Finally! A toilet worthy of Apple fanboys. Meet the iPoo Toilet, which sadly only exists as a conceptual design.

Designer Milos Paripovic said:

Unlike some Apple products, this toilet fully supports Flush. This toilet has exactly the same function as any other toilet and costs only twice as much for the same performance; but you will agree it is all about style and taste, and you will look a lot cooler in your friends' eyes when you say you use the iPoo Toilet ...

Thank goodness for that! Link - via digsdigs

The Aviarios del Caribe sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica is an orphanage that cares for abandoned and injured sloths with the goal of releasing them back into the wild. But the youngsters have to be taught how wild sloths do sloth things. -via Arbroath

“The captain has disappeared in the back and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit right now…,” the co-pilot reported.

“What I’m being told is he’s stuck in the lav,” the co-pilot continued.  “Someone with a thick foreign accent is giving me a password to access the cockpit, and I’m not about to let him in.”

Not willing to take any chances themselves, air controllers on the ground ordered the plane, operated by regional carrier Chautauqua Airlines, to make an emergency landing.

Before the co-pilot was forced to make that emergency landing, however, the pilot was able to open the bathroom door, and calm his anxious colleagues.

The plane landed safely and no one was charged in the incident. Link -via The Daily What

I've found the secret to John Farrier's blogging prowess: it's all in where he writes his Neatorama blog posts.

Actually, no. John's still Master of the Blogosphere but the Steampunk workstation above, called the Steampunk Time Machine Antique Master Bathroom Computer Workstation, is designed by Bruce Rosenbaum and Walter Parker.

Hugh Hart of Wired's Underwire blog has more pics of steampunk neatness: Link 

See also: 3D Steampunk Robot Magnets over at the NeatoShop

For more than fifty years after the formation of the Indian Railways in 1857, there was one crucial element that was missing on the nation's trains: toilets.

Passengers had to wait till till the stations to answer the call of nature, and it was not until a passenger named Okhil Chandra Sen wrote this angry yet amusing letter in 1909 that toilets were installed on Indian trains.

So if you're in India, and you have to go to the bathroom aboard one of their trains, you have Mr. Sen to thank:

Image: Richard Fellowes

From the notable Letters of Note

“DO NOT flush toilets or use any domestic water. Due to a mechanical failure, there is high air pressure in the domestic water system that resulted in damage to toilets. The engineering staff is working to correct the issue,” the memo said. “There has been damage to flushed toilets that has resulted in injuries. We will announce when the issue is resolved.”

Link -via HuffPo

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user Kevin Trotman)

Toilet Monster – $16.95

Are you a prankster who loves potty humor?  You need the Toilet Monster from the NeatoShop. Simply attach this hilarious green monster to the toilet and wait for someone you know to lift the lid.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more hilarious Gag Gifts & Pranks.

Link

Public Toilet Survival Kit – $4.95

Do scary public restrooms keep you from seeking adventure and fun? You need the Public Toilet Survival Kit from the NeatoShop. This fantastic little tin includes:

• 2 antiseptic wipes
• 1 pair of disposable gloves
• and 1 toilet seat cover

Now get out there and pee with abandon. A whole new world of restrooms awaits you.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop more hilarious Personal Care items.

Link

Simply the best bathroom wall graffiti EVAR! Via Accordion Guy

Toilet Shot Glasses – $9.95

Toilet Shot Glasses from the NeatoShop are the perfect gift for a drinker who spends a lot of time :

• Doing the technicolor yawn
• Praying at the porcelain altar
• Talking to Ralph on the porcelain telephone
• Tossing his cookies
• Blowing groceries
• Hugging the porcelain goddess
• Worshiping the porcelain god
• Doing the liquid scream
• Marinading their tongue
• Launching lunch
• Impersonating The Fly
• Or Having involuntary protein spills

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more inappropriate Gag Gifts & Pranks.

Link

More than 30 years after his death, the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, is still remembered as one of the best in rock history. And as more than one hotel chain learned to their regret, that wasn’t all he was known for.

