The progress in sharing housework that was recorded from 1992 to 1997 has now stalled.I can't understand why, in a modern age, the division of housework is still a point of contention between men and women. Surely everyone wants to live in a moderately clean home and each person should work to their strengths. Don't like a stinky toilet - clean it! Can't stand doing dishes - leave it to your partner. Take out the garbage instead.
It looks like they've used local rock to ensure the facility complements the surrounding landscape but without sacrificing function for form.
This eco-toilet comes at a smaller price tag of $140,000, runs on solar energy and has panels which are easily and cheaply changed in case of vandalism. They are designed to be 'privacy-reduced' in order to discourage loitering.
"What is this mere talk of women empowerment and feminism worth if there is no provision of something as basic as toilet facilities for the poorest of poor women," asks Sheikh.
Plans call for the restroom to be named "Bowl Plaza" with buildings shaped like toilet tanks and entrances resembling a toilet seat. A walkway will look like an unfurling roll of toilet paper.
www.kansas.com
I recently did a study of female toilet users in pubs, trying to get an idea of what women like and don't like about public toilets. I was surprised that one of the things that came out top of the list was hand dryers - most women prefer hand towels. Dryers often don't work, take too long, and only one person at a time can use them, meaning that most people just dry their hands on their trousers. Dyson New Zealand has possibly addressed some of these problems; they unveiled the Dyson Airblade this week at Auckland airport.
Dyson claims the dryer (or is it drier?) is the "fastest, most hygienic hand dryer". It works by blasting a "high speed sheet of air, which gently squeegees your hands dry". That sounds kinda sexy. You can see it in all its sexiness at their very sexy website. It took the engineers an incredible 3 years to develop this next step in hand-drying technology. The Airblade was actually released in 2006 but I'm unsure how high the uptake has been. It's certainly the first time I've heard of it.
Ho Chi Minh City's attempts to "work towards a civilized urban lifestyle" have been hindered by a lack of suitable sites for public toilets. Residents are concerned about having toilets built in front of their houses - but presumably they don't mind if people urinate in the gutter. The stigma attached to public toilets needs to be mollified by designing buildings that aesthetically complement the districts - but with only a month to build them, I'm not sure if that'll be possible.
No such problems finding sites for toilets in Pune, India - they've installed 110 toilets in their homes. Friends of Shelter Associates (USA) has constructed toilets for sex workers, people with disabilities and those living below the poverty line. Another fabulous NGO doing great work in this International Year of Sanitation.
It's not very often that I wished I lived in Canada - but OH MY GOD they have a toilet festival! Organised by Oxfam, the festival aims to raise awareness about water and sanitation issues in developing countries.
I do however very often wish that I lived in the UK because it's the only place in the world where you could hold a From Looe for a Loo challenge. Bob and Chris May cycled 300 miles from Loo to Dymock to raise £1500 for a toilet at St Mary's church.
Toilet blog Where's the Toilet? has given an incredible 9 out of 10 to the toilets at Raffles Beach Singapore. This is a much pleasanter story about toilets than one usually hears about Singapore.
And finally tonight, a German toilet collector (that is, a German who is a toilet collector, not a collector of German toilets) spent £1,800 pounds for a rare toilet - only to discover that he had purchased a tiny replica. What do you do with a collection of toilets? Maybe you open a toilet museum. No, too obvious. How about a toilet restaurant?
(I never thought I'd add 'food' as a category on The Bog Logger).
And that is, folks, The Bog Logger signing off on this gorgeous half-way-through-the-Olympics Friday.
An auspicious day, according to the Chinese, and with the opening of the Olympics today, Beijing can be proud to boast that it has 5,333 public toilets and 8,000 toilet attendants.
Topping the list of most useful items in this week's flush is The Woon Box, an all-in-one toilet, kitchen and shower. Sounds like my last apartment. Oh, those wacky Dutch.
