Quote :

"Dean Kamen holds 150 patents. He invented the Segway, oversees a national high school robotics competition. Owns his own island, even, in the Long Island Sound. So it may seem strange and slightly sad that he found himself drinking his own pee last year in South Carolina."

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/healthscience/atoz/article_890581.php



No. 1: IT'S CLEAN

"It's actually pure, distilled water. Any bottled water you have has far more minerals and other contamination. Our machine literally makes pure distilled water. It really doesn't matter what the input was, the only thing that comes out is pure water. It's not like a tablet that people will use chlorine or something to disinfect it or make it biologically inactive. We didn't take urine and add something so you now have urine plus something to make it safe. ... Nothing from his biology gets through the machine."

No. 2: TO PROVE HIS TECHNOLOGY

"I want people to understand this whole concept of point-of-use, immediately accessible water. It shouldn't be big municipal base stuff. The 21st century is going to see computing being personal, and communications by cell phone being personal. And I think things like power and water will come down to being that way. The industrial revolution is over and the big model, grid and everything else, seems to be not the most efficient solution for the future. And that's a good opportunity for the developing world, because they can step in on the shoulders of giants."

2/23/2006 1:55:50 PM

waterworld did it

2/23/2006 1:57:31 PM

how much water per unit amount of urine? what are the wastes and in what form are they?

and no I didnt read the link

2/23/2006 1:58:19 PM

he just put a fancy box around a mr. coffee and claimed it as his own

[Edited on February 23, 2006 at 2:03 PM. Reason : doesn't drinking distilled water fuck you up and make your cells hypertonic or some shit?]

2/23/2006 2:02:13 PM

how about copying that shit and posting it. your link is a fregin login site

2/23/2006 2:05:52 PM

Quote :

"drinking his own pee last year in South Carolina"

I thought this was going to be about the South Carolina law that prohibits possession of urine. (which was apparently an attempt to prevent people from using others' urine for drug tests....)

I'm not sure if that law is still on the books, as the ACLU sued because it infringed on the civil liberties of citizens of South Carolina, namely Asian-Americans, whom commonly save and drink their own urine for health reasons.

I wouldn't judge. Their culture is twice as old as "ours" and they have a much longer life expectancy.



Anyway, I'd buy one of those machines.

[Edited on February 23, 2006 at 2:09 PM. Reason : ]

2/23/2006 2:08:10 PM

Quote :

"namely Asian-Americans, whom commonly save and drink their own urine for health reasons"

wtf, what asian culture specifically?

2/23/2006 2:23:48 PM

x

[Edited on February 23, 2006 at 2:58 PM. Reason : x]

2/23/2006 2:35:07 PM

^ahahahah

2/23/2006 2:37:18 PM

drinking your own urine is actually common practice in alot of societies, or it was more common until it became taboo, because urine from a healthy person is sterile and contains a ton of helpful minerals.

2/23/2006 3:12:26 PM

it's actually microbes from the uretha opening that contaminate urine.

so if keep clean, your pee will be clean enough to drink.

theoretically.

but in reality, there's no way in hell i'm drinking any piss, i don't care if it's magical fairy piss, i'm not touching it.

2/23/2006 3:16:57 PM

What's the patent number on that?

2/23/2006 7:58:29 PM

waterworld did it

2/23/2006 8:25:52 PM

^^^hahahahaha

yeah what he said, I ain't doing it either

2/24/2006 1:00:37 PM

Quote :

"ain't doing it"

2/24/2006 1:03:33 PM

Quote :

"No. 1: IT'S CLEAN "It's actually pure, distilled water. Any bottled water you have has far more minerals and other contamination. Our machine literally makes pure distilled water. It really doesn't matter what the input was, the only thing that comes out is pure water. It's not like a tablet that people will use chlorine or something to disinfect it or make it biologically inactive. We didn't take urine and add something so you now have urine plus something to make it safe. ... Nothing from his biology gets through the machine.""

