Weeds. White Storks. Water

I have seen the future. And. It. Is...Weeds. Uh oh. The other scary piece of information from this NYT Magazine article is that the "middle-of-the-road" climate project for 30-50 years from now is that we'll all be living in downtown Baltimore in the summer. If that doesn't get everyone in Prius' I don't know what will.

Most of us have heard, whether jokingly or as serious health advice, the tales of storks and their relation to human fertility. After reading this story, I learned that the white storks of the Alsace and Lorraine region of france have actually depended on human populations for centuries, and after near extinction are being brought back by a human reintroduction program.

The white storks are supposed to migrate to Africa and back as part of their life cycle (which was one of the factors contributing to their decline). Now, some have wised up:

Today, about half of the Alsatian white-stork population migrates. Only about half of those make it to the traditional wintering grounds in Africa. The rest stop in Spain, where open Dumpsters provide easy meals.

"They realized it was easier to stay in Spain," Wey said. "And the weather was nice."

Ok. And let's review this once more. Water in a bottle: bad. Water from the tap: Good. Buying concentrated water: Stooopid.

The push to turn water into the new wine is a marketing phenomenon: The bottled-water industry is engaged in an intense effort to convince Americans that the stuff in bottles is substantially different from the stuff out of the tap — and worth both the cost and the environmental guilt of buying it.

But empirical tests have repeatedly shown that they are generally the same. In blind taste tests, many people who swear they can differentiate between bottled-water brands and tap water fail to spot the differences, and studies have shown both are fine to drink, and both occasionally can have quality problems.

Experts who study bottled water as a cultural phenomenon say differences are largely marketing inventions.