MY GENERATION

In the summer of 1967, the British rock group the Who embarked on their first concert tour of the United States. They were the opening act for Herman’s Hermits, best known for their hit single, “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” The Who had played dates in the U.S. before, including their breakthrough appearance at the Monterrey International Pop Festival just a few weeks earlier in June. But this was the band’s first cross-country tour, and there was still much about America that was new and unfamiliar to them. (Image credit: Wikipedia user MachoCarioca)

Take American fireworks, for example: In many Southern states, giant firecrackers much more powerful than the “penny bangers” sold in England were perfectly legal.  They could be bought cheaply and in large quantities all over the South. The Hermits had discovered them on their first American tour in 1965, and now, on a swing through Alabama, they introduced Keith Moon, the Who’s 20-year-old drummer, to his first bag of American fireworks -cherry bombs.

Cherry bombs are still sold today, but in the 1960s they contained as much as 20 times the explosive power they do now -more than enough to maim or blind anyone who was holding them when they went off, or who happened to be standing too close. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned original-strength cherry bombs in 1966m but judging from the reign of terror on which Keith Moon was about to embark, they must have still been available.

MAGIC BUS

The Hermits’ favorite prank was throwing cherry bombs out of their tour bus, taking care to hold the lit bombs for a few seconds before tossing them so that they would explode in front of the car traveling behind their. Moon, with a little help from Who bassist John Entwistle, came up with his own destructive trademark when the tour pulled into Birmingham, Alabama, ad the band decided that the hotel’s room service wasn’t up to snuff: He blew up his hotel-room toilet. cherry bombs (Image credit: Wikipedia user J A Chunko)

Why did Moon single out his toilet for destruction? The original plan was to blow up the plumbing beneath the toilet, not the toilet itself. The idea was to do damage without the hotel finding out who was responsible, or whether anyone was actually responsible at all. For all the management would know, the pipe under the floor might have burst as the result of normal wear and tear.

AMAZING JOURNEY

Apparently toilets in the United Sates flush differently than they do in the U.K., because when Moon and Entwistle tossed their first lit cherry bomb into that hotel toilet in Birmingham, they expected it to flush right down the bowl and into the plumbing pipes. But it didn’t- instead, it just swirled round and round the bowl as the fuse burned lower and lower. At the last second, Moon and Entwistle fled the bathroom, slamming the door behind them just as the bomb went off, blowing the toilet to pieces. When Moon and Entwistle opened the door, all they saw was smoke, shards of porcelain, and a hole in the floor.

The destruction must have made quite an impression on Moon, because he quickly abandoned the idea of blowing up pipes he couldn’t see in favor of toilets he could, even if it meant getting caught and having to pay for the damage. “From that moment on,” biographer Tony Fletcher writes in Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, “no toilet in a hotel or changing room was safe until the tour moved away or Keith’s bomb supply ran out.”

I CAN’T EXPLAIN

Some toilet bombings stood out more than others: On a trip to New York in 1968, a very drunk Moon blew up the toilet on the ninth floor of the Gorsham Hotel, a popular spot with rock bands. Then he climbed out onto the window ledge, where he tossed more cherry bombs onto the police, who responded to the call of an explosion at the hotel. Thrown out of the Gorsham, the Who moved to the Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s swankiest hotels. Then, when the management locked the Who out of their rooms until they paid their bill in advance and in cash (probably after receiving a call from the Gorsham), Moon retrieved his luggage from his locked room by blowing the door off its hinges. (Image credit: Flicker member Marc Kjerland)

Thrown out of 2 hotels in 24 hours, the Who tried to book rooms in a third. By then, word had gotten around to every hotel in town, though, and suddenly there were no rooms available anywhere. Pete Townshend, the Who’s guitarist and songwriter, stayed with friends that night; everyone else had to sleep on the tour bus.

WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN

The Who was one of the highest-earning bands of the era, but the band was soon reduced to staying at mid-priced hotel chains like the Holiday Inn because none of the elite hotels would have them. During a trip to New York in 1971, they did manage to book rooms at the Navarro, a luxurious hotel overlooking Central Park. But that was only because the hotel was under renovation- the manager put them in rooms that hadn’t been redone yet, and let Moon demolish them to his heart’s content. (One night Moon bashed his way through a brick wall to retrieve a cassette tape from the locked room next door.)

Moon’s reign of toilet terror ended only after his untimely death in 1978 at the age of 32, when he overdosed on the prescription medication he was taking to treat his alcoholism. It’s not clear exactly how many toilets he destroyed during his 11-year love affair with cherry bombs; one estimate places the value of all that destroyed porcelain at half a million dollars.