In England, a Morecambe man has been banned from every public toilet in the UK after an attempted sexual assault. Don't be alarmed if he knocks on your door asking to use your loo; he is a man of previous good character.
The development of an iPhone application which locates toilets in Australia by using the National Toilet Map has been scuppered by government bureaucracy.
Okay, so this next story has a lot of problems for me. First of all, it involves Christian motorcyclists. Like, what? Secondly, the Christian motorcyclists are meeting at the Kum and Go. Okay, now in my country, that word just there, that K word, kum, that's totally dirty. Usually it's spelled with a 'c' but still, dirty. And thirdly, and why it's making it onto The Bog Logger, is that these Christian motorcyclists are meeting at the Kum and Go (whatever that is - I'd rather not know) to go on a 'toilet paper run'. They're doing this for some organisation which doesn't receive government funds or denominational support, nor, apparently, toilet paper. Oh, those wacky Christians. Read the full story here and let me know what it's about. Cheers.
That's all for me today. It's almost time for the Opening Ceremony.
Birds nest? Looks more like a glowing toilet seat to me.
When Val Curtis wanted to effect some real good, she turned to the powers of evil.
Dr Curtis, an anthropologist, decided positive action needed to be taken to stop the millions of unnecessary deaths from diseases caused by dirty hands. Handwashing with soap can reduce the risk of diarrhoea by about 47% and the risk of respiratory infection by 23%. So Dr Curtis turned to the organisations who know better than anyone how to convince people to do something - marketing companies.
She knew that over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors - habits - among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks, apply lotions and wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.
Read the whole article for a truly creepy and unnerving understanding of what it is that makes us do what we do every day without thinking - and who is controlling our habits.
Ghanaians had no problems washing their hands when they could see the dirt, but didn't think it was necessary to wash after going to the toilet because they couldn't see the germs. Employing freaky manipulative marketing tactics, Dr Curtis's team produced a public health campaign which sold disgust, and it worked - a 13 percent increase in the use of soap after the toilet and a 41 percent increase in soap use before eating.
Dr Curtis's team has managed to use the 'powers of evil' to effect real good in Africa, and I think that's brilliant. Clearly other campaigns hadn't worked so the team turned to something radically different. Other campaigns had attempted to blame the mother for their sick children, without properly educating them or changing their habits. In her 2003 article "Talking dirty: how to save a million lives" Curtis points out that handwashing may be at least as effective as some vaccines under development, and eminently more reachable by most people.
There are of course serious concerns about multi-million dollar peddlers of questionable health products intruding into the public health sphere. There is a risk that it can all go horribly wrong a la Nestlé, but if Dr Curtis's Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap manages its campaign effectively, then the risk should be minimised.
Dr Val Curtis is an interesting cookie. Her research interests include the evolution of human behaviour, the role of disgust and its relationship to hygiene and morality. Her research suggests that disgust evolved to protect animals, including humans, from disease and helps explain the peculiar history of hygiene - and that the cues which signal disgust can be manipulated. Clearly, she is a woman who is researching new avenues to change old problems, and I admire that.
Diarrhoeal diseases are the forgotten killers of children. Every year about 2 million children die from these neglected diseases (WHO Report 2002), the equivalent of a full jumbo jet every 2 hours. However, there are ways to prevent these deaths, and one of the best is also one of the simplest: washing hands with soap. (International Journal of Environmental Health Research: 13, S73 - S79 June 2003)
I wouldn't want to be the Aviation Minister with statistics like that!
As part of a wider campaign to ensure the equal and fair treatment of meat workers, the union are urging Tesco to stop Brown Brothers from subjecting their workforce to a toilet break policy where workers are forced to clock off to visit the toilet.
The staff are also officially expected to provide medical evidence in order to be excused from the system.
A union spokesman said: “The policy means presumably that women in the early stages of pregnancy or simply having their period would have to get a doctor’s note to evidence the reason why they need to use the toilet more often than usual.”
Bringing you all the loo news you can handle, and some that you can't - just in time for the weekend!
