Eccentric Flower talk:201009/The Toilet and the Prius
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201009/The Toilet and the Prius
Mel:
At my former place of employment, there were two separate restrooms near our office. They each just said "restroom" with no sex specified. The only problem anybody ever had with that was when somebody would occasionally forget to lock the door. (I once walked in on my (male) ex-boss peeing. Could have been worse - it wasn't like I really saw anything except him standing in front of the toilet with his back to the door. Embarrassing, but not fatally so.) It seems to me that that kind of quietly unisex toilet is on the rise - the one-person bathroom. I don't think it's going to catch on in highly public areas like stadiums and airports, though, if only because having enough of them to go around would take up too much space.
I'm with Jude (and Cal) on the jet-engine hand dryers - I hate those things. I'll just let my hands air-dry first.
-- 08:45, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Those jet dryers pretty much defeat the purpose of sanitation for me, cuz I just wipe my hands on my shorts or something. Hate 'em, for the noise, the extra time they take, and especially for the slobs who crap up the floors with crumpled paper towels, making such "innovations" necessary in the first place.
-- 14:53, 9 September 2010 (BST)
I say we nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
-- 16:58, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Of course both of your arguments, even tied together as nicely as they are, ignore that if we take those conservation steps population will simply rise 'til we're pushing on the limits yet again.
And there's my call for "OK, massive social change! Bibbity-bobbity-boo!".
-- 17:08, 9 September 2010 (BST)
When I worked for a big university in town, my office was right near the biggest computer lab on campus, and the bathroom closest to my office was often horribly unsanitary. I definitely now have the stereotype that all undergrad students need hygiene lessons. I used to sneak up to the fourth floor bathrooms that hardly anyone knew about, which also gave me some exercise with the stairs. One of the great things about my current job is that the bathrooms are clean.
I used to take the bus to work at my previous job, but one of the problems with that was that many bosses (who all drove to work) were unsympathetic about the flexibility in worktime needed to commute via bus in this town. More of us would have taken buses if we could get in late or leave a bit early. The university promoted non-car commuting, but not to the point of working with managers about flexibility of hours, or providing shower facilities, or anything like that.
It would also have helped if the city buses were less disgusting -- frankly, one reason I switched to driving to work in the last six months was that I was tired of having to check bus seats for urine or other nasty things on them. Which relates to a whole other societal problem (homelessness) that isn't an easy fix.
I don't know how to fix the problem of mass transportation of foods and making sure as many people as possible have access to nutritious foods, it's a mess.
When people find out about a problem, they want an easy take-away solution. Sometimes it's entirely wrong, sometimes it only helps a little, sometimes it's a good step to raising awareness of the big problems and getting things a little better, if not a lot. I don't mind the take-away attitude if we pick things that actually work, even a little.
-- 17:20, 9 September 2010 (BST)
i have always wished that someone would design a toilet stall that would not let you out until you had returned it to the default tidy condition.
i do remember my fist time in Europe using a unisex where all of the toilet cubicles were completely and privately enclosed. i have the unprovable suspicion that those would never be done here for fear of persons engaging in inappropriate behaviour. (amusing, since our campus has several washrooms which seem specifically designed to facilitate inappropriate behaviour.)
but to your point, old dogs, new tricks, etc. sometimes you just have to wait for them to die off. meanwhile, the next generation are learning different bad habits.
-- 17:38, 9 September 2010 (BST)
I might be one of those people who are kind of phobic about touching things in public bathrooms. I just sort of imagine that the entirety of any bathroom other than my own is covered in a thin, invisible layer of poo.
I kind of like those dryers. Especially the new ones by Dyson that are popping up in airports. They're called the AirBlade (which sounds like some kind of fucking bad-ass X-Men mutant power, amirite?), they work really fast, they get your hands plenty dry, and you don't have to touch ANYTHING.
-- 17:46, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Dan: There's an argument that the real answer to any number of these closely related problems is "more expensive resources," and it's a fine argument within limits (by which I mean I don't personally entirely agree with it), but the person making it tends to sound like an enormous misanthrope. How DARE anyone suggest that everything be scarcer and more expensive (even if that's the only way to get people to treat resources as if they have value)?
I mention that argument only because it has some pertinence to the issue of population control and who bears the costs, social and monetary, of having children, and how much having a child should cost. But population control is such a nasty stew that even I won't go near that topic. I will say that every time I see someone go near population control in any way, the math usually works out long-term in a direction I don't like, and one must be very, very careful to avoid the sour taste of eugenics in the back of one's throat.
-- 17:46, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Joy:
Oberlin is similar to Cambridge in some ways. There is a new bathroom design on campus that I just heard about. A single entry, with sinks and mirrors in the main hallway, then branches to the left and right with toilet and shower stalls. Each hallway can decide if they want all stalls to be unisex or divided. There is also right next door a single person unit with sink/toilet/shower, for those who don't want a somewhat communal experience (e.g., the modest, but also this was specifically to address concerns of the transgendered students on campus who don't want to enter a gendered bathroom space.)
