A calamity of our own making

A few days ago I wrote about a decade-old medical experience with parallels to modern tech. Today I have a recent story from home with parallels to medicine. We have an indor fountain in our fancy new home, ⊕ [Note: The story of how we ended up in a house some two levels of fancifullness above our needs and wants deserves a separate post, maybe a whole series of posts. ] a thin slab of rock over which water runs in a smooth sheeth. Problem one: when the water tank is full the fountain is nearly silent. In the dry Colorado air, it is full for a day or two at most, after which it becomes an increasingly annoying drip-drip-dripapalooza. Problem two: you can’t fill a fountain with plain tap water, unless you want to clog the pipes with sediment. No, you need it to be deionized, at least aquarium-grade, preferably distilled. Problem three: the only place that will refill a 3 gallon bottle of deinozed water near us is Whole Foods, which during my time in the US went from the third great…