Sheffield artist Jacqui Bellamy has been snapping photos of women in the toilets of nightclub Razor Stiletto "queuing, chatting, putting on make-up etc," and will be showing her series at The Forum Bar as part of its Wednesday night live programme. They look like an interesting lot, those Razor Stiletto people, so if you're in the area check it out.
You might remember the story of Pam Babcock, the woman who sat on a toilet for two years. Her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, was charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult. Last month he pleaded no contest to the charge, and this week he was sentenced to 6 months in jail, but was granted probation after Pam asked for leniency. Good on you, Pam. Clearly, both Pam and Kory have some social and mental problems that they need to work through, and I don't think jail will help ol' Kory at all.
This one's actually an old story, but it's popped back up in my news feed and it's quite awful. Brown Brothers meat processor, which supplies meat to Tesco in the UK, demands that employees clock off when they go to the toilet. This so obviously discriminates against women, particularly menstruating and pregnant women, that I'm agog! The restrictions are part of a pay deal that tries to streamline toilet break times - and look, I totally get it that it takes workers 20 minutes to go to the toilet because of all the gear they're wearing, but seriously! This is the 21st century! Can't we come up with a better solution? It's not the fault of the workers that they have to wear a spacesuit - why should they pay the price? And more importantly, why do women have to pay a higher price?
Not so much toilet news, as toilet humour - Dave TV has a list of the 10 oldest jokes in the whole world ever - and I have to say I don't think I find them particularly funny. Maybe I need to scrub up on my ancient history or something. Anyway, they're here. I do like this quote from Dr Paul McDonald, who wrote the report:
What they all share [...] is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion. Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research.
Unfortunately, Qantas is back in the news - this time because the pilot refused to allow passengers out of their seats during a delayed landing. One passenger was forced to pee in a sick bag. Look, people, the pilot is trying to look after you. And look, pilot, why not let people pee? Come on. Let's all start talking to one another, instead of just complaining.
A bus driver in Dublin has brought to light an interesting predicament for bus drivers everywhere - where do drivers go to the toilet on a long shift when there are no terminuses? I hadn't honestly thought about this; it's a similar problem to what the meat processors in Tesco are facing. People need to pee and shit, and their jobs don't always allow them to do this comfortably. Employees have the right to a clean private toilet with running water and soap - but not necessarily access to it when it suits them. This seems grossly inappropriate - why have a toilet if you can't bloody use it?
And lastly, in entertainment news, Kiefer Sutherland has revealed why you never see his character on "24", Jack Bauer, going to the toilet:
whenever they cut to the White House, Jack is taking a pee. And he’s also getting something to drink and eat.
And that's a wrap for this week... or a fold... or a scrunch...
The eBay auction for Seattle's failed auto-loos has er, failed. City officials are hopeful though that an extended auction date may prove more successful.
So, the big question is, why did the spaceship toilets fail in the first place?
Toilet provision is a thorny issue with most civic councils. On the one hand, good toilets in city centres encourage tourism and shopping, keep rough sleepers from pissing in the street and give a good impression to visitors. On the other hand, toilets are prone to vandalism, can attract criminal behaviour and are difficult to maintain in a cost-effective manner.
How do you balance the necessary against the evil?
I believe that councils go wrong when they fall into the 'spaceship toilet' trap. These self-cleaning tardises from Germany are a favourite with councils looking to install city toilets. They appeal to council budget-watchers because although they have a high set-up cost, they are supposed to have minimal upkeep costs. But the fact is that after a short while self-cleaning toilets don't. Then you're left with a room the size of 3 toilets in which only one person can relieve themselves every 15 minutes.
Wellington City Council (New Zealand) has a brilliant set of public toilets, on the corner of Lambton Quay and Featherston Street. There are 6 toilets arranged in a semi-circle and a room in which a toilet attendant sits. The attendant keeps the queue moving, mops the floors, keeps each cubicle in paper and provides general chit chat.