LONG LIVE ROCK

If you watched the halftime show on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010, you know the Who are still going strong, albeit minus Moon and Entwistle, who died from a heart attack in 2002. But the band may not be around much longer: In 2010, the Who cancelled their spring tour schedule when Pete Townshend, who is partially deaf, suffered a recurrence of tinnitus -buzzing or ringing in the ears- brought on, no doubt, by more than 40 years of exposure to loud music …and all those exploding toilets.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1967

(YouTube link)

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

How Toilet Paper Got on a Roll

The first products designed specifically to wipe one’s nethers were aloe-infused sheets of manila hemp dispensed from Kleenex-like boxes. They were invented in 1857 by a New York entrepreneur named Joseph Gayetty, who claimed his sheets prevented hemorrhoids. Gayetty was so proud of his therapeutic bathroom paper that he had his name printed on each sheet. But his success was limited. Americans soon grew accustomed to wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog, and they saw no need to spend money on something that came in the mail for free.

Toilet paper took its next leap forward in 1890, when two brothers named Clarence and E. Irvin Scott popularized the concept of toilet paper on a roll. The Scotts’ brand became more successful than Gayetty’s medicated wipes, in part because they built a steady trade selling toilet paper to hotels and drugstores. But it was still an uphill battle to get the public to openly buy the product, largely because Americans remained embarrassed by bodily functions. In fact, the Scott brothers were so ashamed of the nature of their work that they didn’t take proper credit for their innovation until 1902.

“No one wanted to ask for it by name,” says Dave Praeger, author of Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product. “It was so taboo that you couldn’t even talk about the product.” By 1930, the German paper company Hakle began using the tag line, “Ask for a roll of Hakle and you won’t have to say toilet paper!”

As time passed, toilet tissues slowly became an American staple. But widespread acceptance of the product didn’t officially occur until a new technology demanded it. At the end of the 19th century, more and more homes were being built with sit-down flush toilets tied to indoor plumbing systems. And because people required a product that could be flushed away with minimal damage to the pipes, corncobs and moss no longer cut it. In no time, toilet paper ads boasted that the product was recommended by both doctors and plumbers.

The Strength of Going Soft

In the early 1900s, toilet paper was still being marketed as a medicinal item. But in 1928, the Hoberg Paper Company tried a different tack. On the advice of its ad men, the company introduced a brand called Charmin and fitted the product with a feminine logo that depicted a beautiful woman. The genius of the campaign was that by evincing softness and femininity, the company could avoid talking about toilet paper’s actual purpose. Charmin was enormously successful, and the tactic helped the brand survive the Great Depression. (It also helped that, in 1932, Charmin began marketing economy-size packs of four rolls.) Decades later, the dainty ladies were replaced with babies and bear cubs—advertising vehicles that still stock the aisles today.

By the 1970s, America could no longer conceive of life without toilet paper. Case in point: In December 1973, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson joked about a toilet paper shortage during his opening monologue. But America didn’t laugh. Instead, TV watchers across the country ran out to their local grocery stores and bought up as much of the stuff as they could. In 1978, a TV Guide poll named Mr. Whipple—the affable grocer who implored customers, “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin”—the third best-known man in America, behind former President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham.

Rolling the World

Currently, the United States spends more than $6 billion a year on toilet tissue—more than any other nation in the world. Americans, on average, use 57 squares a day and 50 lbs. a year. Even still, the toilet paper market in the United States has largely plateaued. The real growth in the industry is happening in developing countries. There, it’s booming. Toilet paper revenues in Brazil alone have more than doubled since 2004. The radical upswing in sales is believed to be driven by a combination of changing demographics, social expectations, and disposable income.

“The spread of globalization can kind of be measured by the spread of Western bathroom practices,” says Praeger. When average citizens in a country start buying toilet paper, wealth and consumerism have arrived. It signifies that people not only have extra cash to spend, but they’ve also come under the influence of Western marketing.

America Without Toilet Paper

Even as the markets boom in developing nations, toilet paper manufacturers find themselves needing to charge more per roll to make a profit. That’s because production costs are rising. During the past few years, pulp has become more expensive, energy costs are rising, and even water is becoming scarce. Toilet paper companies may need to keep hiking up their prices. The question is, if toilet paper becomes a luxury item, can Americans live without it?

