Dear Thirsty,

I have found references on the internet regarding "alternative wellness" that boast it is OK to drink one’s urine. At the same time, I have found news accounts that do not encourage the practice. If drinking your urine is illegal in some countries, I wouldn't want to go to jail for such a thing. Imagine the heckling from your cell mates!

Believe it or not, during the Renaissance, some people used urine to whiten their teeth, which also resulted in damage to the enamel. Whatever it takes to appeal to the opposite sex!

According to Victor S. Sierpina, M.D., ABFP, ABHM, a professor in family medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, it’s not such a good idea. “From my recollection of renal physiology, I would presume that the recycling of one's own waste water would soon lead to accelerated fluid and electrolyte abnormalities, rising BUN/creatinine, abnormal osmolality, and taste really bad!”

For a second opinion, I consulted with Robert Beach, M.D., director of the nephrology and hypertension division at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “Drinking one's urine will not be beneficial in this situation. In fact, it would hasten one's demise. There are two reasons for this. First, when one is stranded in the desert without water, the body loses water. To partially mitigate this loss, the kidneys excrete a urine high in salts but with little water. By redrinking the salts, one loses this effect of gaining water by getting rid of salts. Second, one of the major functions of the kidney is to filter and excrete the waste products that build up from burning food for energy. If one redrinks the waste products, they would progressively accumulate in the body causing kidney poisoning or uremia.”

OK, so now that we've ruled out urine – well, I don't know about you, but I certainly have for me – I suggest you consult the U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76. It's available online on some nonmilitary sites like this one and that one although one can actually purchase an official Department of Defense printed version of the manual on Amazon.com.

Chapter 6 covers the topic of "Water Procurement" and has several charts that discuss where to find water. For example, heavy dew can provide water:

• "Tie rags or tufts of fine grass around your ankles and walk through dew-covered grass before sunrise. As the rags or grass tufts absorb the dew, wring the water into a container. Repeat the process until you have a supply of water or until the dew is gone. Australian natives sometimes mop up as much as a liter an hour this way."

• "Bees or ants going into a hole in a tree may point to a water-filled hole."
• "Green bamboo thickets are an excellent source of fresh water. Water from green bamboo is clear and odorless. To get the water, bend a green bamboo stalk, tie it down, and cut off the top."

• "Conserve your sweat. Wear your complete uniform to include T-shirt. Roll the sleeves down, cover your head, and protect your neck with a scarf or similar item. These steps will protect your body from hot-blowing winds and the direct rays of the sun. Your clothing will absorb your sweat, keeping it against your skin so that you gain its full cooling effect. By staying in the shade quietly, fully clothed, not talking, keeping your mouth closed, and breathing through your nose, your water requirement for survival drops dramatically."
• "If water is scarce, do not eat. Food requires water for digestion; therefore, eating food will use water that you need for cooling."

In all fairness, I have not read Brady’s book. But based on your brief description, I have a three-pronged argument against this theory: Historical/Archaeological, Spiritual, and Everything Else.

Prong 1: Historical/Archaeological
A simple search on Google for “Tyrrhenians” shows that it is the word the Greeks used when referring to the race of people known as the Etruscans. My knowledge of the Etruscans is limited; in fourth grade, I wrote a paper about a bronze Etruscan chariot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Therefore, I consulted with Thomas G. Palaima, a classics professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose areas of expertise include Aegean and eastern Mediterranean prehistory and archaeology pertaining to inscribed or marked materials. “Any theories regarding Atlantis, as taken from Plato's Timaeus and Critias, immediately take us into the realm of fantasy, rather than science,” says Palaima. “If, a big if, this legendary civilization had any basis in dimly remembered historical fact, the most likely candidate is the island of Thera, Santorini [from the Venetian for Saint Irene], in the Aegean Sea about 70 miles north of Crete.”

