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Economic Analysis of Toilet Seat Position
Ant writes "The Science Creative Quarterly has published an economic analysis of The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Down, employing game theory. This analysis is more thorough than preceding ones cited (from 2002 and 2005), as it factors in the cost of yelling. Both men and women can take some comfort in the conclusion though neither may in the end be satisfied.
Where does closing the lid come in to play here?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, what I want to know is: will this scientific research lead to a new design of toilet that is able to please both genders, thus breaking the intellectual monopoly that Thomas Crapper's original design has had for far too long?
I don't use the toilet. God made bushes and trees for a reason, you know.
(I'm lots of fun at the office, too... those silk plants sure look real)
Seriously.
I don't know about you but when I have to crap I have to sit down. And that's why there's no "leave the toilet seat up!" battle raging, because guys can just go to the fucking bathroom sitting down(which I usually do when I'm not in a public bathroom)! What annoys me more though is when other men pee standing up and get urine all over the toilet seat. In public bathrooms, there are usually these special toilets that can only be used standing up. If your masculinity is challenged by not standing up in the bathroom, use those!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
A better approach would be a technological one; let machinery decide whether the toilet seat should be lowered or not.
One might imagine some sort of sensor that detects the prospective toilet user's gender. However, this is not satisfactory, seeing as how males do sometimes require the seat to be down as well.
I propose a system whereby the toiletseat is lowered when the door leading to the toilet is closed, and opened when the door is closed.
After all, many men leave the toilet door open, though women are vastly more likely to close it. Also, men are more likely to close the door for fear of exposing themselves (or malodorous fumes) when they would be facing the door when using the toilet, rather than standing with their back to the door - which is the most likely orientation when urinating. Closing the door for toiletseat-down operation can be reinforced in males by only providing access to printed matter (such as a newspaper) with the door closed (and hence, the toiletseat down).
The toilet seat might be operated electronically, or even mechanically, so this system could even be used during power outages or in developing nations. It would require only the bare minimum of training for all participants.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
by installing an asian-style toilet, the type you have to squat down on top of. No lid needed!
Among its various additional benefits, squatting really helps pushing out number-two's.
If you constantly have fights over the position of the seat, just get a traditional asian toilet, ie a hole in the ground you have to squat over.
Monstar L
This is becoming such a problem at my workspace that I now go use the toilet where mostly women use it, instead of the one close to me where mostly men use it.
I can't beleive that guys will purposefully pee standing up, spray the bowl, the seat, the floor, the walls, there might even be some on the ceiling, and then just walk away as it it was perfectly normal. WHAT THE FUCK? That's piss you got there on your shoes, not stream water!
I'm ashamed of being a man when I see the state guys leave toilets. Once I was in a public toilet at a theater and the only explanation I could come up with to explain the level of piss spray everywhere was that there must be a war waging inside the bowl between two countries, and one of them just discovered the atomic bomb.
Amen to that...
WE took the time to lift it UP. THEY can take the time to put it DOWN.
(Yes Im married and whipped so this will only ever be posted on slashdot. Im never actually going to say it out loud.)
The seat and the lid get shut every time. If I can't win, no one can. Plus it has the added benefit of keeping the kids and cats from playing in the water.
WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL.
To all women out there,
Men are lazy, and when they need to take a leak, they might decide to try out their aim with the seat down rather than take the effort to raise it. Sometimes they miss, leaving urine for you to sit on. Leave the toilet seat up. It's in your best hygienic interest to do so.
Yeah and the "cowboy neal" option is missing too, you insensitive clod...
Oh, wait ! This isn't a poll.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... http://www.totousa.com/washlets_landing2.asp With a remote that will please the geek in every guy.7 210556,00.html (don't piss on the seat)
but be warned http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001320029-200
Here's how you solve the toilet seat dilemma:
Remove the toilet seat.
No toilet seat, no arguments, no problem.
There are worse cases... At a female friend's place, the seat won't even stay up. You actually need to hold it the whole time when peeing.
And no, neither her nor her flatmate heed it when I complain. Drat. Damn female chauvinist pigs... I should sue them for gender discrimination or something.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I've lived with several MOTS sometimes for years and *never* has this issue come up. And I've never heard of it coming up either around me. I suspect it's purely a US thing.
(note : I'm not in the US.)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
All I can say is this must be the stupidest issue in the world.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
I don't mean whether you leave it up or down, I mean the argument. I've run into women who are adamant about having the toilet seat down, and I just can't wrap my head around it. Obviously, if it's her apartment or otherwise constitutes her space (as opposed to a shared space between the two of you) then she gets to make policy on all things, no matter how inane -- when you're in someone else's home, regardless of how intimately connected to them you may be, it's just rude to do things in contravention of their preferences.
However, if you are living together and sharing a space, then insisting that the toilet seat be down (or up, for that matter, although I've never encountered that) is simply a selfish insistence that your needs are more important than your partner's. Consider: when a man wants to pee, if the toilet seat is down, he must first put it up, or the seat will end up with drops of urine on it, which no one (including the man) wants. When a woman wants to pee, if the toilet seat is up, she must put it down, because she cannot sit on the rim.
Because each wants something different, the fair way to handle it is to simply put it down (or up) as required. Men put it down, women put it up. The distribution of labor is fair, everyone has to put it up or down sometimes and not at other times.
The insistence that it always be down, however, essentially amounts to the woman shirking her share of the toilet-seat-state-changing responsibility. She is saying that she doesn't feel that she should ever need to put the toilet seat down or up, and that you, the man, are responsible for putting it both up and down.
