I am a B-movie fan. I love them. They give me interesting ideas for my own stories and thoughts. Sure they often take a bit more suspension of disbelief then other movies but if you can get there you will experience a fun time.
Face-Off was an initial exception, I just couldn't wrap my head around it the first time I watched it. It took a second watching sometime later to get my suspension to the level I felt it needed to be to enjoy the movie. Well low and behold I need not have suspended anything at all!
You too can get your face transplanted with someone else's! How wonderful! and with an implantable voice synthesizer, you can sound like them too! Electronic Voices
A quick point on bottled water: STOP USING IT! Seriously!
Bottled water in the vast majority of cases is no cleaner or healthier then tap water! There have been numerous instances where bottled water often has been tested as having higher amounts of potentially dangerous bacteria then any U.S. tap water. Not to mention the amounts of particles that come off the plastic itself. Ever notice the interesting taste and smell a bottle of plastic water has when it heats up a bit. Yeah, thats the plastic degrading.
Those are health risks, lets look at the actual monetary costs. Your average 20 oz. bottle of water costs between $0.70 and $1.50 depending on brand and location. The average cost of tap water in the united states in 2000 was between $0.07 and $0.40 per gallon. That is a milk jug of water folks. Inflation has not affected this cost significantly. Modern water treatment plants are top of the line and in most of the civilized world provide perfectly safe drinking water to millions of house holds. No bacteria, no harmful build up of chemicals.
Lets say you live in an older section of town and you have old pipes which do tend to harbor strange tastes smells and potential bacteria. You can get yourself an in house water treatment system that will provide mountain spring clear water for a fractional increase in cost over your standard tap water. These eliminate the 'taste' often associated with with older pipes.
Let's look at the environmental impact. I will just give you this fun fact. Despite the fact that recycling is continually growing through out the country in 2004 only one in six bottles were recycled. Check out some figures: Bottles Bottles everywhere
And you don't have to take my word for it, listen to two one of my favorite two man acts, Pen & Teller, call out the BS.
Bull $%*&
-J.R.
Editorial Note from John:
First, a big thank you to J.R. for a tremendous post. I really enjoyed the combination of two interesting and different topics, and what you had to say on both. If folks click through there are some great links here, and the bottled water issue is one J.R. and I both agree on and have talked through many times in the past.
If you're looking for a little multimedia to drive home the point, check out this video on where some of the plastic that doesn't get recycled goes. Warning, this video and the series that follows it are actually very disturbing. To give a quick synopsis they document a crew sailing out into the Pacific Ocean to document "trash island" a mass of swirling trash (largely plastic) and other debris that swirls around way out in the middle of nowhere unclaimed and unaddressed by governments to date. I posted this a little while back, but I think it really reinforces J.R.'s point.:
