Why I Liked The Charity Water Party

I think last night I went to the best party ever, like ever ever. They should do this every month. (Be There, Or Be Square: The FourSquare Day Party At Sidebar) Why did I like the party so?

Charity Water Dress Code
Charity: Water
Happy World Water Day
Image via Wikipedia
(1) Great Cause

If you had to describe me in three words, you would call me a Third World Guy. Charity: Water to me feels like a pilot project to something grand, something that needs to be 1,000 times bigger and goes beyond charity, impacts large scale global policy. But what a pilot!

"Do You Have An Email Address?"
"Can You Understand This?"
"Bring Home An African Next Time"
Padgurum
Hawai Chappal

(2) Amazing People

With or without the cause it was just a great assembly of people. It was a large, crowded space, and you already knew you had something in common when you approached a stranger to say hello. I wish the party had started three hours earlier and lasted an hour longer. There were more people to meet.

A Mind Blowing Party

(3) Amazing Space

The space was big, huge. I have a thing for big, empty spaces. You start empty and fill it up with people. There were huge indoor plants. Parts of the roof were leaking, so it is not like they made you miss the rain outside. Curiously the place is not listed on FourSquare.

I had pineapple juice. Drinks were free the first hour. (No More Beer, No More Soda)

Matt Damon: A Real Life Hero

Robin Hood: My German Nickname
Enemy Of The State
The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance

Water Changes Everything

Happy World Water Day
Bottled Water: Liquid Gold
Sunshine, Water, Rest, Air, Exercise, Diet



(Via Aspen Steib)

Happy World Water Day

If there is anything that is at the center of the globe's development agenda, it is clean water. Water also just so happens to be my favorite substance. I like to play with water. After I am done with the sink, you will likely see leftover splashes. Some people have thought it is because I am an untidy person.

There is something about the formlessness of water that gets me. Water in its formlessness reminds me of the human mind. Water is what the human mind should be, often is.

Bottled Water: Liquid Gold

BBC: Bottled water has become liquid gold: In the last 40 years the bottled water industry has gone from a business prospect that few took seriously, to a global industry worth billions of pounds. .... bottled water has become one of the biggest success stories in the modern food and beverage industry..... demand for bottle water has grown exponentially ..... "I think bottled water actually represents a kind of caricature of… the global economy.... "It provides people in the developed world with 20 or 30 varieties of something for which there is no actual variety." ... The Eau campaign was a marketing coup and sales went through the roof from 12 million bottles in 1980 to 152 million by the end of the decade. ...... "When you held a Perrier bottle up, it said something about yourself, it said you were sophisticated, you… understood what was happening in the world. ...... In an age of instant gratification, still water in portable bottles provided what people needed, exactly when they needed it. .... Strong, shatterproof and a highly valued form of polyester, PET is a by-product of the oil industry. ..... "Evian was sold as a beautiful person's drink" ..... Between 1990 and the turn of the century, global sales of Evian doubled from 50 billion to more than 100 billion litres a year. ..... a world where nearly a billion people have no access to clean water at all. ..... what bottled water is actually made of, oil and water; the world's two most precious resources, in one neat package.

If you can get a bottle of water for a buck, and a bottle of soda for a buck fifty, and the water is good for you, and the soda is bad for your health, then the water is a bargain, right? A lot of people don't think so.

Clean Water, Obesity

Technology Review: Clean Water For The Developing World: Cotton fabric treated with nano inks produces a water filter that's efficient and needs little power to work...... kills bacteria with electrical fields but uses just 20 percent of the power required by pressure-driven filters ..... At least a billion people have access only to water contaminated by pathogens or pollution. ..... There are two major chemical methods: adding chlorine to the water to kill the bacteria, or adding iron, which causes the bacteria to clump so it's easily removed. ..... Filtration, in contrast, is attractive because it's simple. .... other low-power solutions take too long or are too complex.

Obesity is to America what water is to the Global South. So much of health care costs would evaporate if most Americans lost weight. So many of the diseases in the Global South would go away if everyone had access to clean drinking water.

Some say we already have the knowledge for both and I am not so sure. One of my insights from volunteering for Obama 08 was that Americans don't socialize enough. They don't meet each other in person enough. Their overeating has a direct relationship to their emotional malnutrition.

It is not true we know all we need to know about clean water. Obviously the water cleaning technologies we have are not cheap enough, not simple enough. Obviously. There has to be relentless innovation to reach the masses.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Clean Water for the Developing World (technologyreview.in)
• Nanotech tea bag creates safe drinking water instantly, for less than a penny [Nanotechnology] (io9.com)
• If I bring a Britta water filter with me when I go camping or hiking is it enough to clean the water for drinking? (greenanswers.com)
• New IBM projects striving for cleaner water (news.cnet.com)
• John DeCock: Clean Water -- A Basic Human Right (huffingtonpost.com)
• High-Speed Filter Uses Electrified Nanostructures To Purify Water At Low Cost (lockergnome.com)
• New IBM projects striving for cleaner water (news.cnet.com)
• Clean water welcomed in Shannon, Que. (cbc.ca)
• Clean Water for the Developing World (technologyreview.com)