OK - you're a fucking idiot.

That having been said, I sincerely hope that you are joking. And as Kitsune alludes to - what about piss vapor when you take a leak? (assuming that your emasculation hasn't become so acute as to render you incapable of standing up while peeing)

them's fightin words, nancy.

how does the fact that i close the lid of the toilet make me less manly? I still fart, scratch, spit and watch football. I also have 2 kids, and when they were younger, you had to get in the habit of closing the lid, or risk little fishing experiments. calling someone you don't know an idiot is risky at best.....compound that by questioning their manhood, and you'll probably get in over your head.

I'll give you a pass this time and not fire back, mainly because there is no reason for you to attack me, and I must assume this was just an attempt at humor...

funny.

I agree with you Jim. Unless you live alone with out opposite sex, kids or pets, the best solution is seat AND lid down. Safe and fair.:beer:

Seriously, though, I am superskeptical of the shit molecule threat. I want to know the likelihood of bacterial infection through these remarkable "super" shit molecules which are jumping up through the air and landing on my toothbrush and able to withstand the burst of pressure of tap water.

In recent times we have been bombarded with "information" about bacteria because it sounds really scary and makes the evening news. But studies have shown that the place in your home and office most infested with bacteria - more than on your toilet seat - is your COMPUTER KEYBOARD.


(expecting posting to go way down suddenly)


Bacteria are everywhere. They don't make you sick. Your body has an immune system that fights off these things. In fact maybe you are more healthy if your immune system gets regular practice.

Ironically, worrying about bacteria is less healthy than bacteria -- because worry causes hypertension and hypertension is in the top five of killers.

Why UT, how can you be skeptical of the extensive research that comes from Madison Avenue. :haha:

wouldn't that be called GIGO? (garbage in garbage out?) :D seriously though, that's just not right! i guess that explains the neverending stack of flying and other aviation magazines next to the john here at the house:rolleyes:

toad,
i for one am not taking any chances. the people we bought our house from had apparently been drinking shit soup for 5 years.....as the results of the water test we did indicated.....and they SEEMED healthy....needless to say, we made them install an industrial sized water purification system....

still....it's more the thought than the actual risk.

i lived for 30 years before i heard about that stat.

I think, at the time, I remarked that eating on the toilet was the circle of life.

Fortunately, I don't have an office keyboard, just my personal one.
Yes, I doubt shit on the toothbrush would make one (healthy individual) ill, especially if they are used to said shit, built up a tolerance to it if you will. It's still disgusting. And yes, I agree with Pasteur's rumored dying words "The pathogen is nothing, the terrain is everything" - but if it were true that wallowing in your own crapulence makes the body stronger, I doubt so many people would have succumbed to plagues and diseases of poor hygiene over the last many thousands of years.
Bottom line, toilets are gross, and soiled water vapor expelled from them is not welcome on my toothbrush, regardless of how nasty keyboards or kitchen sponges are.

Here's an interesting link on the poop/brush connection.

Well here's a sensitive question that I shouldn't even bring up: what do the germ-phobes do about oral sex?

I mean, if yer not even gonna put a toothbrush in your mouth...

Cherry flavored antibacterial sex jelly?

first, you have to boil your penis in bleach.........

All this anti-bacterial stuff is going to be the death of humanity...

You don't need antibacterial stuff if you just close that toilet lid....

But it's not like that's a very good seal.

Yeah. But we're talking about basic hygiene here, not kleenex-box shoes and oxygen chamber bedrooms.
Are you opposed to hand-washing too?

that still doesn't explain why you are willing to brush your teeth with Jim's piss vapor.

Jinx, I'm just merely pointing out that the vapor can still pass through any small opening. I'm sure that putting the toilet seat down helps, but how much in the end?

And for the record, I wash my hands regularly, particularly after handling raw food or using the restroom.

you might be onto something here....as far as i know, jinx has never had athletes foot in her mouth.

Huh? You lost me. SOP here is that the toilet seat and lid are put down and the toilet is flushed after use.

