Today, I'm grateful for toilets and running water. If you want to stop reading there, go for it. Because what follows is an assortment of thoughts that have been floating around my brain for a few weeks. Bear with me. To me, one of the most important requirements for civilization is a good wastewater system. When you are living by yourself or with just a few people, you don't need a fancy system. If there's no one else nearby to worry about, you can probably figure out a way to get rid of it that doesn't make you sick. But as soon as you get a lot of people living close to each other, you need a good system or there will be a lot of water-borne illness. So when a city has figured that out, I count that as a huge success, one that will really allow people to get out of poverty because they won't be dying of cholera or dealing with hookworm. (Look up Lowndes County, Alabama. It's a problem there.) When a society can handle something this unpleasant in a sanitary w