the nations highest concentration of industry, dumping for the last 150 years. We'd be happy to try your toilet water!
posted by Dean_Paxton at 11:55 AM on April 18, 2000