The truth is that we did live without it, for a very long time. And even now, a lot of people do. In Japan, the Washlet—a toilet that comes equipped with a bidet and an air-blower—is growing increasingly popular. And all over the world, water remains one of the most common methods of self-cleaning. Many places in India, the Middle East, and Asia, for instance, still depend on a bucket and a spigot. But as our economy continues to circle the drain, will Americans part with their beloved toilet paper in order to adopt more money-saving measures? Or will we keep flushing our cash away? Praeger, for one, believes a toilet-paper apocalypse is hardly likely. After all, the American marketing machine is a powerful thing.

_______________________

The article above, written by Linda Rodriguez, is reprinted with permission from the Jul/Aug 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

(Image credit: Flickr user Eric Rice)

A Physician’s Reasons Why Men Should Stand
by John Gamel
Professor of Ophthalmology
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Western Europe is abuzz with the latest flare-up in the war between the sexes, and for the moment, the women seem to be winning. If outrage continues to mount, it will soon be  not just uncool and politically incorrect for a man to urinate while standing up, but out and out ILLEGAL. Yes, the liberated women of France and Germany and Holland have vowed to put their men down—on the toilet. They carry placards showing a huge red X scrawled across a man standing to urinate. They shout: “Laissez tomber votre
pantalon, et asseyez vous! (Drop your trousers and sit)!” “Behalte deine Tropfen fuer dich (Keep your drips to yourself)!” “Toch niet weer een vieze plas op MIJN badkamer vloer (Not another filthy puddle on MY bathroom floor)!”

Their motives, or so they insist, have nothing to do with penis envy and everything to do with hygiene. On the face of it, their argument seems to hold water. No one enjoys stepping in a puddle of urine. Given the distance between the toilet bowl and the penis of an upright man (approximately 24 inches, depending on anatomic variations), and
factoring in the width of the bowl itself (approximately 12 inches), it becomes clear that only the sharpest aim can hit the target every time. In such a precarious setting, even a moment’s loss of focus will scatter errant drops on the floor. On the other hand, if every  man sits to urinate, the bathroom floors of Europe will remain pristine. Or so goes the logic of the women.

The author's toilet

Forgive me, ladies, but I beg to differ. Before joining the fray, let me establish my credentials: during my life, I have urinated approximately 118,000 times (five times  a  day for 65 years) and on countless occasions have watched other males urinate in public restrooms. (I am not a voyeur, of course; all of these glimpses were caught from corner of my eye, with no intention to invade the privacy of others.) Furthermore, during medical school, I spent four years studying the human body. Combining my knowledge from these sources, I must warn the mothers and wives and cohabitées of Europe that their efforts to sustain the purity of their bathroom floors will surely come to naught, defeated by the anatomy and physiology of the male genitourinary tract.

The first fact to be faced: most of the stray “sprinkles” that     so enrage European women occur not during the act of urination itself, but immediately afterward, during a ritual men learn as part of their potty training. By “ritual” I refer to the various maneuvers required to discharge the urine remaining in the urethra (the muscular tube that delivers urine to the tip of the penis) once the bladder is empty. Nor is the act merely symbolic or recreational. A man who tucks away his penis without performing these maneuvers will dribble half an ounce of urine into his underwear, causing an embarrassing stain in the crotch of his trousers, or an even more embarrassing streak down his trouser leg. To avoid this debacle, every sentient male, after every urination, carefully squeezes or “milks” his member to assure that no stray drops remain within the urethra.

Unfortunately, some men pursue this goal with excessive vigor, indulging in what can only be described as “shaking off the last drop.” It is precisely these movements—and not the free-falling stream itself—that deposit most of the unwanted urine on lavatory floors throughout the world. (And sometimes, given a sufficiently  vigorous shake, on the walls, or even on the ceiling.)

Let me interrupt my argument for a moment to address the mortified gasps from some female readers. I know your “drying off” ritual is far more civilized than the one described above, but this difference derives only in part from the inherent uncouthness of men.

We must also consider anatomy: the female urethra spans only a miniscule length in comparison to that of the male, and as a result, it harbors only a tiny dollop of urine. The male ritual seems barbaric to women because they need only daub themselves with a tissue to remove the few drops remaining on the external genitalia. Granted, their method is more aesthetic, but it’s not our fault that a discrete little wipe doesn’t serve our needs. We can’t help it.