For many councils, taking the human element out of toilets seems to be the best option, but I think they are letting their squeamishness override their common sense. They believe that a toilet attendant is a demeaning job and they're not willing to create it. But there are people who are good at it, just like any other job. The best toilet attendants are like good taxi or bus drivers. They're proud of the facilities they offer, they welcome you aboard and they're pleased to take you to your destination. In other words, they are professional.
The stigma attached to the profession of toilet attendant must end if councils are to provide good clean facilities they can be proud of.
The location of public toilets is also key. The middle of a park is always going to attract criminal behaviour. The middle of a shopping district - not behind the carpark, or hidden away down an alley - is the best location. Toilets must take up excellent real estate if they are to be excellent. At the same time, there must also be decent simple provision outside of the main shopping area for people who are making their way home or for people who have no home. But the facilities must still be on good real estate.
To ignore the human element in city centre public toilets is to commit a fatal flaw. Toilets ARE human. Expensive machines which make the human element disappear fail. Seattle has paid the price, but has it learned the lesson?
Oooh, it's quite an international flush today, and a big one at that! So what we need is a massive toilet. A Yorkshire Water campaign to encourage people to 'do one thing differently' to conserve water is being fronted by giant toilets. I don't believe the toilets actually speak or anything, but it is a fun way to get people thinking about the fact that toilets account for one third of a household's water usage. By the way, I don't really believe that statistic. Maybe it's true in the UK, but I know that here in Australia, water saving cisterns have been standard for at least a decade. I couldn't be arsed researching this at the moment though. Would appreciate others' thoughts.
Another interesting statistic, is that Russians use 10 times less toilet paper than Americans and Western Europeans. Now, this statistic I do believe. The experts claim it all comes down to the old 'do ya scrunch or fold?' question. That is a poll for another time.
Still no bids on the infamous Seattle toilets which are up for sale on eBay at a starting price of $89,000, however Calgary and Fort Lauderdale might be interested in buying them. Not put off by Seattle's experience with the spaceship toilets, Toronto and Vancouver are moving ahead with plans to install more of the suckers. However, they might be better off buying their facilities from Vietnam where the toilets only cost $20,000 a piece - that's a massive saving!
Meanwhile, over in London, red Boris wants to offer free toilet facilities to all senior citizens. The idea is actually extraordinarily deceptive - it is a discriminatory Community Toilet Scheme. As Londonist points out, non-senior-people who pay £100 more for their monthly train tickets should reasonably object to being denied access to toilets because of their age.
To prove that everything strange in the world actually comes from Austria, and not the USA as many people believe, is this story about a man who was blasted off his toilet seat by hailstones. Oh. My. God. I can't even believe how much that would hurt.
And finally in Jamaica, a businessman has been accused of selling counterfeit toilet paper on the black market.
And that's the Friday flush for this week!
Queer - Pride London has issued a statement providing further details about the incident where a trans woman was denied access to the female toilets. As always, the incident was more complicated than was at first reported.
Opening and closing - The toilets on Southend's seafront have been closed for 2 years and are now being replaced with... portaloos! Poor bastards. Better than nothing I suppose. Having said that, Portaloo is currently on a bit of a PR blitz, highlighting its amazing job at Warwick Castle when it provided facilities for 5,000 American kids during a medieval summer festival, and at made-famous-by-The-Da-Vinci-Code Rosslyn Castle.
Technology - The good people at AFT have created a toilet roll dispenser... which has an iPod connector with speakers and charger. No, really. I wish I was joking.
Entertainment - I'm not sure if it's really news or really toilety, but anyway, a decades-old recording of Tom Jones singing in a YMCA toilet has sold for $5,000. I've often sung in the shower, but rarely in the toilet. Anyone else? Also, Pixie Geldof (is this entertainment either? I'm a bit fuzzy with this category) got stuck in a toilet in Kings Cross station.
As promised - the problem-plagued Seattle spaceship toilets are up for sale on eBay here. There are, unfortunately, no bids so far, but there are 8 days to go so get bidding people!