But the high pressure jet of Jim pee shooting into the toilet doesn't spread piss vapor as far as the low pressure swirling of the flush?

It helps enough to give me peace of mind. The vapor that might sneak out the side is unlikely to then blast upwards and over to the toothbrush stand. If it does - well shit, I tried. Like I said, basic hygiene here, not heroic measures.

I guess it depends on how far the pee-shooter is from the target eh? LJim is tall, but he's still shooting from close range, if ya know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge...

Now that is just mean. Funny, but mean.

yeah, careful, that water is COLD....and deep!

Ummm...I think it was meant as a compliment.

Just as long as you aren't handling raw food in the restroom.

If people so greatly fear piss vapor when they flush a toilet at home, how in the hell do they handle a public restroom with urinals? Or, the even more dreaded piss trough at a stadium? You're peeing into a trough, with a drain at one end, and all the steamy liquid from upstream passes by you, which you add to.

...and I don't want to even speak of the unthinkable dangers encountered with the crossing of the streams.

Ahh. See, I took it to mean that he was shooting from close range because he had to get really really close to the toliet.

Kitsune, this article touches upon public restrooms...it was a link at the bottom of the paper jinx posted. Interesting stuff.

"If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts," the professor says, "he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and crap in your sink."




rofl!

Unless it's being compromised by chronic illness. Knock wood, mine seems to be holding up pretty good so far.

Quote:

Ironically, worrying about bacteria is less healthy than bacteria -- because worry causes hypertension and hypertension is in the top five of killers.

Ah, there's where my high blood pressure comes from. *sheepish grin* I've become such a germaphobe in the last couple of years, and it's been really bad recently. :(

Well I was really hoping that you were being humorous with the "ppop molecule" theory, in which case I was being humorous as well.

So how long does the pass last for? Can I use it to validate my parking ticket? Is it an all access pass?

-nancy

sorry, passes are distributed on a case by case basis. we do, however validate parking.

ticket please.

So - roughly a week into the poll and the shower pissers outnumber the hygeine freaks by roughly 3:1. I would really like to see more female votes, so come on ladies - stand and unite! Be heard! Down with Athletes foot!

In public toilets, I've seen a lot of evidence of people flushing toilets with their feet. Shoe marks on the walls, seats, etc. I wonder if these people, that are afraid to touch the flush handle, are planning on washing their hands after they leave the stall?

Wow, I thought the foot-flush was an exclusively female trait ... or have you been in women's bathrooms a lot, bruce?

Anytime I see a co-worker walk out of the restroom without washing their hands, I'm like, "Ewwww!"

Having been both a janitor and a plumber at various times, I've spent plenty of time in both. The one that amazes me the most is the guys that flush urinals with their foot. Those handles are at least 4 to5 feet up and half don't flush them at all, so why bother. I should point out also that they never do it when someone else (me?) is around so it's not a showoff thing. Some don't want to touch the faucet handles after washing so they leave them on.
I guess it's their personal phobia to avoid germs like I avoid pinless hand grenades, covered with poop, sitting in a rattlesnake's nest. Silly I guess.;)

Why, do you find that people often piss all over their hands?

No...it's more like this: I'm going to shake your hand with the hand that I used to wipe my ass 10 minutes ago. Oh, and I haven't washed it.

And people wonder why I don't shake hands with patients.

We even have special one-use-and-discard pens that we give to people who are either really icky, known to be infected with something we are scared of, or have come from prison. There is only one real passtime in prison, and we assume everyone takes part. Thus, disposable pens. On the rare occasions we forget to take the dispostable pen "please just drop that on the clipboard, no don't hand it to me" our own pens get liberally swabbed down with alcohol swabs or sprayed with disinfectant.

From what I understand, recently pissed on hands actually have a lower bacteria count than a hand that has touched the flush-lever, water spigot, or bathroom door. Piss is relatively clean, by bacterial/viral standards. That's your killer ... the exit door handle. And, as we know (HHGTTG), public telephones.

