The Glade 4.0

since this board has a poop fixation I figured I'd share.

http://www.slate.com/id/2264657/

Shortly before Christmas in 1978, the leader of the free world came down with a severe case of hemorrhoids. The pain was so bad that President Carter had to take a day off from work. A few weeks later, Time Magazine asked a proctologist named Michael Freilich to explain the president's ailment. "We were not meant to sit on toilets," he said, "we were meant to squat in the field." He's probably right.

Michael Freilich isn't the first doctor to suggest that sitting on toilets—a recent phenomenon, stemming from the invention of the flush toilet in 1591—might be unhealthy. By the 1960s and '70s, the idea was relatively commonplace. Architect Alexander Kira argued in his 1966 book The Bathroom that human physiology is better suited to the squat. According to Bockus's Gastroenterology, a standard medical text from 1964, "the ideal posture for defecation is the squatting position, with the thighs fixed upon the abdomen."

Modern-day squat evangelists make money off the claim that a "more natural" posture wards off all sorts of health problems, from Crohn's disease to colon cancer. Inventor Jonathon Isbit runs a modest online business selling Nature's Platform—a homemade, $150 device that fits over toilets to make them more like holes in the ground. (He also posted the Bockus quote above to the Wikipedia entry on defecation.) Other entrepreneurs peddle similar products, like the In-Lieu, the Lillipad, the Evaco toilet converter, and, for those who don't like explaining their squat platform to house guests, a $688 Japanese toilet that lets users switch among different squatting and sitting postures, from the "East Asian squat" to the "aft sit."
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That may sound like a bunch of Internet quackery, but there's now some empirical evidence for the claim that defecation posture affects your body. The more extreme assertions about squatting—that it prevents cancer, for example—remain untested. But when it comes to hemorrhoids—a painful swelling of the veins in the anal canal that affects half of all Americans—new research suggests that you may want to get your butt off the toilet.

Before we dive into the data, let's review the mechanics of going to the bathroom. People can control their defecation, to some extent, by contracting or releasing the anal sphincter. But that muscle can't maintain continence on its own. The body also relies on a bend between the rectum—where feces builds up—and the anus—where feces comes out. When we're standing up, the extent of this bend, called the anorectal angle, is about 90 degrees, which puts upward pressure on the rectum and keeps feces inside. In a squatting posture, the bend straightens out, like a kink ringed out of a garden hose, and defecation becomes easier.

So at the very least you could infer that lower toilet seats are better than chair height ones?

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I could have told you all of this. Sometimes I feel like Cassandra around this place.

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The Dude abides.

I love this quote. I don't know why.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Imagine the lawsuits from people falling in if we pooped into holes in the floor instead of toilets...

Imagine the lawsuit from me falling off my chair from laughing so hard at the mental picture you just created for me with this comment....

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Why would we fall in holes? We don't fall in toilets...mostly.

Apparently the French already do this:

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Obviously you've never stumbled into the bathroom half asleep at 3am and sat down to pee only to find someone has left the seat up.....I can't tell you how many times I've almost gotten stuck in the toilet that way...and been a VERY grumpy bear....

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I saw many public restrooms in South Korea that were nothing more than holes in the floor.

Occasionally an attendant would come through with a bucket of water and rinse down the holes...

That's why I said 'mostly'.

Once, long ago in a faraway land (Germany) I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I didn't turn the light on because I didn't want wake the baby, and I don't need glasses to pee, so I didn't see that the seat was up. Ever been to Germany? They like to examine their poop, so the toilets have these weird ledges that seem perfect for whacking a tailbone. Of course, I pissed myself at that point, but that's not the end of my suffering. The bathroom was an old converted closet with a sloped roof, which is fine when you are sitting normally, but caused me to whack my head standing up from the plunge. So now my butt bone hurts, and I've whacked my head and I'm wet... and I'm going to go kill my husband. I head back to the room and (remember no glasses?) run into the door edge-on. this splits my forehead, which bleeds profusely, but more importantly it causes me to stumble backwards and fall down the stairs. Mercifully, this knocks me out (and my husband slept right through it). A few hours later the trash guy comes along and finds a bloody bruised woman naked and unconscious/dead in front of a picture window and calls the polizei. German police don't have any hassles like warrants or Miranda rights, they bust down the door, which DOES wake Eric. He stumbles downstairs only to be grabbed and cuffed by shouting Germans. It's about at this point that I wake up. Neither of us speaks German, and they didn't think to bring a translator (we're off base but in an area dedicated to military housing), so while I'm dazed and hurting I'm trying to explain that this isn't an issue of domestic violence, just domestic stupidity. I ended up getting a robe and pantomiming the whole thing. They laughed at me, and the one woman officer there whacked Eric upside the head. Amazingly, the baby slept through the whole thing.

Eric never again left the seat up while we were married (though it was less than a year before I left him). I did see a facebook entry from his current wife saying that he's such a wonderful man he never forgets. I wonder if she's heard how he learned? You're welcome, Carmen!

Ok, now that I can breathe again, Taamar...That has got to be the best, funniest, personal account I've ever heard.
I'm sorry I know that probably was not funny at all at the time.

Mind if I put it in the archive?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Be my guest. It actually WAS funny at the time... or at least it was funny by the time I woke up. I remember the very last thought before I went down the stairs as "They'll laugh at my funeral. I know it. I'm gonna haunt that f***er for this."

That's a hillarious story Taamar.

In Japan, they just have holes in the floor as well.

The only conclusion that I can draw from the whole toilet-seat-state gender dispute is that there's a greater chance of success at teaching the male population to put the seat down than there is teaching the female population to check first.

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Along the lines of Shel's other thread. I've read this 4-5 times and just realized the thread title says "betting"

<---- oblivious

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Mostly the consequences of males learning to put the seat down and screwing up occasionally are less than the consequences of women learning to check and screwing up occasionally. Your irritation vs. our pain...

Actually, the best option would be his and hers toilets.

One would think that with the greater consequences women face, they would learn more quickly to check for a seat than a man would learn to put it down, all things being equal. That said, I always completely close the toilet after use, so I've missed out on the possibility of any atta-boys for "changing" for my wife.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

See, that's also sensible. That way you're both changing and no one has to feel put out.

I don't leave the seat up unless drunk or rushed.

I'd argue lid-down is best for three factors:

Gender neutrality
Gender equality
Pet friendly

However, as a lid-up person with pets, let me say, Corgi ftw (as usual).

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Once, I was a ranger
Then, I was a warlock
And a mage
And a paladin
Now, I seek to be myself

I always put the seat AND the lid back down prior to flushing. If you flush when it's open, there will be a fine mist of sh*t and piss that is sprayed into the air. Don't believe me? They even have products that you put into the toilet bowl so that your bathroom is "freshened" with each flush. Disgusting. Think about it. Then, put your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.

As for the women sitting down on a toilet without looking first, well, that's pretty damn stupid, too.

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Ron Paul 2012

Mythbusters put theirs in the kitchen and it still had feces on it.

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I'm going to go wash my mouth out with drano. Brb.

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Ron Paul 2012

Do you know where that bottle of drano has been?

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you are evil


EEEVIL!!

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Ron Paul 2012