BILL GATES DRINKS 'boiled and treated' POO. Ah, 'delicious' Haters might say the man responsible for bringing the world the Microsoft empire has finally had a taste of his own medicine, with Bill Gates admitting on Monday to having swallowed liquid poo. El Reg couldn't possibly comment. In a blog post this week, Gates wrote about trialling a machine that turns faeces into drinking …
The amount of water estimated to have been drunk by all humans that have existed is a tiny fraction of all the world's water ---- dinosaurs on the other hand were around for a very very long time so the chances that what you drink today has passed through a dinosaur is very high.
I looked on the internet and my conclusion is a suspicion that there are orders of magnitude more water in the sea than all of the animals that have ever existed could have passed.
Not very robust for a lunch-hour investigation but:
o Discussion: how many organisms have ever lived on Earth?
There is a famous French song 'Dès que le vent soufflera - Scélérats" by an artist called Renaud which has appropriate lyrics
J'ai déserté les crasses qui m'disaient sois prudent
la mer c'est dégueulasse, les poissons baisent dedans!
translation:
I deserted the dross that said to me be careful
the sea it disgusting, fish fuck in it!
Some groundwater predates animals, some volcanic steam, and water from recent comets would be less likely to have passed through an animal, but in general, most water on Earth has passed through several fish at the very least. The mass of the organisms is not what matters...rather how much they take in over time.
Just one human produces 82,150kg of crap in a lifetime. We eat fairly nutritious stuff. Many animals have to eat stuff that is much less nutrient dense and produce far more for the mass equivalent.
Not to worry, H2O is H2O...as long as it has the right number of protons, neutrons, and electrons. It could have gone through a billion anuses and it would be no different.
"The amount of water estimated to have been drunk by all humans that have existed is a tiny fraction of all the world's water"
Indeed, but surely some bodies of water get recycled more often than others? For example, some bottled mineral water (such as that in Buxton) is estimated to have been sat underground for 10 000 years or more before bottling. Whereas I imagine shallow lakes, man-made reservoirs and the like will end up in the loop more often as rain will fall in the mountains and refill said shallow lakes etc.
I could be wrong about this, of course. Much sleep has been had and much beer has been consumed and subsequently returned to the planet since my Geography lessons of 20 years ago...
" Whereas I imagine shallow lakes, man-made reservoirs and the like will end up in the loop more often as rain will fall in the mountains and refill said shallow lakes etc."
IIRC water from the Thames has passed through at least three sets of consumers before it reaches the sea. Extract from river, purify, supply, drink, excrete, flush, sanitise, re-insert into river....and then repeat at the next extraction point downriver.
This post has been deleted by its author
It always amuses me how squeamish people are over the whole human waste into drinking water thing. Literally every glass of water you've ever drunk in your entire life was at one stage some kind of piss, human or animal, likely both, that's how the world freaking works, it's a mostly closed recycling system that turns shit into food, piss into water, and so on.
Machines just allow us to see the process a bit clearer.
I suggest you overuse 'literally'.
In the UK at least, much drinking water comes from the sky, and is collected in various reservoirs located in the more rainy areas of the country, the water itself ultimately originating in the Atlantic Ocean, which is huge to say the least. Yes biological waste will and does end up there (and has done over all of geological time) but I would wager that most of it repeatedly runs off back into the sea where it came from, unadulterated by faunal oesophagi!
sorry bub... but rain mostly sinks into the ground, washing out whatever waste elimination product by [organism] is on it into the soil, where it is recycled by [organisms] which think of [excrement] as [food], in turn producing [stuff] ..... etc...
You can be assured that water from a natural source ( be it a well or pumped up from several 100 meters down ) has seen so many "faunal oesophagi" that there's literally nothing left to use as [food]. This is known as a natural filter, quite widely used, and nowadays actively induced in waste treatment plants.
I know that most modern dutch waste treatment plants turn out a water quality that's significantly better than our "cleanest" surface water, and that the only reason it is not piped directly into the drinking water plants is the well-known Squeamishness about "recycled poo". Which is funny as hell given that the water that is used in those drinking water plants comes straight out of the Rhine/Meuse delta, carrying....well you can do the math...
Many years ago (approx 1968/69) I went on a visit with my school to the local sewage works (they did those sort of things back then). At the end of the trip we all stood around the water outfall from the plant. The Chief Chemist took a glass and filled if from the outfall. Then he drank it.
Only one of the class took up his offer to do the same. Ironically, that person went on to get a Phd in Chemistry.
Ironically in the late 60s that probably wasn't as safe as it is now, but his immune system was probably better than the current average too :)
I find people who have faith in science refreshing (no pun intended) compared to the mass of humanity who think 'chemicalz r badd'
This post has been deleted by its author
Hi, Martin: While the filtration and purification technology has vastly improved since the 1960s/70s, did we have as much junk in the waste stream? Sure, the agricultural runoff may have been worse (DDT and other since-then-banned chemicals) but the average American back then wasn't loaded up on Big Pharma's finest to anywhere near the extent she/he/ze is today. Maybe it's a wash, I dunno.
Hmm. Perhaps instead of the FAIL icon, I should've chosen joke. (Dictionary.com) ...
Delicious - adjective
1. highly pleasing to the senses, especially to taste or smell:
2. very pleasing; delightful:
Using definition 1: Bill is imbibing, so the reference which is imparted is to the sense of taste.
(Icon - pedantry).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
