Water

I have long enjoyed watching water flow, and even more, I enjoy the sound of it doing so --- the breaking of waves on the ocean shore, a waterfall. Ancients, typified by Thales of Miletus, suggested that there must be some unifying force in nature. Nature wasn’t this random collision of various forces --- the chaotic interaction of the gods. It seemed natural that the force would be water. Water seemed to be pervasive: it was a liquid, a gas, and a solid. It moved under its own power; and what a power that sometimes was. So Thales saw water as the arche of which all consisted. 

Water is essential to human life. I have been involved for awhile in a project to resolve the problem indigenous Canadians have with accessing clean water. Typically, municipal water in Canada is clean. Water is tested several times a day. Better to drink tap water than water from a plastic bottle. Well, probably in most cases. But not so with much of the water available to First Nations people. Their water is often toxic with chemicals, and sometimes bacteria. The federal government has earmarked a couple billion dollars to resolution of the problem, but these funds have largely been manifested through central purification systems that do not make sense by reason of cost versus benefits and also because of their propensity to malfunction when there is no skilled help to fix them quickly. Our group has an innovative solution that I won’t detail here just yet. It is much more cost effective than anything I’ve seen suggested as a solution, and substantially more reliable so far as I can so far tell. Hopefully, we will be instrumental in enabling the lifting of many “boil water” advisories.