Odd - Ever wondered if your toilet has a birthday? The good news is, it might! The odd news is, there's a website devoted to it.
Readers may have noticed that I'm very sceptical about everything that I hear about China. I lived there for six months and, suffice it to say, it's not my favourite country.
Going to the toilet in China is not very pleasant. Public roadside toilets do not have doors; they are long deep pits with a trickle of water in the bottom ineffectively attempting to push along poo, nappies, cigarettes and sanitary napkins. Over this pit you hover while bemused Chinese people stare at you. Not fun.
Having said that, China has the best provision of toilets of any country I've visited when it comes to volume. In Suzhou, where I lived, the main street has toilets every 200 metres. Even the back street along the canal, which I would take when I just couldn't handle the busy main road anymore, had pit toilets in little concrete houses regularly along the route. No doubt the pits emptied into the canal, and no doubt the fish sold in the market came from the canal - but that is an issue for another blog. I never ate fish in China.
Beijing has spent $57million on cleaning up the streets and toilets. While I think it's wonderful that these toilets have finally been cleaned, I know that the shitty work was probably done by poorly paid (even by Chinese standards) migrant workers, people who are displaced, whose children cannot attend school, whose homes are being demolished to make way for new highways and buildings. Check out http://china.hrw.org to see the human rights abuses that are occurring in China to make sure that we all have clean toilets for the Olympics (and then try to tell me that sport should be beyond politics).Another thing I read on that Russian site (it's very reputable!) is that only tall beautiful girls (beautiful by Western standards, I imagine) will serve athletes and tourists. I'll leave the tirade against that ridiculousness to someone better qualified (Rayedish?).
Congratulations to Ashura Kiesa for winning BBC Swahili's young entrepreneur competition.
Ashura, the only female finalist, won a trophy and $5000 to kick-start her business of providing commercial public toilets in East and Central Africa. The prize was presented to her by the Ugandan Prime Minister in this the second year of the competition.
But too good not to share.
Rayedish did a 1930s Marital Scale test and scored a neat 56 (Average). I thought I'd give it a go, cos certainly a girl who writes a blog about toilets is going to have a cracking score, right?
 | -5 As a 1930s wife, I am |
Minus 5!!!??? Holy crap. Must have been because I walk around the house in tatty clothes and stockinged feet.
I hate, loathe and despise spaceship toilets, and Seattle residents apparently feel the same way. They're getting rid of 5 of the expensive behemoths which have been in central city locations since 2004, but keeping the $2.59 tax which was introduced to pay for them.
The toilets, purchased from a German company, proved extremely unpopular with locals. The contract for the $6.6million toilets has been ended early after they became a magnet for drugs and prostitution. The self-cleaning machines, after a while, didn't. Instead of saving money on cleaning the facilities the Council had to employ cleaners. At the initial consultation, the toilets were supposed to be a cost-effective solution, but at $360 per toilet per day they are anything but.
As well as being expensive, space inefficient drug dungeons, I personally find these toilets terrifying. When they installed one in Newcastle (Australia) I would piss next to it rather than go in (much to the amusement of the bouncers at the Crown and Anchor). What if it started 'self-cleaning' while you were in it? *shudder* Nope, a squat by the wall it was. Hey, I'm a classy girl.
The Council is now hoping to sell the unsuccessful toilets on eBay. I'll post the link as soon as there is one.
I have so much loo news to get through that it's not possible to comment on everything. So I introduce The Friday Flush!
Voting for America's Best Restroom is currently open.
Officials in India are keeping the streets clean by offering money to people to use urinals. I'm not sure if that's awesome or stupid. I welcome suggestions.
Pride London has apologised after some event staff asked trans people to use a disabled toilet, apparently because they were so tall amongst all those short lesbians. Hey! Not all lesbians are short! People are more civilised in Thailand; a school in Si Sa Ket has created separate toilets for its 200 trans students.
