Friday Flush 16.Nov.2012

Watch out! Once again, it's time for a round up of all the news you never knew you needed to know!

Lifehacker challenge

The winner of this week's Macgyver challenge at Lifehacker shows how you can repurpose toilet rolls to make a bits-and-bobs holder.

Honourable mentions went to a lamp shade, candle holder, iPod dock and scarf organiser (my personal favourite).

Bubble wrap against sweat

So in the same vein of utilising products in a nifty new way, did you know that you can use bubble wrap to stop the inside of your toilet cistern from sweating? No? Me neither! I mean, who even knew that could be a problem??

Grandma did. And Grandma has the answers.

Toilet roll napkin holders

And hell, while we're at it, why the fuck not?

Stage fright

I know that sometimes people get stage fright when they go to the loo whilst someone else is in the vicinity. But the drummer from Florence & the Machine inverted the experience - he got locked in the loo and nearly didn't make it on stage. True story!

Enjoy your peekend, troops.

Nostrils

Where it's at.

Corridor, Newtown

Friday Flush 6 July 2012

Welcome to your semi-regular dump of all the loo news you didn't know you needed!

First up, Liberian journos are being called on to report more extensively on water and sanitation issues. The president of the Press Union of Liberia made the remarks at a 3 day workshop for WASH reporters.

Also this week, the UK has finally allowed sanitation as a human right. This follows on from Canada finally dropping its objections. The UK recognition, however, is not quite the breakthrough advocates have hoped for as it excludes the "collection and transport of human waste".

Next up, we have the Toilet Tour - a giant dunny that's doing the rounds around Australia, just like an Olympic torch - except that instead of heralding the impending tournament of a handful of fit bods spending boat loads of cash to win a necklace, it's spreading the news of 2.4 billion people who can't crap safely.

I urge you to get behind the cause... Either go visit the toilet when it visits your town, or you can arrange to have it visit if it's not already on its way! Check out The Toilet Tour.

And finally, those wacky Koreans aren't just hunting whales for no good reason - no, no, now the country has also opened the first toilet themed theme park

I'm sure it's all for... research...

Don't say I didn't warn you. Over and out.

Tuesday Turd

Your weekly round up of all the loo news you never knew you needed.

Governments commit to WASH

In a week that bodes well for WASH projects, Australian PM Julia Gillard has announced additional funding for the Civil Society Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Fund, providing $97million of funding to WASH initiatives around the world.

Also this week, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Passed the Water for the World Act. The Act has bipartisan support in both the house and the senate, yet I can't find much info on the ol' interwebs. US politics is not my strong point, but I gather that the Act now needs the support of the House to pass into legislation. The CEOs of prominent NGOs are urging congressfolk to support the bill.

Generation ZOMG! THaT's aLOT oF WaTER!

Do you know how much water that burger you ate for lunch yesterday really used? You might be surprised. Astonished, even. Possibly flabbergasted! I sure as hell was.
Every product has litres of hidden water, used in its manufacture, transport and packaging - and to help you find out just how much, the EU has launched Generation Awake - is it trying to scare you into sensibility? Maybe. But it's also a great resource to see how your everyday choices can have a far bigger impact than you realise.

It's a gorgeous looking site - maybe a bit naff, and I wonder what actual impact it will have. Still, an excellent website for teachers looking for resource-efficiency materials.

Toilet treasure

Conservators at an ancient communal toilet oustide Paris have uncovered a rare jewel - a hairpin of the Medici Queen Catherine. I once found someone's drivers license in a toilet in a pub... maybe not quite the same.


Sayonara for now, and I hope that you find something truly wonderful in your loo this week :)

Friday flush 15 June 2012

Ten tonnes of toilet paper aflame!

Luckily this didn't end up with anyone hurt, but in Ohio a trailer carrying ten tonnes of toilet paper caught alight, spilling the cargo onto the highway. Holy flaming bog roll!