Men are frequently inconvenienced by a woman leaving the toilet seat down -- if you show up in the middle of the night, and it's dark, and you really have to go, it's a bit of a pain to always have to feel to see if the seat is up or down before you let it all out. Isn't this exactly the argument most often used by women? Why is it a valid argument coming from them, and not from us? The simple answer is that she wants it her way, and is unable to compromise, and for some reason feels as though society has vindicated her opinion on the matter.
To me, a woman who insists on having the toilet seat down, who cannot take the trouble to put it down if it is up, exactly as I must take the trouble to put it up if it is down, is clearly an example of a selfish, controlling personality who will cause you problems in the long run. And actually, there's a broader theme here: if you're the sort of person, regardless of your gender, who expects other people to conform completely to your habits and norms without considering that in a relationship, everyone needs to change their habits somewhat in order to make things work, then you're probably a shitty significant other. The kind I tend to dump after three weeks, if even.
The fact that some women are even under the impression that insisting that the toilet seat always be down to convenience them is in any way right-thinking at all completely boggles my mind. I don't watch football, but to leverage another cliché as an analogy: it would be like insisting that any time she watches TV that she put it back on ESPN when she's done.
This has turned into a rant, but here's a piece of advice for men who respect themselves: if she starts throwing a shit fit about the toilet seat, dump her. I'm serious. It's the tip of the iceberg, and you'll end up unhappy in the long run.
Um, I'm not quite sure what I expected "MOTS" to expand to now... Well, make that people of the female persuasion.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
And all this for a very trivial problem.
Interesting fact is that the water in the toilet bowl often is very low on bacteria just because it is exchanged rather often so if your pet tries to drink that water it's not that much of a problem.
One other thing to consider is that in some parts of the world you are running the risk of being invaded by unwanted pets through the toilet, so you better should have the lid down and kept in place by something heavy there... Sometimes it may be a good idea to flush before and after...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Women have less need to leave the toilet seat down as they on average keep the toilet cleaner and so less noxious fumes are there to escape.
Beep beep.
You probably noticed this, but I meant to write "Because each wants something different, the fair way to handle it is to simply put it down (or up) as required. Men put it up, women put it down. The distribution of labor is fair, everyone has to put it up or down sometimes and not at other times."
Somehow I reversed the emphasized. Sorry, should have previewed.
I could see a few company logos that would certainly endear toilet paper makers to certain groups. I could well see SCO logos on TP used at Novell...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
if (lid->position==UP)
lid->lower();
sit();
pee();
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am a man- I sit down ALL THE TIME with private toilets- you have to more than 50% of the time, ANYWAY. Much less messy, much less noise, slightly faster, no conflicts. I don't give a rat's a** what anyone thinks (not like anyone would know, anyway, unless I post it in a stupid message on Slashdot for a million people to read).
Now, public restrooms? I will use the urinal when possible, which is what it is there for. My conclusion? Unless the private bathroom also has a urnal, just sit, for crying out loud!
If you want another interesting thing to statistically fight over: Do you leave the LID closed or open? At my house, it is always to be closed. Why? Because it grosses me out when the cats drink out of the toilets!!!
(This has got to be the silliest thread I have ever seen on Slashdot!)
When we're just starting a relationship, we're usually looking for validation of our decision. We see reasons why this is a good thing and that this will work -- we don't see what others sometimes do, that this is a crazy, self-destructive decision which will alienate our friends, and cost us a year of happiness as we extricate ourselves. To have a rule of thumb is a VERY GOOD THING. To adhere to it -- trust it -- and let it force us to make the right decision is a VERY GOOD THING.
When we look for a job, many of us us the Dilbert principle. If there are a few Dilbert cartoons on the cubes, work there. If there are a lot or none, don't. (None means that management won't allow them, and people are scared, too many means the company is seriously pooched.) This is a rule. No matter how nice things look, if it doesn't pass the Dilbert test, we don't take it.
The toilet seat thing seems just as useful and important or more so. If she doesn't immediately see that there shouldn't be an issue there, run.
Because each wants something different, the fair way to handle it is to simply put it down (or up) as required. Men put it up, women put it down. The distribution of labor is fair, everyone has to put it up or down sometimes and not at other times.
Amen. Amazingly, when I explained this to my wife, she agreed and the issue completely disappeared. Showing not only that she's not a selfish twit, but that she can be convinced by logical reasoning.
I share your pet peeve and using that very same logic I was able to get my wife to see things our way and I had won. It was a victory not just for myself but for man kind.
:(
...
Then we had kids and they are very groggy when they get up in the middle of the night and would sometimes sit in the bowl and get themselves completely drenched with toilet water. So we're back at leaving it down
But she hasn't heard the last from me. As soon as they're old enough to be given personal responsibility for keeping their asses dry
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
if (lid->position==DOWN)
;)
{
if (gender==MALE)
goto_sink();
else
sit();
}
pee();
Just hope I got that right. Last thing you need is a nasty buffer overflow
... then you're probably a shitty significant other This in a toilet related thread?09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
This being /., the stronghold of nerdy bachelors, the question is of course purely theoretical. However, there are a few assumptions in the article that would probably fail in the real world.
... for some reason my sig seems oddly appropriate for this discussion:
For example, the author assumes that John (an appropriate name, btw) visits the toilet as often as Marsha. In my experience, females visit the toilet more frequent than males.
