Two quick thoughts
Thought 1
This morning I was listening to Susan Murcott, expert in safe drinking water technologies for developing countries, on Wake Up Call (listen to the mp3 here) and she made an incredibly simple point that totally blew me away. The discussion centered on water and water sources in developing nations and she pointed out that basically your water comes to you or you go to your water. Simple right? But the thing that I didn't consider is that if you have tap water, you basically just go to your kitchen/bathroom/whatever to get your water. Ten or so feet and you have what you want. Now if you live in the developing world, you have to go miles to get your water. Also very simple, right? Consider this though, the people who are getting the water are usually women and children. This means that if you're a third world child, you aren't going to school because your goal for the day (and every other day) is to go get water to cook and clean with. This goes on for years and years until you either get a job or have children that will now fetch the water. Essentially, you're destined to a life of struggle and strife (not to mention disenfranchisement) because you don't have running water. (Of course this is an oversimplification and Susan Murcott can better explain what she's talking about)
Again, the mp3.
Thought 2
Washing clothes. It really is easiest to use a washing machine to do it. There was a time however, that people used to wash by hand. Think of all of the time that we save now by using machines; no more spending the whole day scrubbing away and waiting another day for the clothes to dry. Of course, washing isn't the only thing that saves us time, we have TV dinners, spell check, wikipedia, mass transit, home delivery (of papers, food, and DVDs). So we're saving all of this time...what do we do with it?