Indian railways committed to loos

Utilising World Environment Day, Indian railways have proclaimed a new standard in provision for toilets across the network. Pay-and-use toilets will now be an 'essential service' to passengers at all railway stations, including disabled access toilets, lighting and round-the-clock attendants. The new concept is Renovate, Operate, Maintain and Transfer (ROMT). Not sure what the Transfer bit is about...

Punning on WTO

Jack Sim from the World Toilet Organisation (WTO) claims he was the first to break the taboo on sanitation. Well, I don't want to gloss over the really important stuff that many WASH organisations have been doing since before 2001 (WaterAid comes to mind), but I do admire Jack for getting the sanitation message out there. People gotta poop!

Why WASH?

You don't have to be a boglogger enthusiast to know that having a clean place to crap can save you from a whole host of horrible diseases. Preventable deaths of children under 5 is possible - if we commit to sanitation and hygiene for all.

Coca-cola on the clean water front

And finally, an unexpected feel-good story. While I find their commitment to fitness and nutrition laughable, I have to commend the Coca-Cola Foundation for providing significant grants towards water stewardship, conservation and education. With a total cash amount of $1,279,614, the grants will help to provide improved access to water and sanitation to communities in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A further $7 million will go towards water and sanitation activities through the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation which works across 17 African countries. Well done, you evil bastards :-)


Until next week, I hope all your poos are safe poos.

Friday Flush, 8 June 2012

(Posting from sunny Cairns on the ol iPod so links may not work!)

Water seems like a pretty fundamental human right - most nations agree and finally Canada is on board.

http://washinternational.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/rio20-canada-finally-recognises-human-right-to-water-and-sanitation/

The Gates Foundation is sponsoring research into low cost toileting systems - a phenomenal opportunity for people involved in WASH globally. Schemes like this are great for promoting thought and innovative solutions to the problem of unsafe toileting.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/technology/bill-gates-ultimate-dream-a-low-cost-toilet_778950.html

Who knew the portable loo market was so competitive? With a downturn in the construction industry has seen a related downturn in portable toilet rentals.

http://djcoregon.com/news/2012/05/31/competition-is-fierce-for-portable-toilet-companies/

Friday Flush - 1 June 2012

Welcome back to the boglogger's Friday Flush! Catch up on the web's premier round up of global loo news!

To Pee or Not to Pee

First up, a debate in the UK about whether or not it is acceptable to urinate in public. You can read the full article here, but for me the real winner is in the comments.

There should be a national database of people who feel it is acceptable to urinate in public. They should then be banned from all public swimming pools.
~ mastutio

My favourite is from nblake42, who offers this very British tale:

One afternoon last year I walked up the road to my house to discover a man urinating on my driveway. Like a good, responsible, British citizen, I pretended it wasn't my house and walked on past.

There'll be no surprises that my personal view is quite liberal. If there aren't any facilities around (as there increasingly aren't) then you need to go no matter what the surroundings, or risk causing yourself an injury.

Quick off the mark

Which describes the feat, not my delayed reporting of it.

Earlier this month, Jolene Van Vugt motorised into the record books by beating the land speed record for a motorised toilet. I could elaborate on this story, but I think it really tells itself.

Prosaic advice from Toilet Man

Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, gives great advice to Israeli students about entrepreneurship.

If you can use other people’s money, other people’s power, other people’s distribution, other people’s media, and other people’s influence and connections, and you align them towards a common mission, then each of them will join the party willingly.

As Sim says, he couldn't have run anything as fringe as the World Toilet Summit if governments and media weren't very willing participants.

Need to take the world's largest dump?

Maybe you need the world's largest toilet. Designer Sou Fujimoto has created a toilet like no other in Ichihara City, Japan - a single cubicle encased in glass surrounded by 200 square metres of garden.

I think the concept is great and the execution is breathtaking. At the moment, without the landscaping, it looks remarkably like a cemetery, and I wonder if this is on purpose? When the landscaping is finalised I think it'll be a really beautiful statement. About what? About how the mundane, the everyday, the routine, the necessary can still be beautiful.

Corporate graffiti?