Another thing: It is assumed that John only performs one of the two actions (#1 and #2) when he goes to the toilet. This is not really a problem though; if he has to do both, he would probably do both sitting down, and therefore we could adjust the probability p (of doing #1) to exclude these visits. The author ought to have mentioned this, though.
Life is wet, then you dry.
What has not been factored in is the cost of Marsha or John forgetting to change the seat position before performing toilet operations. The scenario would be John attempting to perform #2 or Marsha performing #1 or #2 with the seat in the up position. This generally happens (at least in my house) because the user is still half-asleep or their senses are otherwise dulled. The probability of this occurring is much much lower than p, however the cost to the user when this happens is much much higher than the cost of a single change-the-seat-position action. The cost of the yelling from Marsha is (again in my experience) also much much higher.
There is also the inverse, where John forgets to raise the toilet seat before #1, often for the same reasons as above. Again the probability is lower and the cost (either of needing to clean the toilet seat or of yelling from Marsha when she sits on a wet seat) is greater than the costs of changing the seat position.
In any case in my house the game includes a 5 year old boy who generally waits till the last second and then runs into the bathroom doing the potty dance, and doesn't remember to raise the toilet seat for #1. The resulting mess I think now even has my "Marsha" raising the toilet seat after use in anticipation of this activity.
That's because you can just pee sitting down(which is better for you medically) while they can't pee standing up.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I've run into women who are adamant about having the toilet seat down, and I just can't wrap my head around it.
It's simple. those women tend to be control freaks of some type. Best solution is to run away. A more fun solution is to put the seat down AND the lid every single time.
It screws with their head hard, as they are pleased you obeyed and put the seat down, but it pisses them off that you put down the lid.
If you get confronted about it simply say, "you like the lid up? how disgusting."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Let see, I am man in his 50's and was raised with 5 sisters. Also, I have 16 nieces, 2 grand nieces, 4 sister-in-laws, 2 ex sister-in-laws and I forget how many female cousins not to mention aunts. It is advantageous to put the seat down when done.
Must be a slow news day!
Thomas Crapper neither invented the flushing toilet, nor was the noun 'crap' created after his name.
I went to Japan on business with a few co-workers once. On the way to an important meeting, one of the fellows had to take a crap. So we found a public washroom, and apparently it had a squat toilet. To keep the story short, he came out a few minutes later with diarrhea all over his pants and shoes. He said it just sprayed out all over the place because he was squatting. Needless to say, he didn't attend the meeting.
Of course after getting out of a shitty relationship and back into my own place I thought I was free to leave the toilet seat in any old position I like. It was pure joy while it lasted. Then a month later I was back to leaving it down.
I work in aircraft maintenance and it turns out we fall under a peculiar law of physics.
Any object dropped can and will fall into the most unlikely and most inconvenient place.
So in other words practically anything I dropped regardless of how many bizarre bounces or ricochets it would take, would land in the toilet from anywhere in the bathroom. Once exposed to this, it takes a long time for it to get it out of your life, much like a neurotic woman. I had never noticed it before because of the much stronger force, known as female OCD, altered the natural laws of space and time in my household. Once I resigned myself to leaving the toilet set back down, things stopped landing in the toilet, though they tried their damndest to do, and instead started landing in the trash can. Now I have to get into the habit of taking out the trash and putting a bag in the can.
A guy can't fucking win.
This is becoming such a problem at my workspace that I now go use the toilet where mostly women use it, instead of the one close to me where mostly men use it.
That may work in a bathroom that isn't used by strangers. Not in a public restroom, though. Have you ever been in a public women's toilet stall? They're worse than men. Ask a woman about it, and she'll explain that some women "hover" over the seat. They have basically no directional control, which means the seat gets soaked. Nobody's gonna sit on a wet seat, so the next woman has to hover, too. Don't ask me why they can't put the seat up. I'm guessing it's a matter of principle.
Sure they can: http://www.shewee.com/
I have it in my appartment. It's great! No nagging, no waiting in the morning, you can go whenever you please, it has another shower too... The previous owner modified it this way to have the extra bathroom for the housekeeper. We never bothered to change it, since the space increase is not exactly worth it (plus structural damage).
I made a deal with my girlfriend: I'd leave the toilet seat down for her, if she'd leave it up for me! Heh! This was a compromise only after she failed to grasp the significance of "The Aerosol Effect": Flushing disperses an aerosol that leaves a disgusting film on the toilet seat, whether the lid is down or not. Ergo, to avoid sitting on it - ugh! - the seat must remain up. (Who has time to wait until the flushing completes to put it back down?)
The problem with the whole toilet thing is that sit-down toilets are not designed for men at all.
They are far too low for the height of an average man, which means we are pissing really far, and spray is almost inevitable now and again. Toilets are designed for the lowest common denominator: women and children. Both are shorter than men, and tend to sit.
The solution is simple: urinals should be installed as standard in homes. That way, men can piss in an appropriately masculine way without getting it everywhere, and only sit on the toilet to defecate. Women and children are welcome to keep sitting. The man of the house can keep his own urinal clean (much easier than cleaning a sit-down toilet), the toilet seat can be permanently down, and the bitch can shut up and stop her whining!
Why the hell has it been decreed that because men CAN pee standing up, they must? Talk about a selfish insistance, especially if you never volunteer to clean the thing you are pissing and splashing up. Seriously, it's a nice, comfy, cool seat. You use it half the time sitting anyway, right? Why not sit down to pee? If you're outside, hell yeah, let 'er rip. If you're at a urinal, knock yourself out. But why try to stand and pee in a small seat? Give in. Nobody will see you. Sit down and pee. Read a page of a magazine while you're at it. Wasn't that nice? Didn't have to worry about aim or pissing on the rim or nothing.