To reiterate my point, men scatter urine not so much during the actual urination as during the “shaking off” that follows. As a result, forcing men to sit while emptying their bladders will serve little purpose, since no man wants to shake himself off while remaining seated on the toilet. To do so he must run the risk—a great risk indeed for the famously well-endowed men of Western Europe—that his instrument will bash against the toilet seat, or dip into a bowl teeming with coliform bacteria. Because of this reasonable and compelling reluctance, all the obedient men who sit to void their bladders will inevitably defeat the purpose of sitting by rising to scatter their offensive    droplets on the floor.

The author's sink

But all is not lost. Eons ago, a hydraulic genius designed the perfect instrument for receiving urine from the male organ with a minimum of mess and bother. I speak here of the lowly urinal, the gleaming porcelain icon that adorns public toilets throughout the western world. For those female readers who have never visited a men’s restroom, let me describe this icon: its bowl is broad as a toilet bowl but sits much higher from the floor, at just the right level to encourage a direct hit from a majority of the men who stand before it. Better yet, the urinal comes with a backsplash to catch any misguided drops, while the push of a button flushes all its surfaces with a cleansing gush of water. Voila! What more could a man or woman ask?

Any nation that bans urinals will pay for this folly with an increase in floor-soiling when millions of men stand up to shake off their drops over a toilet located two feet below their penis. Let us remember that the toilet was designed for defecation rather than urination, and, as noted above, it serves the latter purpose rather poorly, while for the urinal, the very opposite is true.

Unfortunately, urinals give no help on the family front, since few of them are installed in private homes. But we must not lose hope: the solution is at hand. In fact, every home already contains the solution, and it rests only a few feet from the toilet itself. Let us consider the sink, a porcelain instrument whose opening spans a greater width than the toilet, and whose height above the floor brings it much closer to the average male instrument. The young and short-legged among us must stand on our toes or use a stool, but this is a small price to pay for urine-free  floors. By my calculation, considering only the physics of hydraulic trajectory, urine aimed at a sink by a man of normal height is 8.5 times less likely to go astray than when aimed at a toilet. Furthermore, this logic applies equally to both urination and to the drip-dispersing ritual that follows.

Yes, I can hear the howls of protest. Urine in the sink? Yuck! Indeed, our culture is replete with disparaging references— ”piss on it,” “filthy as piss,” “I don’t give a piss”—but rest assured that such prejudice is for the most part misguided. Which is to say, urine has long suffered a bum rap. To quote Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary:

Urine: liquid to semisolid matter that is produced in the kidney and discharged through the urinary organs, that is typically (as in normal man) a clear transparent amber-colored slightly acid fluid which is essentially a watery solution of end products (as urea, uric acid, and creatinine) of protein metabolism, inorganic salts, and complex pigments, and that constitutes the major true excretion of the vertebrate body.

What Merriam-Webster leaves out is the most important fact of all: urine from a normal male is also sterile, completely free of bacterial contamination. In fact, as any soldier trained in desert warfare will attest, this warm, salty liquid serves as an excellent wound cleanser, provided contamination is avoided by delivering the stream directly from its source. In my paean to urine, however, I will not go so far as to advocate its consumption. Though the habit is unlikely to cause serious harm, those “alternative” practitioners who insist it will cure a variety of ills can offer not one jot of scientific evidence to support this idiocy.

Despite urine’s innocuous nature, when contaminated it provokes an aesthetic and hygienic disaster by offering an excellent growth medium for bacteria. After an hour or two in a warm environment, these organisms produce breakdown products that stink to high heaven. This problem is easily avoided, however, by the simple expedient of washing away the urine soon after it is voided.

So at last we have the solution to our excretory dilemma. First, encourage men to continue using the urinals in public toilets, while at home insist they both urinate and squeeze their last dribbles into the sink rather than into the toilet, then rinse the sink with a generous splash of water. To facilitate this, the wise hostess will keep a plastic cup
nearby. Let me close my argument by noting that this procedure offers a spectacular bonus: even the most efficient modern toilet consumes more than a gallon of  water with each flush, while a sink can be rinsed with only a few ounces. Thus if every man on earth pursues this excellent regimen, we will save billions of gallons of water every day, thereby preserving the environment for future generations.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2010 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in college we had way more fun things to do than flushing out socks down the toilet. Apparently though, the students at the University of Alaska apparently are so bored this is their only alternative.

