Things to worry about today number one: Drug Traces Common In Drinking Water

[koganbot]

According to AP story Drug Traces Common In Tap Water (title a bit misleading, since the drug traces may well be common in filtered and bottled water too; and by drugs they also mean hormones and the like, pharmaceuticals in general

Comments

[carsmilesteve]

i think you'd have to drink a heck of a lot of water dearest...

[carsmilesteve]

ah, we'll all be dead by then anyway ;)

[freakytigger]

My initial (and rather cynical) reaction is to think that this worry - or at least the anti-tap spin on the story - is coming at a very good time for the bottled water companies, who are in a tough position at the moment because their core buyers are also the people who are most likely to give up an environmentally unjustifiable product.

That's not to say it isn't a genuine concern, obviously.

[koganbot]

Well, they're saying that it's probably in the bottled water too.

[freakytigger]

Oops yes, missed that paragraph! (And "even in the North Sea" that internationally known resource for clean water)

[koganbot]

(But N. Sea waters contribute to cloud formation which then rains in, like, Glasgow and Stockholm, thus affecting pop music.)

[dubdobdee]

low sperm count = gaian population recalibration!

i've been rereading lots of late 50s early 60s science fiction: blimey they were gung ho back then for the next-stage evolutionary mutation (strangely it always involves become more like an insect)

[koganbot]

What do you think of Jefferson Airplane's "Crown of Creation" (quotes from John Wyndham's Chrysalids)?

[koganbot]

it always involves become more like an insect

Or developing powers of telepathy!

[koganbot]

Wiki:

Wyndham's science fiction may be considered trendsetting in its insistence that interplanetary catastrophes do not just happen to "other people" (e.g. those best-equipped to face them) and would in fact be extremely difficult for our delicate and highly interconnected civilisation to deal with. Similarly ahead of its time is the emphasis that Wyndham put on disruptions to the biosphere as a whole

[dubdobdee]

i don't really remember what happenes in the chrysalids (i can kind of guess!)

bowie's "oh you pretty things" is based on the midwich cuckoos (i believe)

[koganbot]

Post nuclear war, the area of "Labrador" has developed to level of early 19th-century agrarian, surrounded by badlands and beyond that wastelands, though badlands are slowly becoming more habitable and civilization has started encroaching in this frontier area; the badlands populated by outcasts and mutants, who are being pushed back. The two pieces of written matter that survived nuclear holocaust were Bible and a book describing the correct human form. Protaganists Fundamentalist type religion dominates, the theology including the idea that the devil attempts to imitate animals and plants and humans, but not being the lord God himself always screws up, so mutations are signs that the creature was created by the Devil. Some politics in deciding that large horses and special crops owned by influential landowners are fine rather than mutant. Main character is boy who befriends girl with six toes. She is eventually discovered and banished. He also in the evening goes to his backyard and talks to his gorgeous cousin. After a while we

[koganbot]

not being the Lord God himself always screws up

That is, the devil not being God, he (the devil) always screws up in some way or another.