This has got to be some holdover from cavemen days (with apologies to the GEICO guys). Guys sitting down to pee, when they can, is the next leap forward in the evolution of civilization.
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Consider this: if either mate pulls a hissy fit over the orientation of a hinged piece of plastic, I say shoot them both! One for being a petty jerk/bitch, the other for having such poor taste as to risk spreading weak genes through reproduction.
Eugenics starts in the bathroom!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think that's too much thinking, though I think the conclusion is a good one. One thing though, women need the seat down all the time, and men, maybe a third the time, that's more of a need for it to be down than up.
I prefer to have the seat and cover down. I'm not sure why people of either sex wants to see even clean toilet water even when they are in the bathroom for other reasons. If you never use the cover, then you may as well remove it, there's no reason for it to be there if it's not even used.
The cat plays in the toilet which is disgusting, causing you to close both the seat and lid! Both men and women must both open and close, no more yelling, or at least equal opportunity yelling :)
both a toilet and a urinal. Then there is no need to move the seat, ever. 100% efficient.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Both men and women will have to lift *something* to do anything. Men will lift the cover and seat for #1, and women will just lift the cover for both.
Problem solved. Also keeps pets out of the toilet.
-- My Sig is a P228.
Seriously, problem solved. Why wouldn't you want your own bathroom? It's worth the extra $.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
The one and only time when standing up to pee is 100% effective is in the shower.
You pee and don't have pressure to aim correctly or have to faff holding clothing out of the way or anything.
A shower pee is similar to the outdoor pee - just make sure you don't piss into the wind.
liqbase
The reason I've often heard is that it's a safety thing. Women are afraid of falling into the toilet if they have to go in the dark and the seat is up.
After I stop laughing at that mental image and assure her that I'd really like to see that, I point out that she'd be VERY unhappy if I didn't look when I peed, so why shouldn't she be expected to do the same?
Only nancy boys sit down to pee. ;)
It's because we like to emphasise our superiority. Every woman I know has a serious case of penis envy when it comes to peeing. They would LOVE to be able to use public toilets without touching anything, pee in the woods, even write their names in the snow!
I'm a woman and I don't find this. Yes, on occasion some inconsiderate cretin makes a mess and neglects to clean it up but 99% of the time it's a little dribble which I can quite happily wipe up and get on with my own business. I've been into both mens and womens toilet stalls (I used to clean them) and I find mens to be by far the nastiest.
Silly rabbit
So, the dog licking his ass and balls and then giving you a sloppy kiss isn't a bit gross?
Dude!
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Generally speaking if you talk to people who clean public toilets they always say the women's room is worse.
Maybe it's different in an office bathroom, I don't know.
"Cleaning the thing" is the overlooked variable in this discussion. The argument comes down to who has higher standards of cleanliness in the determination of the cleaning chore. If there is sufficient disparity in the periods between cleanings or subjective need, then the person who has the higher standard will typically end up doing the cleaning most of the time. It is not absolute, but there seems little doubt that the female of most heterosexual relationships has the higher standard of cleanliness in the bathroom, ergo: the woman is most often responsible for cleaning.
Here, gentlemen we find a peculiar irony, if women typically expect to clean the bathroom more, why then would they prefer the standard (for seat position) that makes it more likely that cleaning will be required? The answer, lies in their catastrophic aversion tendencies. The most important issue here is "falling in" which most women have experienced at some point in their lives. When that happens there is shocking discomfort, instant embarrassment, questions of hygienics and sometimes a need to change clothes. All of these things are most likely to happen when a woman is at her least prepared (groping in the night, blearily in the morning or distracted by other issues,) which compounds the issue by forcing a sudden reorientation of priorities. In short, it is a catastrophe if a woman falls in.
Meanwhile, if she can force the man to adopt the habit of always having the seat down, it avoids the possibility of having to deal with the potential life shattering experience of discovering the seat up the hard way. Cleaning more often has very little impact on her preference, and fear of the water torture has quite a bit.
Now the real issues are of effort and time. A man expends effort and also looses time when he has to raise and then re-lower the seat. He loses even more time and expends even more effort to sit rather than stand. The cleaner (typically the female) loses more time time in cleaning if she cannot convince the habitual stander to always sit. Yet, given all these reasons to consider alternatives, when confronted with even one splashdown, the answer is always to leave the seat down and to heck with the consequences.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Install a standing urinal for him.
First solution is to install a urinal in the bathroom.
Second solution is for a man to live with a man, not a woman.
So if you are a man and you piss standing up, you automatically must aim poorly and hit the seat with a stream of urine? Or does it splatter from the bowl up on to the seat?
Personally I aim for the back of the bowl, just above the waterline.... this is where the angle of deflection will disperse the urine stream effectively in a way similar to a urinal... which is also designed to not spray urine back on to the urinator... which of course is where the concept comes from.
Now if for some reason I do get a couple drops of pee on the seat... I grab some toilet paper and wipe it off. Urine is a combination of uric acid and ammonia mixed with whatever waste chemicals your body decided it didn't need and could expel via your bladder. These chemicals could probably be put into a gel capsule and sold as vitamins if you separated them from the uric acid and ammonia. What I'm saying is that urine is pretty damn safe and really doesn't do anything bad to you at all (unlike fecal matter which can contain Hepatitus, Flu and lot of other nasties).
