Water supply

Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Irrigation is covered separately.

Global access to clean water

In 2010, about 85% of the global population (6.74 billion people) had access to piped water supply through house connections or to an improved water source through other means than house, including standpipes, water kiosks, spring supplies and protected wells. However, about 14% (884 million people) did not have access to an improved water source and had to use unprotected wells or springs, canals, lakes or rivers for their water needs.

A clean water supply - in particular water that is not polluted with fecal matter from lack of sanitation - is the single most important determinant of public health. Destruction of water supply and/or sanitation infrastructure after major catastrophes (earthquakes, floods, war, etc.) poses the immediate threat of severe epidemics of waterborne diseases, several of which can be life-threatening.

Waterworks (card game)

Waterworks is a card game created by Parker Brothers in 1972. The game pieces consist of a deck of 110 pipe cards, 1 bathtub-shaped card tray, and 10 small metal wrenches. The object is for each player to create a pipeline of a designated length, beginning with a valve and ending with a spout. Players race to be the first to complete a continuous, leak-free pipeline that connects their valve card to their spout card.

Gameplay

Players begin with a hand of five pipe cards and two wrenches. Cards used in play are lead pipe cards, copper pipe cards (invulnerable to leaks), and lead pipe cards that are already leaky. The valve card is placed on the table to begin a player's pipeline. The spout card is set aside until it is used by a player who has completed their pipeline, and then immediately the player ends the game by placing the spout aimed down toward the player.

A number of different pipe shapes (L-bends, T-pipes, straight, etc.) are represented in the game. Leaky pipes can only be added to the end or over the last piece of another player's pipeline, and players cannot add to their pipeline until leaks are repaired. Leaks are repaired by either placing an intact pipe of the same shape over the leak or placing a wrench on the leak card. Repaired pipes cannot leak again. Play proceeds clockwise and new cards are drawn after cards are played. Players always have the option of exchanging a single card rather than playing a card.

Eaux d'Artifice

Eaux d'artifice (1953) is a short experimental film by Kenneth Anger. The film was shot in the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Italy. The film consists entirely of a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothes who wanders amidst the garden fountains of the Villa d'Este ("a Hide and Seek in a night-time labyrinth") to the sounds of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", until she steps into a fountain and momentarily disappears. The actress, Carmilla Salvatorelli (not "Carmello"), was "a little midget" Anger had met through Federico Fellini. Anger used a short actress to suggest a different sense of scale, whereby the monuments seemed bigger (a technique he said was inspired by etchings of the gardens in the Villa d'Este by Giovanni Battista Piranesi).

The title, a play on words, is meant to suggest Feux d'artifice (Fireworks), in obvious reference to Anger's earlier 1947 work. Film critic Scott MacDonald has suggested that Fireworks was a film about the repression of (the filmmaker's) gay sexuality in the United States, whereas Eaux d'Artifice "suggests an explosion of pleasure and freedom."