Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden.

Ye nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne.
But tell me nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Probably you have decided from the above that I am a member of the Flat Earth Society and a nonbeliever in the microworld. Not so. In fact, I read with open-mouthed wonder of the doings of positrons, quarks, and neutrinos and I stand amazed at the diversity of creation. Under every gnat’s armpit there remain a billion universes to be discovered. There’s nothing new about this. An 18th century poet stated it eloquently:

On every flea, there’s a flea to bite him,
So on and on, ad infinitum.

Appreciation for the rich microworld teeming with life does not require, however, that one profess faith in the gospel preached by today’s pseudo-science establishment any more than belief in God requires belief in Jimmy Swaggart. In other Gazette articles I have frequently confessed that I do not worship at Robert Gallo’s altar. Read more

In technology of processing of water the essential role is played not only by the total amount of the weighed substances, contained in it, but also their dispersity, structure, structure and properties.

The optimum technological circuit of processing of water and charge of reagents on their removal depends on the physico-chemical characteristics of insoluble impurities. Read more

Among vast set of substances water occupies a completely special place. And it should be understood literally. Almost all physico-chemical properties of water are exceptions in nature: it is really the most surprising substance in the world.

Surprising not only because of variety of the isotope forms of a molecule and not only because of hopes, which are connected to it as with a source of energy of the future. It is surprising by its most usual properties.

Let’s not doubt in a law. Water is the rarest, and, maybe, unique exception to the rules. Perhaps, there is no substance more surprising and mysterious, than ordinary water. But it is not possible yet to explain the reason of it up to the end of, though it is clear, that the secrets of water are hidden in a structure of its molecule and intermolecular structure. Read more

Life always leaves itself free space for maneuvering;
it never submits to exact calculation.
Theodor Schwenk.

History shows that superstitions are not manufactured by the plain man.
They are invented by neurotic intellectuals with too little to do.
Lancelot Hogben.

Every age has invented outrageous metaphors to explain its mysteries. We dwellers of “the kingdom of dead laws” are no exception. Though the gods, the stars, and crystal balls are out of fashion, our age has given life to a vast microworld inhabited by shadowy demons known only to a handful of high-tech wizards who explain them for us the way priests of old explained the will of the gods. Our oracles are consulted via the microscope and its high-tech variants. Mysticism, as Hogben says, has taken refuge in the atom.

Here is a fact that few have caught on to: Science is the religion of our time. To varying degrees, we are all believers. And our child-like acceptance of the pronouncements of the microscope gazers diminishes us and obscures our view. Read more

The wise men of Miletus thus declared
The first of things is water.
Pythagoras.

Thales of Miletus. known as the Father of Greek Philosophy, founded his school of thought over 2,500 years ago on the premise that “All things are water.” On the other side of the globe, Taoists like Lao-tzu and his disciple Chuang-tzu were teaching that water is the model for human behavior, the tangible expression of the flowing, organic pattern of nature. “Man is water,” Chuang-tzu said. “It congeals to form man, and his nine openings and five viscera appear. . . . What is it, then, that has complete faculties? It is water. There is not one of the various things that is not produced through it. It is only he who knows how to rely on its principles who can act correctly. . . .”

Water moves through all things. A jellyfish is 99% water, and our own bodies are literally pumped into shape by water. Like the Earth, we are more than 70% water. Water is the common fabric that unites us with the Earth and all its creatures. Read more