So here's my questions... if you always get urine on the seat, do you also always get urine on the rim? Who cleans that once a month? Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up after yourself when you make the mess, rather than letting it sit for weeks?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I used to have a single Windows device in my home, Dell Axim x51v... Man... it's embarassing to say, but it just so happened that after reading some slashdot on it I dropped it accidentally in the toilet. Alas, no more Windows for me.
Last Windows device.... What a bummer....
I hope it's the typical thing of the nasty minority (like fundies in religions) making a huge ruckus, because it boggles my mind that an entire nation of people would have this argument.
Oooh, is that because there's a big fluffy pink seat cover on it? Explaining how bad your aim is while hunched over and using one hand to hold up the seat migh help.
I live in the US, and I've never actually encountered this argument in real life either. It is, however, in the movies and sitcoms all the time, which probably makes it seem more prevalent than it is.
Why the hell has it been decreed that because men CAN pee standing up, they must?
Let me explain to you why it is men can pee standing up.
On the Eighth Day, God came to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and said "I've finished creating the world, and I've got a couple of things left over which I want you to have between you. Let's see... first thing I can offer you is the ability to pee standing up".
"Oh, yes, can I have that please, God?" said Adam, "That would be so cool - I could be out hunting, fishing or whatever and just pee wherever I am."
Eve smiled sweetly and said if peeing standing up is so important to Adam, let him have it.
God said "Okay. Adam, you shall be able to pee standing up. Now, what else was it I had in the bag.... oh yes. Multiple orgasms".
Darn. I was curious and hoping you'd elaborate.
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Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
RFID Implants
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wait... it's faster? What kind of pants do you wear?
Get a web developer
Easy solution for that. Pee all over the seat. One way or another it won't be a problem again...
If she starts throwing a fit about the toilet, maybe it's just learned past experience. Maybe her parents did that or whatever. Talk to her about it first. Ask her about it, preferably at a time when you didn't just leave the seat up. If she's unreasonable, then consider if the relationship is right for you.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Normal", whatever that is. You have to pull down your pants and underwear some, regardless of standing or sitting... unless you think messing with a silly "fly" on underwear makes any sense at all.... (And no, none of my underwear even HAVE "flies").
Next topic: What type of underwear men wear.... ug!!!!!!!
Even if you sit to #1, you still have to aim, silly. It isn't a hands-free endeavour!
Somewhere here I have a good article of "men issues", and this is near the top.
toilet seat. we need it up, you need it down. You're a big girl now, learn to work the seat.
The common man's argument is that we sometimes need it up and sometimes need it down, so we have learned how to use the seat. (you rarely hear of a guy "falling in", and if he did, he certainly wouldn't try to find someone to blame for it, let alone even admit to having fallen in in the first place) Women OTOH who have lived in families or with roommates in an exclusively women household have lost this important life skill of operating the seat, since it is always down. (when visiting friends houses with exclusively women, it's a fun social experiment to slip into the bathroom and lift the lid and run out, and wait for someone to fall in, the screams and resulting argument are always fun to watch!)
A good example to draw is drive to a small town and park your car out front of your friend's house (in a spot where parking is permitted) and go in for a chat. BOOM someone just ran into your car. You run out to find someone rear-ended your parked car, and is upset at you for having left your car there, there isn't usually a car parked there and therefore it's all your fault. Same thing.
Just because you are not acustomed to something being different than you expect, does not negate your responsibility to identify reasonable (and sometimes even frequently occurring) change and adjust your behavior accordingly. Take responsibility for your actions, don't blame me.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Everyone wins.
This, off course, totally pisses off the prissy wimminz who use the toilet seat as some kind of petty ammunition in the pointless fights they plan to have, which is a huge bonus.
You can't take the sky from me...
I put both the seat and lid down so that nobody can use the toilet without adjustment. That seems more fair to me, but that's the 'everybody suffer' equilibrium.
I have never given it a second thought in my life when I had to lift up the toilet seat.
Why do women have to make a problem out of putting it down?
Consider a home only inhabitated by men; they would still have to switch the seat for when they shit or only pee.
A home only inhabitated by women, on the other hand, would never ever have to manipulate the seat, as the always sit down.
So I think it comes down to this:
Men are accustomed to 'manipulating' the toilet seat since they learned how to use it, and confrontated with the 'problem', they don't mind switching it at all.
Women don't wan't to close down the seat so they can pee beacause an ignorant man has selfishly lifted it up!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I've never understood how the hell the "fly" on underwear is supposed to work anyway. Looking at how it's contructed, I would first have to shift my penis way over to the left to go in the inside hole. Then I need to make a 90 degree turn (ouch!) to the right. Then snake my, er, snake through the tunnel between the two flaps. Depending on how cold it is, I'm not sure I'd always have enough length to make it to the end of this tunnel. Then I'd have to make another 90 degree turn (!) to the left to exit out the outer hole. And then try to pee through a penis that has two 90 degree bends in it.
Yeah, that's way easier than pulling down the elastic band a bit.
To whoever was cynical enough to mod me "Insightful": I LOVE YOU!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Let me get this correctly:
... What is that shit???. And the parent post also bring plenty of examples: "Much less messy, much less noise, slightly faster" He is worried about the noise?, What mess is he talking about?. It's just PISS!.
You sit to piss?