Palaima says that island is what remained after a huge volcanic eruption and related ash fallout, and tsunamis scientifically datable to circa 1650-1600 BCE. “Excavations of the city buried under the ash fallout have revealed an extensive town with refined architecture and beautiful wall paintings. Unfortunately, there is little indication of writing, but some clay flat-based nodules with seal impressions on them recently discovered indicate that the Cretan Minoan culture was sending parchment messages to the inhabitants of Thera (or Minoans among them). Even though the culture is clearly Minoan-influenced, there is not enough evidence to say anything about the linguistic affiliations of the inhabitants.

As for the connection between Atlantis and the Tyrrhenians, Palaima says there is absolutely no basis for linking them. “Etruscan does not line up with known language families, but its features also do not line up with what is known of Minoan, from the clay tablets we have from the Minoan palatial civilization (1850-1450 BCE). Herodotus' story of the Tyrrhenians coming from the area of Lydia during a famine is uncorroborated, and there is little, if anything, in the material record to argue for such a link. Some few inscriptions from the historical period on the island of Lemnos in the northeast Aegean – fairly close to the site of Troy – have been linked with somewhat more probability with features of Etruscan and together actually grouped by some scholars as Tyrrhenian. But that affiliation, even if true, does not get us anywhere near Atlantis.”

Palaima says theories about Atlantis are similar to those about still undecipherable scripts, like Minoan Linear A, and the so-called Phaistos disc. “In the words of Maurice Pope, they attract language-proposers as flames do moths or horse races gamblers. Or, one might use a more current analogy. Believing those who claim to know whether a real Atlantis existed, where it was located, and what language Atlantaeans spoke, is like believing the White House that they knew that Iraq had WMD, even after the president's deplorable jokes about the WMD being hidden under White House couches and behind White House drapes. Only the consequences are different.

I also found a quote in a story by the BBC:

American classical scholar Daniel Dombrowski said, “Atlantis was only a powerful literary device invented by Plato, which was to act as a means of highlighting the fate of the ideal state created in Plato's mind's eye. The only place in which Atlantis can be found, in addition to the writings of Plato, is in the minds of those with an imagination as vivid as that of Plato.”

Prong 2: Spiritual
Look at the history; look at the world today. Over the years, people from different religions have quoted their holy words as a justification for whatever is the belief du jour. Therefore, the Ezekiel argument doesn't fly with me.

In Hannah and Her Sisters, Max von Sydow's character Frederick said, "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, He'd never stop throwing up." I don't want to be crude, but if Ezekiel were to get a copy of Mr. Brady’s book, well, he might ... might ... disagree.

Accoding to The Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge, Ezekiel was one of Judaism's four greatest prophets. The Book of Ezekiel is the chief source of his biography; chapters 1 to 26 relate to the doom of Jerusalem and the balance is devoted to "promise and consolation."

Non-Jewish sources like to connect Ezekiel to the New Testament prophecy of Armageddon. Since I am of the Jewish persuasion, this whole end-times talk really gets me in a tizzy. It’s not that I’m worried about burning in hell – I place more emphasis on the here and now, try to do things as best I can on planet Earth. As I see it, there are some who seem to obsess with dying and the end of the world, as if that’s the main point of the Bible.

But I digress. The popular Left Behind series and others link Ezekiel to the rapture/end times. Vince Aquilino links Ezekiel to God’s judgment against America due to abortion and to what sounds like World War III:

“The DEBKA report is especially interesting when one considers that these same nations are some of the nations expected to join with Russia, Turkey, Libya, Ethiopia, and Iran in the attack against Israel during the Gog and Magog War – predicted in chapters 38 and 39 of the prophet Ezekiel.”

Biblical geography buffs will be glad to know that Discerning the Times Digest further clarifies this by saying, “scholars have traced Magog and Meshec to modern-day Russia, Tubal as southern Russia to the Caucasus Moutains and Caspian Sea, Togahmah to the Central Asian countries between the Caspian Sea and China, Persia as modern Iran, Iraq and Syria, Cush as modern Ethiopia and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and Put as modern Libya.”

Craig White agrees with this theory, plus he adds Japan and other Asian countries to the mix:

“Notice in Ezekiel 38:13 the 'merchants of Tarshish' and her 'young lions' who men call 'young tigers,' who are the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand, who are modeled after the Japanese, this is why they are called such, say to the invaders of Israel: 'Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?' There saying to the invaders of Israel that you took our greatest trading partners and destroyed them. This is why the ships of Tarshish are howling, because of the destruction of their greatest trading partners the USA, and her allies!