A ridiculous gadget claims to 'promote better relationships' because it enables users to lift and lower the toilet seat without touching the often soiled seat. Whatever.
Taiwan decided flushing toilet paper down the toilet paper was okay, and then decided it wasn't, because 82 per cent of of toilets flow directly into river and waterways. Taiwan uses 340 tonnes of toilet paper a day. Better to turn that into landfill, I say.
Sloan Valve Company's new High Efficiency Toilet (HET) Systems have all sorts of sensor-flushy-solar-electro doovies to make your toilet super efficient. I think.
There's a few stories about China allegedly poshing up its toilets so that Westerners don't find them so offensive. As someone who has lived in China let me tell you that I'm very skeptical.
And to finish, Geri Haliwell loves talking about poo and wee. Good on you Geri.
In Colchester, the town centre toilets are open again, and 'the first 50 customers to use the new arty loos in Lion Walk received a commemorative loo-roll', designed by the artists. That's so awesome I can't even speak. No pic yet, but maybe soon.
The toilets are the first to be refurbished as part of Colchester Borough Council’s Creative Conveniences project, during which a partnership of arts, street and tourism officers have worked together to improve the look, feel and function of a selection of Colchester’s public conveniences.
That's so cool it deserves its own post. Oh, man, I need more time!!
Staying in the UK, COLDSTREAM and Eyemouth are top of the list to have their public toilets refurbished and also to get a town attendant each, responsible for cleaning the toilets and other general duties around the town. I'm such a fan of toilet attendants. It's a really important job, and it also keeps toilets human - something I advocate strongly.
For every toilet that opens, dozens are closed. Angry Burnham-On-Sea town councillors this week threatened to withdraw £35,000 of funding for the district council in protest at the authority's decision to shut down and sell the town's seafront toilets. And in Borehamwood, the Community Toilet Scheme proposed 18 months ago is still not off the ground.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
New Delhi, July 1 (IANS) Sulabh International, a 38-year-old movement
promoting low-cost safe sanitation in the country, has liberated over
60,000 scavengers, a report by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) released Tuesday said.
The report, focusing on the various strategies adopted across the
world to engage the poor, additionally said Sulabh's revenues reached
$32 million in 2005, with approximately $5 million in surplus.
Sulabh maintains 6,500 public pay per-use toilets and by 2006, had
installed 1.4 million household toilets. An estimated 10 million
people used its facilities across the country, the report said.
"The public toilets run by Sulabh break even within eight to nine
months," it added. "Facilities in prominent places were highly
profitable."
There is ample scope for replication and even scaling up of the Sulabh
model that its founder Bindheshwar Pathak started in 1970, UNDP said.
"State governments that used to invite Sulabh into single-party
tenders have now started inviting competitive bids to build and run
public toilets," it noted.
The UNDP report noted that while it was officially said in 2003 that
India had 676,000 scavengers - people, mainly women, who eke out a
living lifting human excreta - unofficial estimates peg the figure at
1.2 million.
Of them, Sulabh had liberated 60,000 through various skill development
and adult literacy programmes; for instance, it trains women in food
processing and markets their products.
It has successfully used internal and external resources to start an
English medium school and a variety of business incubators targeted at
the erstwhile scavengers to get them accepted in mainstream society,
the report said.
Sulabh, which employs over 50,000 associates and presently operates in
26 states, also trained 19,000 masons who could build low-cost,
twin-pit toilets using locally available materials, UNDP said.
Focusing on the constraints Sulabh faced when it started off, the
report identified three key hurdles.
First, there was a lack of market information: businesses just did not
know whether poor people would pay to use toilets and related
facilities or install toilets.
Second, there existed an acute lack of widespread knowledge on
propagating low-cost hygiene solutions.
And finally, perhaps the most critical factor: the poor did not have
access to finance to provide for sanitation.
The report then highlights the strategies Sulabh adopted to overcome
these obstacles.