On a trip to Newtown, wondering what to eat, aimlessly shuffling between Noodle House and Chinese Noodle House, but not really feeling like noodles, I came across this.

I HATE OPTUS
but vodafone is nice!

Corporate graffiti? Or exercising the right to voice your opinion in a public place?

Booze Bar and Black

Even if you haven't been to the newly re-opened Beresford yet, no doubt you've heard about its sexy curved bar, its naff wine list (organised into cheap, decent, good), and, of course, its magnificent loos.

You've heard about the loos, right?

First, a word about how I ended up in The Beresford on a Tuesday night. We had gone to The Rocks for a bit of St Pats day cheer, but found the prospect of lining up for 30 minutes just to get into the pub, followed by 30 minutes of queuing for the bar, followed by standing outside and having drunk loud amateur drinker step on our toes just wasn't... cheering. T had noticed that the Columbian served Guinness, so up we trudged to Oxford Street. Now, while technically the Columbian does serve Guinness, it comes out of a can, which is poured into a glass, and the glass is then placed on some sort of sonic device which gives the beer a head. It was creepy.

So we went to the Beresford. Which doesn't serve Guinness at all. So we had two pints of Coopers instead.

The most noticeable thing about the toilets at the Beresford is that they're dark. Very dark.




The next noticeable thing is that they're dark. And also, the hand washing area is communal. I like this. It feels efficient.



And the next noticeable thing is that they're dark. And also, they have Dyson Airblades! It's a shame that more people don't know how to use these properly. They are an absolute revolution in hand drying technology. I couldn't find a really good clip which shows you how to use the Airblade properly (it's all about pulling your hands out slowly, people! Not plunging them in again and again!), so you will have to make do with this Shiny review.



Also, they're very dark. And they pour a rather nice pint of Coopers.



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Ring My Bell

Going for a walk to Kings Cross on Sunday, my pal and I found ourselves at Woollomooloo. It happens. We by-passed the (very famous) Harry's pie cart, past the (very renovated and dull looking) Wooloomooloo Bay Hotel and strolled straight into the Bells Hotel.

How this outback-Australiana-olde worlde-pubiness-pub survives in this location I can't understand. Many years ago some buddies and I drove from Lismore to Tenterfield for reasons which escape me now, but I do remember it involved a 21st birthday at the school at Mummulgum. Anyway, on this road trip, we passed through a town called Drake, a town which was so low-class backwater Deliverance scary that we wound our windows up and sped up just a notch. It was palpably different to all the other rather nice country towns we drove through. I'm not saying that the Bells Hotel is as scary as Drake - but it is completely incongruous in its location.

AND it serves XXXX Gold on tap.

My pal put ten bucks through a poker machine while I read the local Sydney City Council propaganda. The cricket was on. An old geezer took ten minutes to walk from the door to the bar and the barman came round and gave him a stool. The girlfriend/wife/drinking buddy of the barman was wearing short shorts and white sneakers and had hair the colour of skank. It was all I could want on a Sunday afternoon drinking session.

On returning from the gents, my pal said that the toilets were as olde worlde as the rest of the pub.

"Is it a long drop?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Oh," I said. "Has it got one of those pull chain cisterns?"

He paused. "No," he said. "I guess it's just an old toilet."

Unfazed, I visited the ladies toilets. I was transported back to country towns and school toilets of my youth. Check out these awesome tiles.



The ladies toilets did, in fact, have a pull chain cistern, and also some really poignant graffiti (for 'poignant' read 'pissed').






The graffiti reads

Angelique 07
loves glamma
and goggles

Well. That's nice, Angelique 07.

Someone was so enamoured of this poem they wrote it twice.

AND ALL THE MIRRORS, RUSTED AND FLAKED
ARE SMUDGED WITH HARLEQUIN PAINT
And all the mirrors, rusted and flaked,
Are smudged with harlequin paint

I guess Angelique's friend felt the need to yell it out the first time and then repeat it quietly, sadly, looking down to her left, her hands clasped in front of her. Just for effect.



Thanks Bells. You were a lovely Sunday sesh.









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