Once again, not much surfing got done; too much time was spent in the real world.
Christian
The provocation for this tweet didn't deserve a link. What I tweeted was that Christians might want to consider observing June as Humility Month. There's no link, yet, because Blogspot won't link to future posts. There will be a full-length post here on Sunday.
Social Justice
Also unworthy of a link, although some readers probably read/watched it, was the Guardian's publication of a cheeseball series on "America's Dirty Divide." The seven-minute segment I watched lamented that for every thousand Americans in each "race" category, three White ones, five Black or Hispanic ones, and fifty-eight Native American ones are living without...shudder, quake...city water systems.
There's no way of knowing how many of these people live in rural areas where they can do better than the city water system, and wouldn't have city water systems connected to their homes if they were paid to have. I know for a fact that that's typical of many people in my part of the world, whether we identify as White, Red, or (not in any cases that I know personally, but there probably are some) Black. Your great-great-grandfather did not sink a well, or buy land near a mountain spring, or buy water rights from one, in order to drink (eyeroll) town water. Not that our town water is all that bad. You might drink a little of it when you were in town, if it was ice-cold enough that you didn't taste the chlorine. You just think of it as a mild bleach solution, not water.
When people are already tied into urban water grids, and those grids are not maintained or are maintained in a way that harms poorer neighborhoods--the name of Flint comes to mind--then government is responsible for fixing that.
When people are free from urban water grids, or even when they're not but the grids are not serving them well, what they need are dry-flush toilets. Much cheaper and more sanitary.
Why the Guardian tolerated the videographers' clinging to retrograde ideas about water-flush toilets being modern, safe, reliable, or sanitary, I don't want to try to speculate. Decent dry-flush toilets have been available, and the technology has been improving steadily, for at least twenty years now. They run most efficiently on electricity but, if they are well made and well placed, they work on solar power alone.
Public health policy could stand to shift focus to helping people get rid of those nasty water-flush toilets that foul rivers, and learn to use the better kind.
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