On a sobering note...

On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:33:49 -0500, "Wolfgang"
wrote:


"Cyli" wrote in message
.. .


I can't see anyone getting ultra sick from having a minor scratch and
swimming in e.coli water unless it the water was so full of it that no
one would want to swim there because of the colour and the smell.
Accidentally or intentionally drinking some, okay.

From the article: "I think it's just sad that it's polluted, and I hope
they find a solution."

Were you pointing out the 'I think' and 'I hope' until it came to
'they find'? Remarkable how the pronouns change there, isn't it? Not
that I'm saying I'm any better, by the way. That's how I feel about
it, too, but at least I realize I'm more part of the problem than of
the solution.

Anybody remember, "The solution to pollution is dilution"?

Yeah. Except there's only so much you can dilute. Then you have to
go to concentration and degradation.

One of those potentially dangerous half-truths......one which, in this
instance, happens to be perfectly correct in its implications, if not in
practical terms.

Wolfgang

--

r.bc: vixen
Minnow goddess, Speaker to squirrels, willow watcher.
Almost entirely harmless. Really.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli

"Cyli" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:33:49 -0500, "Wolfgang"
wrote:


"Cyli" wrote in message
. ..


I can't see anyone getting ultra sick from having a minor scratch and
swimming in e.coli water unless it the water was so full of it that no
one would want to swim there because of the colour and the smell.
Accidentally or intentionally drinking some, okay.

From the article: "I think it's just sad that it's polluted, and I hope
they find a solution."

Were you pointing out the 'I think' and 'I hope' until it came to
'they find'? Remarkable how the pronouns change there, isn't it? Not
that I'm saying I'm any better, by the way. That's how I feel about
it, too, but at least I realize I'm more part of the problem than of
the solution.

Nah, that's interesting, but it didn't occur to me. I was just struck the
juxtaposition of "polluted" and "solution".....it rang that chime from long
ago, and paralleled Bob's observation about threshhold levels. Coliform
bacteria in gneral, and E. coli in particular, are everywhere and we are
exposed to them constantly. They only present a problem (generally
speaking......yes, there are exceptions) when one is exposed to numbers that
overwhelm the body's immune defenses. Hence, the dilution=solution
equation.

Anybody remember, "The solution to pollution is dilution"?

Yeah. Except there's only so much you can dilute. Then you have to
go to concentration and degradation.

Right. In fact, while the limits to the dilution=solution paradigm may not
have been known in detail at the time, the mantra was disingenuous because
in all too many cases those limits had already been clearly exceeded. In
direct contravention to one of the concise statements of an already well
understood ecological principle that followed closely in the wake of Barry
Commoner's "The Closing Circle," that "there is no such place as away,"
people were (and to a large extent, still are) deliberately encouraged to
believe that problems concerning waste can simply be flushed away when, of
course, flushing it away is precisely the cause of the problem.

Wolfgang