What to drink, what to drink...?

A couple days ago I wrote about wine snobs and their corks. Specifically about the silliness of natural cork loyalty. Well, maybe the wine snobs aren't so dumb after all; they're just being environmentally friendly. Apparently, the lowering demand for natural cork is putting pressure on cork forests. I was unaware, before reading this article, that cork is harvested from trees without destroying them. In fact, the cork that is good for stoppering bottles isn't even found until at least the second harvesting. All this means that the forests and their associated ecosystems remain intact despite the commercial use. If cork ceases to be a viable crop for someone, the cork trees will be replaced by something that will be cut down for lumber, effectively gutting the forest ecology of that area. And if you want to push it further, I suppose that a renewable cork resource is greener than petroleum based plastic stoppers or metal caps. Just don't tell me it makes the wine taste better. That's all I'm sayin'.

Since I can't feel quite as superior to wine drinkers, I'll move on to bottled water people. I've always thought that buying water was silly, especially if it has to come from France or Fiji or whatever, and it's even more silly that people believe that it's melted off a glacier or scooped out of a cave or whatever. But with the recent revelation that Aquafina (from Pepsi) is tapwater, now everybody seems to care. In truth, most of the bottled water out there comes from tapwater. Certianly Dasani (from Coke) and all the store-brand stuff is tap water. Granted, it is filtered through some serious equipment, and not your store bought PUR or Brita stuff either. But seriously, these companies use the same water for their other sodas and such, and despite the complete lack of other, more expensive ingredients including secret formula flavors, you still pay the same price for the plain water. Just the cost alone ought to be enough to deter, as noted by the New York Times. But beyond that, understand that bottled water is usually not even regulated as much as your tap water, meaning that there are things that, by law, cannot come out of your tap, but can legally be sold to you at 7-11 with a picture of a pristine mountain spring on the front of them. One the one hand, buying bottled water is silly when the water in your house is probably plenty good, especially filtered through your fridge or whatever. On the other hand, you may live in a place that has nasty tap water. Check here. I've certainly been to places (some of the places I travel for work, especially) where the water doesn't taste so great. Luckily, Portland water is pretty good, and is in fact, some of the best water in the country. But not everyone lives in a place where the tap water is anything more than passable. On the OTHER other hand, remember that your bottled water=somebody else's tapwater anyway.

So back to my original premise, stick with beer.