Hundreds of socks have been flushed at the UAF Fine Arts Complex since December, creating havoc on the building’s sewer system. Maintenance Superintendent Bill Cox figures the stray socks have caused at least $15,000 in equipment damage and labor costs.

Link

Behold the Numi Bidet Toilet. At a mere $6,400 it’s a steal:

The Numi does just about everything for you, aside from the stuff that, well, only you can do. Looking something akin to a fancy pop-top waste bin, Numi comes complete with a self-opening and closing lid so you never have to touch the toilet seat; a self-cleaning bidet with adjustable controls for temperature and water pressure; heating elements to keep your toes and tush toasty; an illuminated panel for nighttime rendezvous; a built-in speaker system that connects to a remote docking station to ensure only you know exactly what you’re doing in there; and a deodorizing element that sucks air from the bowl through a charcoal filter. Of course, no connected appliance would be complete without a touchscreen, and the Numi’s no exception; it has a touch panel remote that you can use to set to your specifications.

Engadget has the video clip: Link | Official site

Mum Ammie Croft called in the cavalry to her Baulkham Hills home after not being able to find the fourth kitten in a newly-born litter.

“”I asked Alannah if she knew where he was and she said ‘down the toilet’,” Ms Crofts said. “I didn’t believe it could be true. I thought, ‘she can’t have put the kitten down the toilet’.” A whimper from the pipes confirmed her fears.

Complete with rescue equipment used in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake disaster, the NSW Fire Brigade arrived and began their quest.

The rescue crew found the kitten by putting a camera down the pipe, and pushed the kitten to an access valve. The eight firefighters worked for five hours to free the kitten. The kitten was reunited with his mother Pusska and was renamed Cain after the firefighter who pulled him from the drain. Link -via Buzzfeed

(Image credit: Brad Hunter)

Marvin Maxwell once made a guitar from a toilet seat. Now he’s reversed that idea and made a toilet seat that looks like a guitar! Or how abut a “piano bench”, if that’s your taste? Several colors are available from Jammin’ Johns. Link

When you get up in the dark of the night, what is it that you really need to see? The toilet! LavNav lights up only the toilet, so you can see where you are “going”. It’s motion-triggered, which saves batteries, and glows red when the seat is up and green when the seat is down. What will they think of next? Link -via the Presurfer

Ancient cultures were surprisingly adept at moving water around in a way that kept people from having to walk through pools of their own feces. (That was really more of a Medieval European thing.) Cultures as far back as 3000 BC were flushing away their problems—so who you callin’ primitive? Members of the Harrappa civilization in what is now India had toilets in their homes that drained into subterranean clay chambers. The residents of Skara Brae, a 31st century BC settlement in what’s now Scotland, were even clever enough to use a draining system that exploited a nearby river to automatically sweep out their dirty business.

None of these systems were anything like the flush toilet -that came later. Read all about it at Gizmodo. Link

(Image credit: Sam Spratt)

Toto’s engineers developed a receptacle inside the basin to collect the urine for sugar content and temperature checks, and an armband to monitor blood pressure. The readout is displayed on a wall-mounted computer screen.

"With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor," said Suzuki.
"In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet," she told AFP.

The electronic marvel, called the "Intelligence Toilet", is capable of storing the data of up to five different people and retails for 350,000 to 500,000 yen (about 4,100 to 5,850 dollars) in Japan, she said.

Link | Nerve has a few more pics: Link – Thanks Ben!

United States patent 1493222 is for "A weighing device especially adapted for weighing feces as excreted." Simply put, the patent is for a toilet outfitted with a turd scale in the bowl. A person seats themselves on the toilet, does their "business," and just like stepping on a traditional scale, takes a deep breath and hopes the number that registers at the top of the toilet bowl does not betray the number they’ve been praying for.