Goodnews Christian Ministry thinks “Tyre” is actually New York City, although it could be Rome. (Wow, what is the margin of error on that?) Their claim is that the September 11 tragedy happened because Ezekiel described a place called Tyre.

At one point in my research, I determined that one could use Google to link Ezekiel to many countries. I played a game in which I entered the words, “Ezekiel prophecy (name of country)” into the search engine. My first try was “Argentina” and what I ended up with was a James P. Dawson argument linking Ezekiel to the Falklands War.

You might say I sound like a person of little faith. Quite the contrary, I do believe in God and I have read the Bible. But I don’t have faith in people who use the Bible to conveniently spin their own yarns. I agree with Aurelia T. Fule, who I think effectively argues against Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others who “free-quote” Ezekiel as they see fit:

Now can we sit with all these 'learned' men and play a game? If you have a reasonable study Bible you find quite different explanations. Meshech and Tubal and Gomer and Beth-togarmah are Assyrian place names, not surprising in that place and time. The Oxford Annotated Bible footnote adds: 'Though people and places in apocalyptic literature can often be identified, they are part of the literary equipment and should rarely be taken literally.' But if you want to show that before Christ’s return the Soviet Union will attack Israel according to the Scriptures, you have a lot of molding to do.

Prong 3: Everything else
While I am sure J.D. Brady has done his homework, he is not the first to suggest that the Bible contains references to Atlantis and, for that matter, other things. After the time of Plato, people pretty much gave up on writing about Atlantis for more than 2,000 years. Then, in 1882, Ignatius Donnelly released Atlantis, the Antediluvian World in which he took his own multipronged approach to prove the existence of Atlantis. Early on, I think he makes a pretty good argument by saying that for many years, Pompeii was merely a mythical place – and we all know what a discovery Pompeii was. Donnelly also mentions the Noah's Ark story from the Bible and similar stories from other cultures as a possible explanation of the destruction of Atlantis:

“The Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. In the legends of the Chibchas of Bogota we seem to have distinct reminiscences of Atlantis. The Toltecs traced their migrations back to a starting-point called 'Aztlan,' or 'Atlan.'

In the 20th century, famed psychic Edgar Cayce had many stories about Atlantis. Heinrich Himmler believed an offshoot of the Atlanteans settled in Tibet. There have also been theories of a Nordic-Aryan-Atlantean connection – in fact, at about the time of Plato, Pytheas of Massalía wrote of a place called Thule that was perhaps Scandinavia and/or Atlantis.

In more recent years, Joseph F. Blumrich, a NASA engineer, believed the Book of Ezekiel contained descriptions of Unidentified Flying Objects. In fact, he left NASA to write the ebook Da tat sich der Himmel auf (The Spaceships of Ezekiel). Of course, Erich von Daniken’s bestseller from the 1970s, Chariots of the Gods? also describes the UFO/Ezekiel connection.

End of pronged approach. Whew! Not sure if you knew, but according to the Dr. Who TV series, the old motto at the Bank of Atlantis was, "The First Bank of Atlantis – it would take a tidal wave for us to lose your money!" Sorry, just had to throw that in there.

When anthocyanins are exposed to acids or bases, they change color. An average anthocyanin is red in acid, violet in neutral, and blue in alkaline solution. Some anthocyanin pigments can also be changed due to heat and light. The fact that your wine residue turned blue suggests the soap was a strong base.

If you want to get more specific than acid vs. base, then you need to measure something called pH, which is an abbreviation for "p(otential of) h(ydrogen)." pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. Acids and bases are on opposite ends of the pH scale. The number 1 is the strongest acid and 14 is the strongest base.

Soap makers in general say they try to avoid soaps with a pH more than 9. But according to the Walton Feed Soap page, many major brands of soap are higher than 9:

Interested in doing more chemistry experiments? According to General Chemistry Online, the following household substances can be used as acid-base indicators: