It seems the environmental engineers in Finland have suffered a huge case of thinking outside the box. You see, there is a pond in Finland located next to an old abandoned mine. The pond is contaminated with heavy metals like copper and zinc, there is also a large sulfur contamination. As water soluble heavy metals have a tendency to prevent life from flourishing, they have to get rid of them. Now most engineers would have come up with some sort of filtering system, or added specific salts which will remove the metals from the water and make them sink to the bottom. The Finns came up with a better idea... pig shit.

Yes, pig shit... and not just a little bit of pig shit, but quite literally a ton of pig shit. A shit-ton if you will, or yet more specifically they intend to pour 450 cubic meters of pig shit into the pond. While I'm quite confident that this is easily a lot more than a ton of shit, let me help you visualize 450 cubic meters. Imagine five football fields stretched end-to-end. Now extend that vision vertically and horizantally, and then fill that box with liquid pig shit.

You see, pig shit contains bacteria... and that bacteria can "feed" on the heavy metals and make them sink. As an added bonus, pig shit doesn't cost a lot of money... and is environmentally natural. On the other hand, it stinks like... well, shit. It also tends to get into ground water and cause contamination issues of a different sort.

You figure they could come up with a better source material for this bacteria. Hell, we grow bacteria of all sorts in our lab, and we don't have to put up with the un-Godly smell. So to the people of Finland, I must offer some advice... don't go swimming near any mines. That smell isn't a skunk, and please, please, please don't drink the water.

-Bryan

Stranger than fiction: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060721/od_nm/finland_mine_dc;_ylt=AptfoHCd84h6YQzrUYHp5j_tiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-

I have very fond memories of my childhood playground back in Texas. There was a large gravel area, enclosed by rotting lumber, and containing the greatest jungle gym of all time. There were monkey bars, and some sort of pipe dome type thing. The main stucture included ladders and swings and fireman poles, and of course a tire pit. As a child I looked at that park with joy and happiness, I would play on it until people watching got tired and had to drag me home. I must have burned myself on that slide a hundred times (hot metal slides on hot Texas days made for melted shoes and burned legs). I must have skinned my knees on the gravel as many times, and then there was that nasty splinter I got... but I digress. As much fun as I had at that playground, some overprotective parent (not mine I assure you) was having panic attacks that their kid might accidently get a little bit hurt. So they insisted that the playgrounds become more and more safe.

Fast forward 15 years, and suddenly you are hard-pressed to find any sort of playground that contains metal or gravel. Now they all have padded foam on the ground, and safe plastic structural pieces.

At what point in time did all the parents in America decide that they want their kids to be complete pussies? Are kids no longer allowed to hurt themselves, or knock out their teeth? Does somebody actually have to get sued every time a child cries. (Every time a child cries, a personal injury attorny get a hard-on.) What the fuck people? Are we no longer allowed to let kids experience the fun and pain that is gravel rash? I'm sure I cried more than once at that playground, hell, I nearly folded myself in half landing a jump off of the swing set. It sucked, but I'll be damned if I wasn't trying again moments later.

So here's my thing to all you parents out there... kids get hurt, it's what they do. It's supposed to happen, that's what life is all about... you fall down, you get back up. If you fall down on rubber chips, you don't learn to be more careful, and then the kid will actually be in danger. He won't learn to hold on tighter to the monkey bars, he will learn that stupidity has no consequences. This is a poor lesson to teach the kids, because they will never learn to fear and respect the more dangerous parts of life.

-Bryan