There is something very weird about the USA. You are a completely ANAL society. You like asses, admit it. A little bit too much. No, not true for the rest of the world. Maybe in the last couple of years this is starting to get more widespread. But usually, TITS were what man looked for first in women (which is logical, since we all have an ass). In the USA, ASS, ASS, ASS. Look at the way you talk:
Your more usual words are "Shit" and "Fuck you". All your insults are ass-related, while it's usually not so in the rest of the world. In Spanish, for example: "Carajo" (Dick), "Coño" (Vagina), are far more common.
But even when you seem to insult ass-related all the time, you censor anything relating to body functions. For example: Number 1 or Number 2
It's common for the human being to try to separate itself from certain things that remember him that once he was an animal, and then, at the same time, find pleasure in certain primitive sensations. But in the USA you seem to be doing this in a pretty twisted way.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
That's odd. I've had to clean both men's and women's public restrooms as well, and I'd have to say that used cotex and other USED feminine-hygiene-products all over the floor, along with the urine and feces being where it shouldn't, which are only slightly less prevalent than in the men's, make the women's FAR worse than anything I've ever encountered in any men's room. I could care less about the urine on the seat... it's the damn bloody thing on the floor that scares me. That's a biohazard for crying out loud. How flipping hard is it to hit the damn mini stainless trashcan anyway?
Someone earlier pointed out urine spray on the walls. I can say that I have actually encountered these strategically "decorated" toilets in which the seat will only stay up for a short time. Here I am in mid-piss when all of the sudden the damn seat starts to fall. Once in mid-piss it's hard to turn off the water works so quickly so in a fraction of a second you have to decide to piss on the seat or redirect to the walls. I remember as a little kid being short enough that I had to redirect or have "stuff" hit by a falling seat, thus spraying the walls.
This has caused more arguments for me than just the whole seat up or down argument as it is practically an evil trap perpetrated on men by women that want the seat left down.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
This isn't text.
Is there a lid and is it a public restroom?
...
If there is a lid, I put it down too. It hides the nasty bowl that I ever clean and its not realy that much work. that and I have a 2 year old running around
In the public restrooms, I leave the seat up. too many downies piss all over the seat and i would rather my seat was drip free when I sat on it.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
That sounds like a problem unrelated to your pants.
Do not anger the worm.
if the lid is not shut, a dropped toothbrush or razor WILL land in the toilet, regardless of the distance between the sink and toilet.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Couldnt agree more with you. Ive always said to my wife that ill start taking down the seat when she starts leaving the up. Fair should be fair.
All the women who used the toilet in those 5 years, every single one of them, left the lid up.
In comparison, about half the guys lowered the lid. Make of this what you will.
Actually, the only time I had to deal with this (as an American) was when living in Berlin with an ex. Moreover, it wasn't intentional on my part; I couldn't care less about the seat position - I just wouldn't remember to put it down all the time. So much for your pettiness theory. Of course, as parent noted, it's a battle of the sexes cliche in American film and television.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
It's also one of the few occations when you're glad if you don't have a backup.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
None of that matters when she's the object of your desire. Men are driven by sex, so once denied the man will leap hurdles to get it back again.
A heterosexual relationship is a relationship of unbalanced power. The woman has the power, and the man does not. That's why you listen to your woman and put the seat down. She has the leverage; you do not.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I think about that joke whenever I find myself in a dirty public restroom. Especially when I'm able to take a leak without setting down my camera rig on a suspect surface (*shutter*).
Good call, Adam.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
encourage the dog to lick guest's exposed skin. Then ask them if they left the toilet lid up or down.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Personally I think we (men) have the better deal. We can pee standing up, and if we are quick enough on the draw we can guarantee that we have more orgasms over our lifetime that our women :-)
And the dishes get done at the same time - it's a win-win situation.
The lid must be left down, otherwise my dog will drink out of the bowl.
If the lid is down, the seat must also be down.
Therefore, efficient or no, the seat goes down each time.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
It sounds perfect, but then it goes up against another of those feminine habits - the need to decorate & make everything look nice.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
No, I don't agree with your assessment at all. Despite what many men seem to think, pissing into a toilet with the seat down nearly always results in urine on the seat. This is all the more true if the man is groggy or if it is dark. If a habit were made of this, the woman (and the man, but more often the woman) would find herself constantly sitting down on a dirty and possibly wet toilet seat. She demands, and rightfully so, that the man have the courtesy to lift the toilet seat before he pees for exactly this reason.
Furthermore, lest you forget, men also need to sit on the toilet, and so we also can accidentally sit down on the rim, thereby dumping our asses in the water, etc. Despite this "equation unbalancing" risk, I think I've done this maybe once in my entire life, and I'm reasonably sure that I was drunk at the time. This may have something to do with the fact that I'm in the habit of putting the seat down before I sit, because I know I have no reasonable expectation that the seat will be down when I go to sit on it. By the same token, I am in the habit of putting the seat up before I urinate, because I know I have no reasonable expectation that the seat will be up when I go to take a piss.
It is not unfair to ask that women develop similar habits. Besides, look at it this way: we sometimes have to use other people's toilets, or sometimes other people (like our children, for example, or our dinner guests) use ours. It is therefore in our best interest to be vigilant about the toilet seat -- if a woman is in the habit of simply sitting and assuming that the seat is down, she's going to be dumping her ass in the water an awful lot, and it won't be anyone's fault but her own.