Then the water produced by this gizmo is actually no good. Pure, distilled water is bad for your body; it causes essential minerals and ions to diffuse out of your body. There's a reason for the levels of chemicals and metals that are in city tap water. Granted high levels of iron or chlorine or whatever are toxic and will harm you, but their total absense will cause the depletion of the levels of those ions that you are suppose to have in your body.

It's called diffusion. Your body is something like 70% water, but that is not pure water. The water in your blood, for instance, not only has blood cells and platlets (sp?), it also has to carry hormones, gases, etc. All these various substances are in diffusive equilibrium, that is, they possess an equal concentration everywhere (give or take local variances). But suppose you start adding pure water into your body. This pure water enters your body, so now all of a sudden there is a region within your body that has zero levels of the aformentioned substances. In diffusion, things diffuse (move/travel) from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. By adding pure water into your body, the chemicals already within you will diffuse to the areas of pure water until equilibrium is reestablished (ie, the concentration is the same everywhere). Even if the same amounts of substances still remain within you, their concentrations are now lower, and that's where problems begin to occur, since almost all biological processes rely upon the concentration of certain chemicals (a good example is pH). This ignores the fact, of course, that as excess water is removed from your body, it will contain these substances, thus not only does the concentration of these substances decrease, but their actual amount also decreases, hence the loss of nutrients and demineralization.

By the time I have finished this long-ass post, I wonder if anybody else will have pointed this out?

2/24/2006 1:23:49 PM

r kelly

2/24/2006 3:21:18 PM

i haven't looked up how this machine works yet, but if it removes water from stuff, and delivers that which is only water to the drinker

instead of removing stuff from water

then what you ^^ said won't apply



[Edited on February 24, 2006 at 3:29 PM. Reason : ^^]

2/24/2006 3:29:16 PM

http://www.drweil.com/u/QA/QA21181/

Quicker to google than to make up shit you think could be correct.

And this does an even better job of "out thinking" you in regards to distilled water mr umbrella.

http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/distilledwater.htm

[Edited on February 24, 2006 at 3:43 PM. Reason : x]

2/24/2006 3:32:30 PM

^ were you at the gym on the treadmill last night @ 9:30?

2/24/2006 4:14:20 PM

No, I'm typically an elliptical just to warm up guy.

And I think I met you before back in undergrad days. Do you know a Robyn K. that was in EE/CPE? I swear I think I met you through her somehow.

2/24/2006 5:58:46 PM

Quote :

"...if it removes water from stuff, and delivers that which is only water to the drinker instead of removing stuff from water then what you ^^ said won't apply"

No, it most certainly will. What I said didn't deal with how the water in this gizmo is extracted, it deals with what happens once that water enters your body.

Regardless of whether you remove water from stuff (distillation, as mentioned in the article) or remove stuff from water (via some really damn good filtration), pure water is still bad for you to drink.

Quote :

"Quicker to google than to make up shit you think could be correct."

If you're so good at googling, then, show me the study conducted that conclusively proves that distilled water isn't bad for you. I'm just suppose to take one doctor's word for it? Maybe he's right, but where in that article does he present evidence? Don't give me an apeal-to-authority fallacy and then somehow think you've won.

[Edited on February 24, 2006 at 7:45 PM. Reason : blah]

2/24/2006 7:39:00 PM

Perhaps I should rephrase a bit, however. One glass of pure water (pure as in only H2O, no chemicals or ions whatsoever) will probably not be enough to kill you. I get this impression from the second article that State409c posted. However, I would imagine that, if consumed extensively over a long period of time, it would be bad for you.

Perhaps I will take you up on the googling, just to be sure.

2/24/2006 7:53:29 PM

Quote :

"Do you know a Robyn K. that was in EE/CPE?"

nah, i've never met a broad that was EE/CPE

2/24/2006 7:57:46 PM

This argument is pretty much irrelevant to anyone with functioning kidneys.

It's true that adding absolutely pure H2O to your bloodstream dilutes it. However, as long as pure water isn't the only thing you consume, you'll get plenty of the electrolytes and nutrients you need, and your kidneys will keep you in the proper ranges.

2/24/2006 8:15:45 PM

2/25/2006 2:24:49 AM