It first developed an initial pilot project and demonstrated the
popularity of pay-per-use toilet facilities in urban Bihar and
pioneered the low-cost toilet model to be installed in poor
residential areas.
Next, it constructed a museum and planned for a sanitation university,
took its own designs and trained other non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), and started policy dialogue with governments.
"Sulabh influenced the central government and over 100,000 public
toilets will be constructed in addition to local government's
provision of toilet-related loans and subsidies," the report said.
IANS
This News is featured in Mangalorean.com
www.Mangalorean.com
A Cape Cod boy was retrieving his toothbrush from the family toilet when he found two diamond rings lodged in the pipes.
Apparently, the former owner had placed the rings on a piece of toilet paper after cleaning them and had accidentally flushed them 12 years before. Remarkably, the intervening years of flushing, cleaning, snaking and plunging had failed to dislodge them; it took a solid hand groping to find the missing jewels.
Many years ago when I was at the Crown and Anchor in Newcastle (not the old crappy dodgy Crown and Anchor, but the new crappy trendy Crown and Anchor) I found a drivers licence in the toilet. I weed, I wiped, I flushed - and then I plunged my hand in and pulled out the licence. Now before you say 'ewww!' you must realise that I knew then what very few people know, which is this: your toilet bowl is cleaner than your kitchen sink. Seriously.
Last month, a report comparing toilets and computer keyboards at one UK workplace found the keyboards far, far, far more grubby than the toilet seat and the toilet door handle. In fact, the keyboards had ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TIMES the recommended limit for bacteria. This isn't at all surprising. Workplace toilets are cleaned every day; when was the last time you cleaned your keyboard? It also makes sense that there are fewer germs on your thighs than on your hands. Hands are filthy dirty disgusting things. My geneticist buddy used to say that after going to the toilet men should wash their penises, not their hands. Sticking your hands in a (clean) toilet can only improve them.
Another friend of mine has just moved into a brand new apartment in Wellington. In the bottom of his toilet there is something that looks like a bit of rolled up paper, maybe a cigarette. Anyway, it was there when he moved in, it was there when I went round to help him set up his TV stand, it was there when I went round for a few drinks at his housewarming party. Chances are, it'll stay there until he moves out in six months time. Some people, I guess, just can't shove their hand into their toilet, no matter how clean it is.
The good news is, the father of the kid that found the diamond rings tracked down the former owner of the house and gave the rings back. I'm not sure what happened to his toothbrush.
"The idea of creating cuddly toys on the subject of pee and poo is not only
truly unique, both historically and now, it's also neutral, and therefore widely
applicable and acceptable, with regard to age, gender and nationality. People
just like them; they seem to have a universal appeal."
In this eco-conscious world o' ours, it's great to see some innovation in the bathroom. A real step up from the brick in the cistern.
That's right. It's a washing machine. On a toilet.
Of course, there are many (more sensible) eco-friendly toilet solutions.
This sexy number from Matsushita, made from organic glass
claims to be environmentally friendly as it features the industry's lowest water usage.
Or the Aqus system, which captures water from the bathroom sink to be re-used as flushing water.
And in St David's, Pembrokeshire, UK, a city trying to become the world's first carbon-neutral city, rainwater is harvested to service the public toilets.
But as regular readers will know (and I sincerely hope that you're all regular) one of the things I care most about is the provision of adequate toilets, particularly in developing countries. So I was pleased to see this week that Pump Aid co-founder Ian Thorpe (not the swimmer) is a finalist in the St Andrew's Prize for the Environment for his Elephant Toilet.
Costing just £20 each to build, the toilets use discarded objects such as plastic bottles and empty ballpoint pens in their construction. The 'elephant' toilet name comes from the two ear shapes where the user puts his or her feet and the trunk which separates liquid waste from solid.
http://www.knaresboroughpost.co.uk/harrogate-news/Innovative-toilet-design-is-no.4056293.jp
The photo comes from Christine Collier's Malawi diary.