The rise in allergies may also be connected to--or explained through--an understanding of the theory of evolution. The reasoning would go like this: We've come to exist as we are through millions of years of coexistence with billions of microbes. Our immune systems have grown up in the presence of irritants and attackers. As each of us grows to adulthood, our immune systems take time to develop along with the rest of our bodies. When we don't provide enough external stimulation, our immune systems don't develop enough memories of attackers and irritants. That's the "too clean" idea.
You can't take the sky from me...
While I see your point, this is an economist we're talking about. Actually modeling the real world seems to be of only secondary (tertiary?) concern to them.
Oh, so is that why women always go on pairs to the bathroom? To give directions each other?
"Down, down, down, stop! A bit to the left.. no, no, to the right... go, go, go, stop! Okay, start! Wait... shit! Go backwards, go backwards! OMG, what a mess you're doing!".
At least now I understand why so much mystery... And what about geek chicks? Do they use light sticks like the ones they use in airports to taxi airplanes?
First of all, I'm glad the paper did not make the mistake of assuming that the n_1/n_2 ratio is equal, and therefore men do each 50% of the time. But this is immaterial in the long run.
Forget about this seat-up, seat-down business. I'm talking about those fuzzy seat-cover things they put OVER the lid. You know the ones I'm talking about; they add just enough thickness to the lid that when in the up position, it is balanced precariously, and the seat itself cannot be positioned upright. Those things are psychological
warfare on upright pee-ers. (not to mention a potential dismemberment hazard.)
Also, those water-saving short bowls. But that is a discussion for another day.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I used to sit down to pee a lot, back before I went through puberty, for exactly the reasons that you described. I no longer do, and it's not just about convenience. The main reason that I don't anymore is because I have a dick, and I don't mean that in a machismo way. I'm 196cm tall (6'4") and the one-size-fits-all toilet seat is small to begin with -- even if I had a tiny little dick shoving it between my legs and pointing it downward while sitting on a seat that's too small for me would be uncomfortable and restrictive. And that completely ignores the very real problem of morning wood, which a sibling poster hinted at. It's hard enough (no pun intended) to piss sitting down when you're flaccid, but doing it when you have an erection is just impossible without great discomfort.
Then there's the question of orientation. Unless you're a virgin who failed anatomy, you'll no that the vagina is situated between the legs, whereas the penis juts out from the front of of a man's body. As such, when a woman sits, her urethra is conveniently oriented downwards, making urination convenient and dare-I-say-it pleasurable, but when a man sits, he finds his penis uncomfortably wedged between his legs.
Many modern toilet seats are not closed at the front, presumably because some neanderthals can't remember to put the toilet seat up before they piss. I cannot stand these seats -- when it's time to "take the browns to the superbowl" as it were, I find myself sitting, squeezing my penis as best I can against my body so as to prevent it from touching the exposed toilet rim.
"Why don't you just sit?" is one of the most ridiculous questions I've ever heard.
If you're a woman, you're deluded. If you're a man, you're pathetic.
>> (i'm 1.85 cm tall (and i like to drink beer), so it's a ~"far drop")
If you're only 1.85 cm tall, how do you get up to the top of the toilet bowl in the first place!?
To
The argument happens because women are lazy. The idea that one person should prep the toilet for someone else on the off chance that the other person might be the next person you use it, is absolutly absurd.
This idea of men prepping the toilet for women stems from the same place as the idea that men should open doors for women. The idea is that women are inferior to men, and thus need to have even the most basic of tasks performed for them, combined with the idea that women are whores, and men must purchase sexual services from them by performing labor on their behalf.
Lets look at the two reasons women give for wanting men to prep the toilet for them that do not include them being inferior whores, as I don't particularly like to think of women that way.
1) Having the seat up looks bad.
Well, this is a matter of taste, but no rational person is going to say that having the seat up looks bad, but having the lid up does not. If your spouse is suggesting this, then you should be asking why she doesn't love and respect you enough to be honest with you. You should immediately suggest that she start seeing a marriage counselor with you, as any relationship based on that kind of disrespect and lies is in serious trouble, and really needs some help.
2) She keeps falling in.
This is really just another way of saying that she is inferior. I have known thousands of men. Not once have I heard a man complain about falling into a toilet. Now, given that men also sit on toilets, and even do it in the middle of the night when they are groggy, yet don't seem to have this problem of not knowing the state of a seat that they are going to sit naked on, conclude that it is a inferiority complaint.
I know that I don't like living in a society that treats women like inferior whores, so please stop doing it by preppeing toilet seats for them. Now in my household we put the lid down. This is because it looks better, but also has some other benefites. It keeps things from falling to the toilet. For those of you with pets, it will keep the pets out.
And even more importantly, many cities clean their sewer lines by running high pressure into the sewer lines to force out any blockages. If a blockage is stronger than the force necessary to force the sewage backup through your toilet, you can have quite a mess on your hands. This has happened to me only once thankfully, and because of our lid down household policy, the cleanup consisted of Lysol, and a wipe down of the lid and seat. If the lid had not been down, who knows where the feces from a thousand home would have ended up in our bathroom. I can only assume that many cities have the same policy concerning this as Santa Rosa, CA, which is that they will pay to have the bathroom cleaned IF you figure out why your bathroom smells like sewage. They have a policy of not notifying the residents when they will be doing their sewer line cleaning, and they do it in the late morning when most people are at work. The effort of putting the lid down is very little for the benefit of knowing that I am not brushing my teeth with the feces of 3000 neighbors.
