the need to conserve water

As a non-conformist by nature, I have a tendency to question everything I hear, the wisdom of anything being preached etc. So the first time I heard about the need to conserve water, as a child, I immediately felt - why?
After all, isn't water a constantly renewed resource? Don't rains replenish all the freshwater we use every year?
When I grew to know more, I learned about the water table depletion, and how rainwater is not percolating down to replenish it at a fast enough rate. A bit rather like the oil deposits which are being pumped out without being replenished.
Still, that didn't make that much sense about why water needs to be conserved. It didn't make as much sense as, say, conservation of energy.
That is until I figured out the energy bit of the equation. The water that runs out of your tap or faucet does not get there by magic or by itself. The water that you use represents a significant amount of energy investment. It too a lot of energy to get that water to your tap. So when you waste water, it's not just water you're wasting. It's also the energy that was required to bring it to your tap.
Similar arguments hold true for any product we use... paper included. The trees represent only one part of the equation. The other part is the energy spent in processing the wood into paper.
So don't waste water, don't waste paper, don't waste energy.

in a lighter vein

During my random browsing, I stumbled on the following -

http://www.quq.dk/cybersex.htm

I was laughing really hard at some of the funny shit that's on this page.
And I thought who'd laugh at it as hard as me? Immediately only one name sprang to mind. My one dear friend.
So this one's for you chum - hope you laugh and hope life's treating you alright!

justice and terrorism

I've always been a proponent of just desserts. What you sow, so you shall reap, and in some cases, with a little help from the victim of your sowing! In many of my rants in the past, you'll notice a flavour of extreme justice. i.e. going beyond the economic value or the punitive value of a crime. It's going much further and punishing the seed of evil within, which will usually laugh at imprisonment or monetary penalties. This seed will only be terrified of pain, of immesurable loss.
Enough about the basis of justice... on with the topic of the day.
The bomb blasts in London got me thinking on these lines again. Supposedly an act of vengence (like so many terror attacks), for Britain's role in the war crimes in the Middle East (yes, that is what they were, and still are). But how stupid and black hearted the perpetrators must be, when none of the victims had anything to do with the war crimes! Come to think of it... there was a BIG anti-war movement in the UK. Many Britons had openly lambasted Blair for supporting the US in its war efforts. So in effect, the stupid assholes of terrorists effectively killed many of their supporters and sympathists. How dumb is that?
Not to mention the fact that it violates the basic tenet of justice. The act of revenge should only be directed at the perpetrator of the first injury. In this case, all the people affected were innocents. How is that justice in any way?
What Blair and Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan was just that... slaughtered countless innocents in the name of revenge. That's what makes them assholes and shitstains of the worst order. This act of terrorism in London makes the stupid terrorists no different.
If they had the balls and the courage of their conviction, they would have attacked military targets, not civilian ones. They would have targetted the leaders responsible for the deaths in the Middle East, not innocents on the streets. But most of the times, the attacks of the ball-less idiots, who engage in acts of war, impact innocents (what the Americans term as collateral damage). Totally unpardonable and despicable.
All the people who arrange, plan and fight in wars should be summarily executed, or better still, put together in huge fighting arenas, and killed by each other for the entertainment of spectators. Of course, they should be given hand to hand combat weapons.
I can just hope that all these numbskulls kill each other and give the rest of the world a break.