Ice Bucket Challenge

People are still complaining about the Ice Bucket Challenge. It's almost as if a favorite TV show was cancelled for no reason or M&Ms got rid of the yellow M&Ms.

I don't get appeal of the Ice Bucket Challenge in that it's not really all that clever, but I also don't like Taylor Swift and look how popular she is. But these past few weeks I have heard ALS discussed in the media more than I have in my entire life. (And part of that discussion has been correctly calling it "ALS" which I'm definitely for. It's not Lou Gehrig's disease if you're the one dying from it.)

Although the Ice Bucket Challenge might seem dumb and all about our "Look at me!" social media society I know for a fact that people with ALS, their families, and their friends are happy to see the raised awareness of a really awful disease. And a fair chunk of money has been raised from all this ice water goofiness. That money may do nothing for finding a cure but money also goes to assist people with ALS.

Last year I saw plenty of people complaining about the rash of marriage equality symbols that flooded Facebook. The main negative comment was that everyone changing their profile pics wouldn't actually do anything for creating marriage equality. That was true, but it raised awareness which led to media coverage and discussions public and private. And more importantly it meant a hell of a lot to people who are/were banned from getting married.

As for the complaint that the Ice Bucket Challenge wastes water…Hey, it's great that some people are actually aware of how valuable water is. Keep that awareness fresh in mind, folks. We'll need it.

Sure the Ice Bucket Challenge water could be put to better use, and the wood and paint and drywall used to make sets for stupid TV shows and awful movies could be used to build low income housing.

The amount of water wasted in the Ice Bucket Challenge is almost statistically insignificant when it comes to all the fresh clean water we thoughtlessly use ever day in the US.

If 1 million people have done the Ice Bucket Challenge and they used 5 gallons of water each that would be…Yes, that's right; 5 million gallons of water. That is a lot of water.

In the US there are between 300 and 350 million toilets. For ease of numbers let's say the gallons of water per flush (GPF) is 2. (US toilets run from around 1.28 GPF in high efficiency models to 7 GPF in old toilets. 1.6 GPF is the Federal maximum allowed in new toilets.) And let's say that each US toilet is flushed just once a day. (Ha!) That's at least 600 million gallons of usually clean water used ever day just to get rid of our bodily waste. (I found numbers on the Internet, which is how you can check my numbers if you like.)

And that's just our toilets. We also thoughtlessly use or waste perfectly clean water every day running the tap til it's warm or cold, taking 20 minute showers, washing cars just so they look pretty, keeping lawns and golf course green, or flushing the toilet because there's a tissue we just blew our nose on in there.

You can go find the numbers if you like, I'll just say the amount of clean water we use everyday is way way WAY beyond all the buckets of ice water that will be poured over heads for the Ice Bucket Challenge.

The good news for all the critics is that the Ice Bucket Challenge will be gone real soon. Unfortunately ALS will still be around. But thanks to some goofy late summer trend more people are now aware of ALS than ever were before.

Of course as many critics are quick to point out awareness in itself can't do anything but it can lead to things being done. At the very least awareness can be a bit of cold comfort to a person with ALS or his/her family members who don't have to explain to another acquaintance or stranger what ALS is.