The OSHA approved method for handwashing, incidentally, requires that the water be left running while the hands are being dried with a clean towel. The faucet is turned off with said towel, otherwise you are recontaminating yourself. You should also retain said towel for egress from the restroom ... no knob/handle touching there either. Dispose of towel in next available trashcan.

I wash my hands nearly as many times a day as someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I do have an excuse. My only problem is that in winter months especially, this tends to take it's toll on my hands. Nasty chilblains. I'm still in search of a good hand moisturizer that doesn't leave your hands all greasy and slippery. I'm at the point where if I can find one here, I'll have to go down to the Agway feed store for a container of Bag Balm. Of course, I don't need the "large barn" size ... mebbe they have a sample container?

I guess people always fear the most what they can't see.

That's why I don't sweat peeing in the shower.

Exactly -- peeing in the shower is nothing. Urine is extremely friendly to bacteria growth once outside the body, which is why washing up after using the public restrooms is a really good idea.

Speaking of clean urine ... just in case you need some.

They really have thought of everything, including the temperature differential.

You can sell your urine? I'm such a moron -- I've been throwing mine away! The body is a goldmine!

Lubriderm Seriously Sensitive is pretty nongreasy

I guess we all have our own tastes :p

maybe they do the "Ivy League" wash?

The student paper linked to seems to mainly be supported by the work of Charles Gerba. The student paper references this story, where Gerba is quoted as saying:
Well, I went to Wal-Mart tonight and bought a $1 bottle of red food coloring. After putting much much more than was neccessary in my toilet, I held a blank piece of printer paper directly over the toilet (about 1/2 inch above the seat). After flushing the toilet, the paper turned out to be completely blank.

So, it did not work for me.


(edit:

I forgot to mention -- I stirred the toilet water up with an unused drinking straw, so as to mix and distribute the red dye evenly)

Let's hear it for empiricism!!

I discovered an error in your lab procedures, Juju. You would have gotten positive results if you'd used the correct media.

Since you used food coloring, you should have held a cake with white buttercream frosting over the toilet. Food color sticks to frosting really well ...

Maybe it's a microbiological thing.

congratulations, juju. you have officially supplanted elspode as the poster of the funniest thing i've ever heard.


kudos!

Maybe it is the type of toilet. With the low-flows and all that non-sense today, maybe there isn't enough water flow for piss mist to happen. We should attempt the same experiment with a gas station public toilet. You know the kind: no tank, rocket engine thrust, will eat entire oranges with no clogging, etc.

Yeah, I thought about that. I have a "low flow" toilet, so perhaps that is why it didn't work?

The guy definitely seems to be for real. His homepage is here, and it lists the insane amount of scientific articles he's published. The article in question seems to be:<blockquote>Gerba, C.P., C. Wallis, and J.L. Melnick. 1975. Microbial hazards of household toilets. Droplet production and the fate of residual organisms. Appl. Microbiol. 30:229-237.</blockquote>But unfortunately, my university library account only allows me to access articles from 1998 to present (via the internet, that is).

I guess I could try it with a gas station toilet, but I'd feel kind of silly sneaking in there with a piece of paper and a bottle of food coloring. What would I say if I were caught? "Just an incognito FBI operation on your toilet, ma'am. Nothing to worry about."

Put the items in your coat pocket on the way in. Throw the stuff away in the bathroom trash can.

Yes, yes, of course.

I'm sure as hell not braving the freezing cold for it, though. If I decide to, it will be at a more opportune moment. :)

While living in the dorm, we had one of those gas station-style toilets go completely insane on us. Someone flushed it, the valve broke, and we found ourselves with an ever-flushing toilet.

At first, we were a bit frightened -- it isn't every day that you come across something of this nature -- but after a coming to the conclusion that the campus repair guy wouldn't be around for awhile, we decided that a constantly flushing toilet might be a good thing to have around.

It is not. All the positives of a never-ending water stream are nulled by the fact that while sitting on it you are sprayed with, yes, a fine mist. My roommate was the first to try it and return with the bad news: yes, everything is swept away without any need to push a button, "but you're going to walk away with a drippy ass".