🚀 go-pugleaf

Professor Vonroach wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:55:10 -0500, Steve <bozone@ripco.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >Fabrikant wrote:
> > Again, if rivers bring salt to the oceans, they also
> >> bring salt to the lakes, and lakes should have been much more salty,
> >> than oceans, which is not true.  I rest my case.
> >
> >Almost all lakes drain out into the ocean through rivers.
> 
> All lakes are fed by rivers and lose water and contained salts by some
> means - draining rivers, evaporation, soil absorption, etc.

Oh feh, already.  The lake can't lose salt through evaporation, and the
soil stops absorbing salt once osmotic pressure reaches zero (pretty
quickly).  Go take a well-deserved break and polish your corduroy jacket
elbow patches.

> 
> >The ones that don't are salty (Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea).
> 
> More saltier than those with better water circulation. All water and
> soil contains salts, they may be kept to a minimum for use in water
> used in analytical chemistry by distillation. Catch a jar of rain
> water and have it analysed - you will find salts in various
> concentrations, including minimal amounts dissolved from the glass
> container. Perfect purity is an illusive ideal.

-ahem-

After extensive contempation in the spirit of the father of the field of
semantics, Alfred Korzybski, I have decided upon amending the previous
statement to read, "subjectively salty."  I am quite aware that no
quantity of water may be said to be salt-free, rather, that we may only
assign a probability to the likelihood of finding a salt molecule
therein.  I am also quite aware that consciousness of minutiae does not
necessarily preclude its omission, usually with an eye toward referring
to an object or event in a less cumbersome and (subjectively) meaningful way.