InventorSpot has more: Link

Neatoramanauts! Here’s the perfect gift for the elegant desk of your boss and co-workers. Behold, the Butt Station from the NeatoShop – a tape dispenser, memo/business card holder, pen holder and paperclip dispenser all rolled into one toilet-inspired unit: Link

See also: Fun Stuff for the Office

YouTube user PvtGermanWagz and his friends emptied the contents of 32 glowsticks into a toilet’s reservoir and flushed it to see the results. The results are simultaneously asinine and cool. Warning: foul language.

via Geekologie

It’s time once again to cast your  vote for America’s Best Restroom! Will it be the toilets at Bryant Park in New York City, the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, or maybe the Santa Monica Pier in California? Ten finalists are going for the title. You can take a virtual tour of each convenience facility and rank your picks accordingly. Pictured is last year’s winner, the The Shoji Tabuchi Theater in Branson, Missouri. Link -via Metafilter

It is not uncommon for schools to have a toilet permanently occupied by the mysterious girl, who is known in Japanese as Toire no Hanako-san (lit. “Hanako of the toilet”). She is often found in the third stall in the restroom on the third floor — usually the girls’ room — but this can vary from school to school. Details about her physical appearance also vary, but she is usually described as having bobbed hair and wearing a red skirt.

Hanako-san’s behavior also varies according to location, but in most cases, she remains holed up in the bathroom until an adventurous student dares to provoke her. Hanako-san can be conjured up by knocking on the door to her stall (usually three times), calling her name, and asking a particular question. The most common question is simply “Are you there, Hanako-san?” If Hanako-san is indeed present, she says in a faint voice, “Yes, I’m here.” Some stories claim that anyone courageous enough to open the door at this point is greeted by a little girl in a red skirt and then pulled into the toilet.

See more possibly disturbing pictures of Hanako-san at Pink Tentacle. This story is part of a series on Japanese urban legends. Link

Sean Michael Ragan of Make magazine declares that with this video by inventor Patrick Brawley, steampunk has ‘jumped the shark’:

Introducing the Electro-Flush! Technically, TeslaPunk Urinal. Hand-made solid oak tank with battery powered flush pump, laser aiming assist (aim at the laser dot in the bowl at night), lights, antique gauges, flush capacitor, and cup holder. Bowl is a round 1949 Standard.

via Make

Barbara Heard, from Gretton Road, Winchcombe, said she failed to understand how the signs could have been sanctioned by Tewkesbury Borough Council.

She said: “Does anyone have any idea what these signs mean?

“My husband and I regard ourselves as fairly intelligent but we have no idea.

“What will our overseas visitors will make of these signs?

Chris Pike of the Tewkesbury Borough Council says “ambulant” restrooms are larger than standard, and are “intended for people who may be partially disabled but cannot access the full disabled unit.” Link -via Arbroath

Apparently on the Enterprise-D, there was only one toilet, and the post includes a video of Jonathan Frakes pointing it out on a schematic of the ship.

Link

image by flickr user Richard Freedman used under creative commons license

Georgia Max Coffee chose to redesign the toilets of a number of key ski resorts in Japan. The cubicles were fully wrapped on all sides, so that the person caught short would have a ski jumper’s view when they were sitting on the loo. The person could look down at their skis (simply printed on the floor of the cubicle) and see the steep ski jump slope ahead of them.

Link -via Boing Boing

“It took some lifting to get him out, and he had cut himself pretty good trying to get himself out,” Johnson said.

The man was allowed to wash off with the fire truck hose at the scene, where he made another painful discovery.

“That’s when he discovered the keys were still in his back pocket,” Johnson said.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Ashley Smith/Times News)

Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times. Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container. In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor.

Link

Going to the bathroom doesn’t get much simpler than this. Behold the "Simple Toilet," as envisioned by Jessie Neukomm (bag) and Alejandro Bona (shovel) for the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL), Switzerland. Link [in French] – via Cribcandy, Thanks Justine Dufrenne!

I imagine this puzzle game would be funny for about 10 seconds, and then your friends are going to start yelling for some TP… or they will put your guest towels to ingenious use, as John Brownlee from BoingBoing Gadgets puts it.

Via BoingBoing Gadgets.

[YouTube - Link]

Here’s an adorable music video for all you cat lovers and a quick apology for the cat haters for this as well.

I just had to show this to all of you and have this song stuck in your head all day long while your at work or running your errands. At long last we can all rest a little easier knowing that the water crisis to come can be blamed on cats flushing toilets.

The song is by Parry Gripp who has bunch of other mind melting songs as well! You can find his website below.

via – BoingBoing

Parry Gripp Song Of The Week – Link