...at one point, he squatted down on a toilet base not yet fitted in situ, to demonstrate how it works and a huge howl of children's laughter errupted at the obviously recognisable stance ... toilet humour crosses all cultural boundaries.
It sure does, Christine.
BTW, how good a name is Matsushita for a toilet company!?
The boyfriend of Pam Babcock, the woman who sat on a toilet for so long that she became physically stuck to it, has entered a plea of 'not guilty' for the misdemeanour charge of mistreatment of a dependent adult.
The boyfriend, Kory McFarren, is also appearing on an unrelated charge of lewd behaviour. Good on you Kory. You know, Kory had my sympathy. I can totally understand how days, weeks and then months can pass without alerting anyone that your girlfriend is a bit crazy. I can't believe I spent 9 months at my last job when it was the most miserable place in the whole of New Zealand - it just kind of happenned. But Kory, if this stuff about you flashing yourself to your neighbours is true, maybe you're a little bit wrong upstairs too.
There's an article on the Boston Herald website about the poshest sorts of toilets you can get for your own home including... a throne.
You can be proud owner of a sleek and sexy toilet - BostonHerald.com
The history of toilets in private homes is primarily a story of the rise and fall of ostentatious fittings.
In the early 19th century fittings and furnishings in bathrooms were needlessly ornate - people were making bathrooms out of rooms, and had to fill that space with a lot of filigree. By about 1855, cleanliness and simplicity ruled, before there was another shift towards putting all the expense of the house into the bathroom. And why not? You're pretty well guaranteed that your guests are going to see it. What a great place to show off!
Bathrooms remained an impressive size (for those who had bathrooms) until the revolution of 'bath-cells' in American hotels in the late 1800s, when bathrooms came down to a more reasonable size and utilitarian function. There seems to now be a shift again towards fabulous bathrooms, but the onus is on luxury rather than fussiness.
Toilets themselves, however, haven't changed all that much, so it's nice to see manufacturers doing something interesting, and even ludicrous, with the design.
Did you know?
The first bath was installed in the White House in 1851.
In 1895, no New York tenement had a bath.
The Lord Mayor of London was denied a request to install a shower-bath in the Mansion House in 1812.
Clean and Decent, Lawrence Wright
I might be a lefty leaning pinko greenie, etc, but surely I'm not alone in thinking that toilet paper is a basic human right? Well, not in Montgomery County, Maryland USA it's not.
United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) which represents about 8000 government employees has released a memo with cost-cutting measures and it suggests, among other things, restricting the amount of toilet paper issued to inmates of jails.
The county spends ‘‘hundreds of thousands of dollars” annually to repair plumbing because inmates use it [toilet paper] to clog their toilets.
Issuing a maximum of three rolls a week to each inmate would avoid some of those costs.
Read the full article here.
I can just imagine the black market in Montgomery County jails: smack, cigarettes and bog roll. They'll have to get their mules to smuggle it in one sheet at a time so as to avoid detection.
I'm recently re-employed again (hence the slight downturn in regular blog postings). The toilets at my new place of employment are a little on the miserable side, and it got me to thinking - job interviews should be held in toilets.
Seriously. There are plenty of seats, you can talk shit without it being out of place, and guys can all stand around comparing penis sizes.
You can learn a lot about an organisation from the condition and layout of their toilets. The ladies toilet in my new workplace has two cubicles and one separate disabled toilet into which no disabled person has ever gone or could ever go. It is the worst type of accessible toilet: it is an almost-accessible toilet. It has a tap that can be mouth-operated, a generous hand rail and a slightly wider than usual access door. Unfortunately, the door leads into a little hallway with a door which is smaller than usual. Even if a wheelchair could fit in the hall door, there isn't sufficient room in the hallway to turn into the disabled toilet, without doing an 8 point turn. Honestly, who designs these things?
I do like my new workplace, but there is an air of almost doing things right.
My old workplace was notoriously bad for people not changing the loo roll - I guess it just wasn't in anyone's job description.