Our women/men bathrooms (single person) on my floor at work have recently had those signs taken off. In college our bathrooms were unisex, but on parents/reunion weekend the older folks (gah, that means people my age now!) would stick labels on the bathroom doors, essentially saying fuck you to the female or male student whose stuff was still inside.
Anyway, I feel this is a story that fits your category of hitting on the one note you weren't up for discussion. But I thought the new bathrooms were interesting.
I don't get why the US isn't as big a proponent of diesel. Anyone know? City buses, yes, but not cars. I LOVED my diesel Volvo I had in grad school, even though I was out of luck if it was below 20 degrees for more than a day because I lived in an apt building and couldn't hook up an electric cord to the engine block warmer. Got well over 40 mpg, and this was a 1989 sedan.
I think I'm one of those people who wishes someone would just ban the use of fossil fuels or something. I think our radius of experience will get smaller and more local and I don't think this will be a bad thing, although there will be serious adjustments. I wonder if conference attendance in academia is going to slow down out of the economics and environmental costs of it all - I've seen discussions pointing in that direction.
-- 18:44, 9 September 2010 (BST)
I feel this is a story that fits your category of hitting on the one note you weren't up for discussion ....
Nah. The toilets were the most interesting part, so I'm not surprised if people focus on that. I think as a society we don't talk about our toilet sociology nearly enough.
-- 19:26, 9 September 2010 (BST)
A tangential story: When I was in Saudi Arabia to meet the clients, the husband took us on a tour of his beach house (and by "beach house," I mean for you to picture the spread at the Fontainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, circa 1975). In the basement of the banquet hall (seated 5000 and had a sound and video system more usually found at NBA arenas), he very proudly showed us his 8" waste pipe, which he said he needed to install because some of the female guests had no experience with Western-style toilets, and would flush used sanitary napkins, which would clog the system. No more problem, he said, with the 8" waste pipe. In the stalls themselves, there were visuals signs depicting how to use the toilet. It was one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had (and that's not even to mention seeing his pet lions).
-- 21:13, 9 September 2010 (BST)
8" soil pipe! My god. You could flush a duvet down an 8" soil pipe.
(For those who don't know, soil pipes in houses are generally 3.5" to 4" in diameter.)
(For those who care, which will not be many: The trend has actually been to make them smaller over the years because it is felt that this uses the flush water more efficiently - smaller tube = greater pressure - but making them smaller than 3" creates risk for what is called "trap siphoning," which I'm not going to bother to explain; just trust me that it is bad.)
-- 22:02, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Joy, on diesel automobiles, we bought a VW TDI and have been pleased as punch. We can snicker at the Prius drivers about the ecological load of batteries, all while experiencing driving that doesn't feel like sitting behind a plastic trash can crossed with a PowerPoint presentation.
Columbine, if I may indulge your misanthropy for a moment, have I grabbed you by the shirt collar and screamed "you must read 'A Farewell To Alms'!!!! Now!!!!" recently? We can ignore the past ten thousand years and focus on the recent blip of two centuries or so and applaud our leaders when they scoff at "neo-Malthusian ideas", but evidence strongly suggests that Malthus was right.
I'm just enough of a rat bastard to say "screw it, as long as it doesn't happen while I'm alive I no longer care".
(Of course if I were actually a successful leader of populations, I'm sure that some future generation would overdub the dramatization of my demise to suggest that I was distraught over the canceling of my XBox live account...)
-- 23:59, 9 September 2010 (BST)
Soccerjude:
On the uni toilet business, I wonder if it's just sheer coincidence that Ally McBeal (which was set in the Back Bay) was the first TV show I can remember that featured a unisex toilet - at a law office, no less!
I can see that you're drawing a line between wastes of two different sorts, mostly around the perception of what we (as the individual) can do. In the case of a bathroom, it's to turn off the lights when the room's not in use and to use as little water and paper as possible. (And please DON'T get me started about those jet engine hand dryers that Target put in to replace paper towel dispensers, because as "sanitary" as they claim to be, they're NOT, and the noise scares the bejeezus out of Cal to the point where I have to dry her hands with toilet paper.) In the case of fossil fuel consumption, it's all about driving less (as a person) and kinda ignoring the fact that the individual driving is really just a terribly small slice when compared to the consumption by commercial carriers. (Am I get warmer?)
What gets my goat on the latter is that there aren't a ton of choices in some cases. Of course, there's the example of Baton Rouge that you cite. But, even in a relatively well-appointed area like the Boston Metro area, as far as public transport goes, I still have to drive to Providence for work because my train options are so slim. I live ON the line that runs directly between Boston and Providence, and yet the a.m. trains that go directly into Providence arrive at 7:25 or 10:30am. This is what we'd mildly term "schedule fail". Or, more accurately, "This is why I have to drive when I really wish I could take the train." Here's hoping that the new rail link to TF Green Airport gets the frequency into Providence station up, and then my wee carbon footprint can get wee'er. Because...even if it may be not be helping all that much, at least I can nap or read while I at least do *something*. Better than driving a tractor trailer to/from work, that's for damn sure.
-- 01:58, 9 September 2010 (BST)