Another reason to drink beer
I apologise for digressing from my usual media related posts, but I have to talk a bit more about water. Water is important to me: I work out quite a bit, and water is also the only sensible compensation for all the caffeine I consume. Drinkable tap water used to be one of the few advantages Oslo had over London, and the Norwegian capital is almost in the grip of a panic now that its authorities has announced its drinking water unsafe.
Yesterday bottled water was sold out by the time I hit the supermarket, and I had to confine myself to a bottle of carbonated water. Today there was no Norwegian water left when I hit the store mid-day; only Swedish (!) bottled water (hopefully Swedish is better than French bottled water - an exec of Severen Trent Water once told me over dinner that the latter had worryingly high traces of arsenic, but I never got around to test that thesis). Anyway, in these dark water times, this post from eminent beer blogger Knut Albert Solem sure put a smile on my face:
It’s funny. Back in the Middle Ages, one of the reasons people drank beers in vast quantities was that it was the only liquid available that was reasonably safe to drink.
Meet a new acquaintance, the cheeky little fellow in the picture is called Giardia, and is a parasite that is currently inhabiting the water supply of Oslo. (He was probably there in the Middle Ages, too!)
...That’s about four weeks of boiling all the water you want (or need) to drink. Luckily there are other beverages available. And at last we have a use for the ice beers from which they have removed the flavour - they are ideal for brushing your teeth!
