planetwater

ground- water, geo- statistics, environmental- engineering, earth- science

Archive for September, 2008

Plup!

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For already quite a while doughnut-shaped water bottles are available in Finnish supermarkets. The idea is, to donate 10 cents of each sold bottle for the protection of the Baltic Sea. Is this sensible? The bottle is a disposable one. The water is tap water. It isn’t even sparkling water, because most people don’t like bubbles in water (as long as there isn’t also hop and malt).

In most bars and restaurant in Finland you get tap water for free. There are no additional costs for transport and packaging and you can be sure the water is potable. As long as you don’t live in Nokia, there is absolutely no reason to buy bottled water. Drinking tap water and investing some money in a proper waste water treatment at the summer cottage is probably far more sensible than doughnut-shaped bottles.

Anyway, the advertisement video is nice. Participants are Bam Margera, HIM and Jorma Uotinen, which is a famous Finnish dancer.

Written by Johannes

September 15th, 2008 at 1:41 am

Organizations That Help Provide Drinking-Water

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I came across the site of charitywater, who put an enormous effort into their website to help and drill wells. If it’s your birthday, you can sign up there and let people give money to those guys.

As a hydrogeologist, I want to point you also to hydrogeologists without border, who work along similar lines, but are trained hydrogeologists. I guess already from their name and the similarity to the probably better known medicines sans frontiers / doctors without borders, you can easily derive what their goal is.

Update Wednesday; April 22, 2009: Drinking Water for Life is another option if you are looking into ways to support people who can’t afford drinking water.

Update Sunday; April 26, 2009: Please check also “charity:water” out

Written by Claus

September 12th, 2008 at 5:54 am

Best Presentation is About Water!

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Slideshare announced the winners of their presentation contest. The winning presentation is a cool summary about the importance of drinking water. Check it out:

THIRST
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

Written by Claus

September 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 am

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Geostatistics

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On Friday I’m leaving for Southampton, UK. From Monday to Wednesday there’s the conference “geoEnv 2008“. I’m quite excited: There are many exciting speakers from the geostatistics community who I have never heard live let alone met. The conference seems to be organized really well. And I am going to give a talk on tuesday afternoon, entitled “Applications of Copulas in Geostatistics”. I would be really surprised if anybody who reads this here would actually be in Southampton, but if this should be the case, I sure would be happy to meet you, and buy you a beer!

It turns out that there is a dinner organized in the evening after my talk on restored classic british sailing ship.

Due to this conference, this blog here will likely be updated less frequently than usually. I hope you guys can understand!

Written by Claus

September 2nd, 2008 at 12:13 am

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Gustav

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I just found a few interesting links related to Gustav, the Tropical storm that is going to hit the US Gulf Coast:

  • The Google Earth Blog has put together a huge collection of links in google earth;
  • Wired has maps by a reinsurance company on “Storm Surge Risks” along the US Golf Coast; Wired also has an interesting piece what sort of rescue or help resources are in place if disaster should strike;

Written by Claus

September 1st, 2008 at 1:23 am

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