no coffee; pepsi.

no coffee; pepsi.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Congratulations, Boston: You've joined the percentage of the world's population without reasonable access to clean drinking water.

It's not the exclusive group you might think »

Posting by cameraphone from Logan International Airport, Boston.

wilding

Photo: Arts & Architecture

I’ve seen all the wild rivers I ever want to see.

Floyd E. Dominy in 1966. Dominy, who served as the commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to 1969, passed away on April 20 at the age of 100.

According to the New York Times, Dominy was responsible for the “Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge and Navajo Dams in the upper Colorado River basin, and the Trinity River part of California’s Central Valley Project, among many others.”

I don’t think I would have gotten along with Dominy (may he RIP), even though there's every reason to believe that he did what he did out of a humanitarian impulse to help the farmer and rancher of the American West.

Unfortunately, he overdid it.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is more my style. He recently did a spot for American Express in which he talked about his dam busting.

Video: Yvon Chouinard and the American Express Members Project Commercial

The July / August 1967 (and final) issue of Arts & Architecture was dedicated to the architecture of North American dams. The photograph above was taken from that issue, as was this excerpt:

It could be said that water is one of the most potent forces employed by Nature in shaping the animate and inanimate world, and as a form creator is thus within our province.

(...)

It is of importance to note just how far man has progressed in his ability to form and deform his environment. Like water, he is both form giver and destroyer, but until quite recently man was one of Nature’s relatively minor and inefficient tools and weapons.

By his inventiveness and increase in numbers, however, he has become capable of changing the face and fortune of the world beyond the capacity of any other natural force. An indication of his increased capability is the catastrophic affect man has had on water in the U.S. It is estimated, for example, that is he were to disappear tomorrow, it would take a generation for the waters of even our largest rivers and lakes (e.g. the Hudson River, Lake Erie) to regenerate and become fresh again.

Water Resources in North America, Arts & Architecture, July / August 1967

Update: NPR reported on Dominy on May 4th »

water water everywhere

As I predicted, everyone from my mother to the maid has simply assumed that the rain that deluged the blood-spatterers at the gates of the prime minister's house was a direct divine intervention in the affairs of Thai politics. The idea that it could simply be a cosmic coincidence has never occurred to any of them. Unless you understand this, you will never understand Thailand.

Water is at the very center of the Siamese worldview. Before there were roads, there were waterways. The alluvial-rich central plains have enough water for two rice crops a year and are the heartland of the establishment; the drier northeast can only sustain one crop a year, and is the heart of Thaksin country. It is an inequity that goes beyond money, and money alone can't fix it.

Right now, it's still the dry season: the rain that descended on the red shirts was therefore unseasonal. By definition, therefore, it was providential. There it is.

Opera composer Somtow Sucharitkul commenting on recent Thai protests on his blog Somtow's World.

Found Somtow's blog via the Guardian as I crawled out from under a rock this morning (crazy at work, lately; promises to be crazy for a while longer yet) to get my mind around what the bloody protests of mid-March were all about.

Of interest: the New York Times reports this morning that mobile-driven flash mobs have played a role in rallying the protesters to action, but it was Somtog who voiced the unsettling possibility that the mainstream media has only danced around:

There is in this country an enormous gap, financial and cultural, between city and country. This gap has been heavily exploited by the architects of this protest, but, contrary to what the western press seems to think, it is not what this present struggle is about.

It is in fact an incestuous war between two elites: an old-style, gentlemanly elite and a flashier, no-holds-barred elite. The poor have been duped into serving as collateral damage.

The actual struggle, the one to narrow the gap and to bring the entire kingdom into the modern age, has not even begun to be fought. We must give it time. To demand all the results immediately would be to insist that Magna Carta, the Reformation, the Restoration, the Industrial Revolution, and the New Deal all be squeezed into about fifty years.

water changes everything

Today is World Water Day. Give a tall drink of water »

*gulp*

• Bottled water consumes between 1100 and 2000 times more energy on average than does tap water


• Global demand for bottle production alone uses 50 million barrels of oil a year, or 2 1/2 days of U.S. oil consumption


• Drinking an imported bottle of water is about two-and-a-half to four times more energy intensive than getting it locally


• U.S. bottled-water consumption in 2007 required an energy input equivalent to 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil


• Although the energy for purifying and delivering tap water varies, even in the most expensive cases it is hundreds of times less than for bottled water

The research findings of environmental scientists Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute as reported in Drink Up, Energy Hogs in the 26 February issue of ScienceNOW.

The article continues: "To put that energy use into perspective, Gleick says to imagine that each bottle is up to one-quarter full of oil."

speaking of water

Video: Think About Your Troubles from Harry Nilsson's The Point

Watermyth has gone public: the blog is receiving posts from anyone who has something to say about Water.

Learn more »

Or email your watery post to " watermyth [at] gmail [dot] com "

nothing that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful

I'm not interested in how we can make materials sparkle and glimmer and make them visually spectacular, but how we can make them performatively spectacular.

Architect Eric Olsen in the May issue of Metropolis magazine, commenting on his winning entry -- the pleated bucket -- in the 2008 Next Generation design competition.



Constructed from pleated tarpaulin, the pleated bucket takes a cue from the Saguaro cactus -- each of its pleats expands as it fills with water. The "bucket" -- which is actually more shawl like, designed to be worn in just that way to transport water from one place to another -- will disinfect the water it contains when set out in the sun for five hours.




Illus & Photo: Metropolis