Humans, though apparently efficient, manage to use 630 gallons of water to produce a single hamburger. PBS claims Americans eat an average of three hamburgers in a single week, totalling an astounding 50 billion burgers each year. This means it costs 31.5 trillion gallons of water to fulfill America’s annual burger requirements. This also means it costs $3 at a fast food restaurant to contribute to the world’s clean water crisis. Though guilty, most Americans and others alike remain ignorant of this keystone fact, except for Dean Kamen, founder of DEKA Research & Development Corporation and inventor of the Segway. Kamen hopes to solve the vast amount of problems pertaining to unsanitary water using a machine, called the Slingshot after an iconic weapon in the story of David and Goliath, symbolizing the eternal effort to solve big problems, despite the circumstances. The Slingshot is a guaranteed saviour to poverty stricken areas across the world, ultimately ridding the water of countless diseases, and saving lives, too.

A crisis is an understatement, but the struggle to eradicate such an overwhelming problem is barely visible under a microscope. According to the World Research Institute, thirty six countries suffer from severe water stress, the lagging ability to meet the human or ecological demands for water. Antigua and Barbuda top the list, and Afghanistan bottoms out. Large population sizes tend to be in correlation with the countries whose rankings reside near the top, forecasting a brawl for resources, but health seems to be the bigger hub of attention.

Water is health’s asset, humanity’s incentive, and arguably the world’s most important resource. But to those who don’t have access to clean water, it suddenly becomes a disease. Outbreaks in America’s public drinking water supplies can devastate a community, eating people from the inside and out. These diseases assure them that, in spite of their persistence, living for a drop of water only brings hazardous infections, including Salmonella and Giardia, “an intestinal infection marked by abdominal cramps, bloating, nausea and bouts of watery diarrhea,” as Mayo Clinic describes it. 286 million American use these contaminated water sources, but the need to drink clean water exists world wide. Diarrhea, the passage of loose or liquid stools, accounts for 4% of all deaths. And 88% of those deaths, according to the CDC, are the indirect result of unsafe drinking water in children under the age of five. Being a mere sliver of the 3.4 million tallied deaths by means of waterborne disease, many deem it the “world’s leading killer”. But not only is diarrhea a major symptom of waterborne diseases, it also prevents a sufficient amount of hydration as fluids are passed quickly through the body, ultimately creating a deadly cycle commenced by the water itself (Mayo Clinic).

Aside from the chitter-chatter of the bologna and germ sandwiches, some soulful, goodhearted people devote their entire lives to boosting the health of others. Dean Kamen is an inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist that turned a brilliant idea into reality. That idea, the Slingshot, is a machine that uses evaporation to separate water from other pollutants and microbes in an unprecedented distillation method that proves to use far less energy than leading processes. The heat used for evaporation is produced via solar energy, then recycled throughout the system to increase its overall efficiency. By creating the Slingshot, Kamen is in pursuit of reducing the amount of diseases obtained from drinking water, reducing deaths, and reducing the countless steps it takes to reach the nearest water source. Nonetheless due to the help of Coca-Cola, the Slingshot project’s first backer, it started in Ghana with fifteen test units, and has spread to several other countries since ('SlingShot': Segway Inventor Says End of Clean Water Is Near-So He Built a Solution). Kamen’s machine hasn’t let down yet, which is why Kamen pledges to deploy 2,000 additional units in countries around the world by the end of 2015, a telltale sign of its potential for success.

Dean Kamen’s revolutionary machine is everything more than a slingshot in the dark. It’s a design for the future, and a way to make it possible for all human beings to practice their natural rights to health and life. In Kamen’s eyes, hope is the ability to help others by solving big problems. The Slingshot removes diseases from water and dehydration from communities, and makes it possible for all to eat burgers without the worry of letting another man die.




Works Cited

Berman, Jessica. "WHO: Waterborne Disease Is World's Leading Killer." VOA. N.p., 29 Oct. 2009. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
"Global WASH Fast Facts." Cdc.gov. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, June-July 2015. Web. 19 Dec. 2015.
Jackson, Mark. "'SlingShot': Segway Inventor Says End of Clean Water Is Near-So He Built a Solution." The Epoch Times SlingShot Segway Inventor Says End of Clean Water Is Near So He Built a Solution Comments. EPOCH Times, 30 June 2015. Web. 23 Dec. 2015.
Mayo Clinic Staff. "Giardia Infection (giardiasis)."MayoClinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 13 Oct. 2015. Web. 20 Dec. 2015.
Reig, Paul. "World’s 36 Most Water-Stressed Countries." WRI.org. World Resources Institute, 12 Dec. 2013. Web. 22 Dec. 2015.
"Water-related Diseases and Contaminants in Public Water Systems." Cdc.gov. Usa.gov, 7 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Dec. 2015.
"Water-related Diseases." WHO.int. World Health Organization (WHO), 2000. Web. 23 Dec. 2015.

To type is not to write, and not to write is not to use a pen. I am overriding my inevitability to use a pen, the median of technology between a pencil and a keyboard. I am not unrepentant of my actions, as I unwillingly lost my favorite pen, the embodiment of everything I write, which I adore. My favorite pen with about 40% of its lifespan left, fluctuating between blots and dots, was stolen directly from the top of my folder, simply because it felt uncomfortable in my pocket. The only problem is that I’ve had about fifty favorite pens, but the sequential actions of a weekly automated pen-sweeping street cleaner prevents me from having a single favorite pen throughout the entire school year. My careless act of removing my favorite pen from the sanctuary of my pocket, because I failed to prioritize visuals, subsequently led me to an irreversible consequence.

Now the remoteness of the feeling of a pen sitting vertically in my pocket, emphasized by the translucent red tube and the shiny chrome clip wrapped over the copper rivet complementing my gray shorts with a slightly blue hue, leaves me to use a number 2 pencil to take my geometry final, or a keyboard to write this essay, practically forcing me to suffer the hex of a pencil gypsy, which is an insight I do not want, nor deserve. I'd much rather feel discomfort while walking to my history class, the jabbing of the sharp tip on my outer left thigh abandoning a dense ink glob in its place, than having my fingers covered with graphite absorbed by my hand sweat. Now I have no pen, rather a shrinking piece of wood, never sufficiently satisfying my need for bold.

A Sailing Thought


A map.
A black and white photograph.
An ever changing vision sailing through my imagination.
Like a ship at sea,
Equipped with sonar,
Three miles deep, discovering the unimaginable,
Yet it’s still possible.
A crystal clear photograph eases its way onto the outdated screen,
Only to find an old pile of sunken driftwood on the sea floor.
One can consider it garbage,
But another would call it paradise.
A mechanical claw takes hold of
The waterlogged piece of heaven.
And when it finally meets the salty ocean air,
It becomes clear,
And I start to draw.