Eric bought a snake to get his drains to flow faster. It's a pretty cool device, and only costs like $12! We were talking about sewers and how our house has a septic tank (it's a hundred year old house). I was curious about septic tanks, how they work, advantages and disadvantages to modern sewer systems. Of course, http://www.howstuffworks.com came to the rescue.

It's a really amazing system. The curvy pipes under a sink are p-traps and designed to keep smelly gasses from coming up into your house.

Sewer systems are just about the only utility you get for free these days. We pay for gas, power, water, even trash. I remember I was like 10 or 12 years old when I learned we had to pay for garbage service. So if you are totally poor, you may not get water to drink, but your waste will be taken away for free!

This discussion with Eric moved on to toilets and how they work, also a very cool invention. The actual flush of a toilet doesn't happen because of the water dumped from above. It's because of a siphone on the tank that fills up and causes the tank to empty. You can make a toilet flush by dumping 2 gallons into the tank. Cool!

Whoever invented the modern toilet pretty much nailed it. On every flush pretty much everything goes down the tank. And the toilet has no motor, pump, or other fancy machinery.

I highly recommend howstuffworks.com for anything you're curious about.