h20: A Review of Many Waters
by EDWARD DORN
Of all the common luxuries, water drinking has been the most diminished by the foul habits of man for the longest time, far far longer than the corruption of the air. Hunting and skinning disqualifies the water enormously even within the perimeters of such low-scale activity as that now seems. Irrigation is a major disturbance. And everybody is an expert on industry. Water, in fact, degrades itself depending on where it's been, and such is the nature of water that it can go practically everywhere.
Strictly speaking, water is the oxide of hydrogen, and has no more character than paraffin, which it was once thought to resemble structurally. When water is sweet and light and clear of interference it smacks of the best parts of the earth.
A short while ago Prince Faisal announced his intention for the tenth time to tow icebergs from the Antartic to Arabia. He said "the iceberg" (and presumably he has one in mind) would amount to a flow twenty-two times the Nile. He didn't say for how long. At any rate, much of the South Polar ice is shoddy in composition and inferior in quality, being mixed with sea-ice and compacted neve. Some of the southern bergs extend half their bulk above the surface. They would probably not sink the Titanic. The heavy, high gloss bergs are bobbing in the North, out of the Prince's reach. A quicker-witted Europe would build an aquapipe to trade the Prince water for light crude, gallon for gallon.
Really pure water is blue when viewed through a considerable thickness. All waters, unless very impure, are made safe by boiling, but some waters are so rich in bacteria that a pressure filter which is supposed to burst the organism, plus boiling, is no guarantee against the ravage of water. There is a bug in Mexico which has three heads and can get past all present barriers into the gut where it hangs on with one head and eats with the other two.
That's bad, but the cure is possibly worse. No thinking human should drink Boulder water without boiling it. Chlorination presents some strange problems entirely aside from the aesthetic consideration arising from greenish yellow gas with an irritating smell and destructive effect on the respiratory tract.
Yet Boulder city tap water is probably safe to cook with because chlorine, the recently discovered vector for radiation, is volatile, although no one can vouch for the safety of bystanders. Perhaps the ancient observation "a watched pot never boils" should be the excuse for staying away.
a porpoise There are several things wrong with Perrier water, aside from the fact that any goof can use it to wash his Sportster. It is bottled under pressure, in itself an unspeakable thing to do to water. The gas is removed to accommodate some kinks in the technique and then returned as the cap goes on, and it is claimed this gaseous sleight of hand makes no difference. That's for anyone to judge. Polish waters are nice. The Romans prized Yugoslavian waters and you can still get those from the same places.
bobby jindal The local water I like the most is Deep Rock. It is very light and very old, from ancient aquifer accumulations, and it's still oddly cheaper than gasoline. But there is no doubt which would fetch the higher price from a traverser of the desert. Deep Rock has a geological sharpness and clarity to it which allows you to abandon medicine. In these parts, the wisest check you can write is to Dan the Water Man.
The very highest water I ever personally tasted was taken from the stream about two hundred feet below the face of Eklutna Glacier, 75 miles northeast of Anchorage. Diamond blue, all the way to the Pleistocene.
from the exxon valdez Short Sips from the Ancients
Sir Isaac Newton defines water, when pure, to be a very fluid salt, volatile, and void of all savour or taste; and it seems to consist of small, smooth, hard, porous, spherical particles, of equal diameters, and of equal specific gravities; and also that there are between them spaces so large, and ranged in such manner, as to be pervious on all sides.
Their smoothness accounts for their sliding easily over one another's surfaces; their sphericity also keeps them from touching one another in more points than one; and by both these their friction in soliding over one another is rendered the least possible. Their hardness accounts for the incompressibility of water, when it is free from the inter-mixture of air. The porosity of water is so very great, that there is at least forty times as much space as matter in it; for water is nineteen times specifically lighter than gold, and consequently rarer in the same proportion.
Johnson's Dictionary, the sixth edition
BP ceo Tony Hayward
For water is a moving, wandering thing, and must of necessity continue common by the law of nature.
Theophrastus, in his work On Waters, says that Nile water is very fertilizing and fresh. Hence it loosens the drinker's bowels, since it contains a soda ingredient. He further says that many bitter waters as well as salt water and entire rivers change their character; such is the river in Caria on the banks of which stands a shrine to Zenoposeidon. The reason is that many thunderbolts fall in that region. Other waters, again, are like solids, and have a considerable density, like the water of Troezen, for it is no sooner tasted than it becomes a mouthful.
The waters near the mines of Mt. Pangaenum weigh in the winter time ninety-six drachms to the half pint, while in summer they weight forty-six. Cold weather contracts it and gives it a greater density. Hence, also, water flowing in water clocks does not correctly give the hours in winter, but makes them too long, since the flow is slower on account of its density.
Snow water is thought to be good, because the more potable element is drawn to the surface and thus broken up by the air; it is, therefore, even better than rain water, and water obtained for ice, also, is better because it is lighter; the proof is that ice itself is lighter than water in general.
But cold waters are hard because they are more solid, and whatever is corporeal is warmer when heated and colder when cooled. For the same reason water on the mountains is better to drink than water in the plains, because it is mixed with less solid matter. For example, the water in the lake at Babylon is red for several days, while that of the Borysthenes at certain periods is violet-coloured, although it is extremely light. The proof: when the north wind blow the river rises higher the Hypanis because of its lightness.
When I had weighed the water from the Corinthian spring Peirene, as it is called, I found it to be lighter than any other in Greece. For I have no faith in the comic poet Antiphanes, when he says that Attica, besides excelling other places in many respects, has also the best water. His words are: A. What products, Hipponicus, our country bears, excelling in all the whole world! Honey, wheatbread, figs. - B. Figs, to be sure, it bears in plenty. A. Sheep, wool, myrtle-berries, thyme, wheat, and water. Such water! You'd know in a minute you were drinking the water of Attica.
From The Deipnosophists by Athenaeus
Edward Dorn was a writer and poet who died in 1999.
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