[QatzelOk]

Yesterday, I guy I work with announced to everyone that he saw a film on water privatization, and he had film posters that he put up on the bulletin board (they lasted an hour) and a passionate speech at the beginning of the shift.

He also "accidentally" broke the water drip holder on the office water cooler, and then told me - in a socially-conscious aside - that it was an "accident" wink wink.

Personally, I am against bottled water, and I make it a point to drink from the tap.

Is it better to drink from the tap or to bust the water cooler, if you want to move the world towards public water quality?

[MB.]

Depends how awful the tap-water tastes.

[Oxymoron]

Honestly bottled water is the greatest fraud in our society. It is barely filtered.
But as a lazy mother fucker I have yet to install a filter on my tap.

[QatzelOk]

It turns out the water cooler isn't busted. The plastic grill is supposed to be in two pieces.

Still, Tim left thinking he destroyed it, and probably slept better with this minor act of Avatar-hood.

[Lensky1917]

Is breaking a water cooler good politics?

No.

The water cooler is a meeting place to gossip with coworkers, it's an essential tool of office politics.

[QatzelOk]

But what about if you have an agenda that involves bottle water?

Is it then okay to sabotage one of the dispensers of your object of scorn?

[Zyx]

People still buy water?

I drink tap or mother's refrigerated boiled water.

No sense in spending 100 times more; the tap is good enough to clean in.

Just fill the cooler with tap water.

[Huntster]

This thread is a great example of an issue over nothing. I guess it's common among city folks to find something to be "agin".

It's a drink of water, for Pete's sake. If it tastes better (less chemicals and/or colder) from the cooler or a bottle than from the tap (which is likely to be nearly toxic in some cities), drink the bottled or cooler water.

[QatzelOk]

The thread is more about "life on earth" than it is about how exciting my own life is.

Bottled water is more of a problem than you think.

For one thing, it represents the commercialization of a human NEED. Why are merchants allowed to contaminate water with their factories and oil sands projects, and then allowed to sell clean water for 1000 times more than the clean water that they destroyed?

Is air next?

I realize land was taken out from the feet of most people by force a long time ago.

"Getting a life" requires water.

[GandalfTheGrey]

nothing wrong with tap water - at least in any developed country. I'm going to insist my children drink only tap water because of the flouride they get in it. Growing up on a farm I didn't get that, but luckily my parents made me take flouride tablets every day.

Is air next?

reminds me of Space Balls where Mel Brooks is addicted to sniffing cans of air

[Rancid]

I wonder if Qatz would drink tap water in China.

Anyway, I agree that bottled water is a scam for the most part.

[QatzelOk]

I wonder if Qatz would drink tap water in China.

What's wrong with the tap water, and who damaged it?

**shakes fist as water cooler**

[Rancid]

The Chinese government ruined it.

[QatzelOk]

The Alberta oil sands project - which is a way for Canada to stay rich during a recession by destroying the atmosphere selling Americans filthy oil for their SUVS - is also contaminating the largest freshwater supplies left on earth.

The future of Alberta is bottled water.

Long after the oil has been used up driving back and forth to awful suburbs, the grandchildren of today's Albertans will have to leave their homeland to go live somewhere where water is abundant.

They are having their futures aborted by today's Harper government, and the complicity of corporate media.

[The Clockwork Rat]

^ There was a Canadian American who I talked to who organised a protest against the oil sands. I had an interesting conversation with him about the effectiveness of direct action, with me being the sceptical one.

[QatzelOk]

^ There was a Canadian American who I talked to who organised a protest against the oil sands. I had an interesting conversation with him about the effectiveness of direct action, with me being the sceptical one.

The current "protests" against the tar sands are about as effective as the intifadas were against Israeli apartheid.

As the young people get tear-gassed in Ottawa, the tar sands expand. And expand. And expand.

Maybe humanity just needs to get used to the idea of being enslaved by corporate psychopaths who destroy their drinking water to make an extra billion.

[The Clockwork Rat]

Oh, he knows that each individual action is pointless, but... fuck he was drunk and I was distracted.

He had his reasons...