Now, having ranted about the disrespectful nature of putting the seat down, let me rant about the other bathroom peeve I have that hopefully the ladies with cling onto... What the hell is going on with men pissing on the floor?!?!?!? I've heard all sorts of excuses. "I was tired", "I just had sex", "It just happens". Look, pissing on the floor of your home is what an animal does. None of those excuses are valid, and if by some freak of nature you have somehow pissed on the floor, have enough shame to hide it by cleaning it up before you leave the room. Pissing on the floor is no better than shitting your pants. Would you walk around work with a load in you pants? Then why would you piss on the floor of your home (or anywhere else for that matter) and leave it there?
Women, you have a tool that can solve this problem. Just remember, an
At night I will put it down in case my wife is up in the middle of the night still half asleep (or the same for myself) but during the daylight hours I will go either way and it's fair game at my house.
Forty-Two
Like TFA, the parent supposes that the inconvenience (C) of moving the toilet seat is the same to both John and Marsha. Let me suggest that the whole game is not driven by (C). It is driven by (Y), the yuck of performing a sitting operation without realizing that the seat is up.
TFA correctly notes that the cost of yelling (D) is much greater that (C). (Y), in turn, is much, much greater than (D). (Y) is so much greater than (C) that Marsha will choose a strategy that calls for creating (D) daily rather than endure even one (Y) a year.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The fact that some women are even under the impression that insisting that the toilet seat always be down to convenience them is in any way right-thinking at all completely boggles my mind. . . . if she starts throwing a shit fit about the toilet seat, dump her. I'm serious. It's the tip of the iceberg, and you'll end up unhappy in the long run.
If right-thinking is what you what you want in the relationship, then this is good advice. If what you want in the relationship is something else (children, cooking, laughter, money, sex, etc.), then keep her or dump her on the basis of something that matters to you. Some men rank the efficiency and logic of toilet seat position relatively low among the ten thousand things.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Woman can piss standing up. I have heard of a Basic tutorial for women to pee standing and a few other references to woman peeing while standing. I don't know if the above method works as I can't experiment using it, and I haven't asked any woman if they could please confirm or deny if that method actually works.
Not only that, but if you don't redirect, the piss is going to hit the falling seat at a close distance at high velocity, generating a random spray that ends up everywhere, sometimes even on the ceiling.
Households with dependent children or domestic animals would be well advised to leave the lid in the down position after using the toilet.
It is well documented that domestic animals often view the toilet as a convenient source of fresh water. While they may be correct and will probably not be sickened by drinking toilet water (they do, after all, lick their own arseholes without any deleterious effect), most humans view this habit as revolting and would rather the animals drink from their designated drinking bowls.
Small children, on the other hand, are curious, enjoy climbing, and are topheavy. It is surprisingly easy for one to climb ino a toilet and drown. Are you going to be the one to write that obituary? Me, either.
Indeed, in my household, all family members leave the toilet seat and lid in the down position after using the facilities.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Yes. The question is if he should get it back with someone who uses his sexuality as a weapon against him.
A monogamous relationship (which is the only type where this has even a theoretical chance of working) has two implicit assumptions: that neither partner will seek sexual relief from outside sources, and that both give it to each other. The latter is often overlooked, but it is what makes the former possible.
Or, to put it another way: remove sex from a relationship and you don't have a relationship, at least not for long.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
A lot of guys have too, but since they don't need to sit, then it happens a lot less often and of course the urgency thing is a part of it as well, most of the time when guys are in a hurry it isn't to sit. For women, every urgent call is a need to sit. Aside from those factors which make it less likely that a guy will forget to check the seat, there is also the mechanical factor. Plenty of women are mechanically inclined but far more guys are likely to be thinking of mechanics without having to actually work at it than the gals.
Then there is the biggest reason you haven't heard about it, male ego. Men are far, far (think parsecs here) less likely to ever mention it since that would be so unbelievably anti-macho.
And of course, men don't chat about things like that much do they? Women chat about things like that, men ignore them. Women go the bathroom in herds, men use euphemisms.
At a random guess I'd say the numbers break down something like this:
20% - Percentage of guys that have ever fallen in
90% - Percentage of women that have ever fallen in
98% - Percentage of women who admit they have fallen in to a non-spouse
0.00001% - Percentage of men that have ever mentioned they have fallen in to anyone at all
94% - Likelihood that you have ever met a woman who would mention it unabashedly in related conversation
0.000001% - Likelihood that you have ever met a man who would mention it in any conversation with another man
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Some women seem to be incapable of looking before they sit.
Have you ever had a guy sit on something in the passenger seat of your car before you could move it?
I haven't, but I have had several women do it.
They just can't or at least don't look before they sit.
This is why the need to have seat down all the time.
The vertical fly on underwear is indeed unworkable. That's why you should consider a brand with a horizontal fly. No problems getting your dick through there! I speak from experience.
JP
You can't take the sky from me...
In my house I put down the seat and the lid. The inconvenience is universal in this position. She must always lift the lid but she cant yell at me since the seat is down.
...and putting the lid down immediately reduces the spread of the smell.
However, its doubly inefficient according to the math.
That's one argument my bf and I will never have, thank goodness.
It's been done but here is some more reasoning (I didn't RTFA because it looked boring and effortful). Let us assume each partner urinates eight times per day and defecates once per day. Let us also assume that it alternates who is using the toilet, and pretend the probabilities work themselves out.
When the strategy is that each partner changes the state of the toilet to their preference before usage, and then leaves it there: the man makes 8 efforts per day, and the woman makes 9 efforts per day.
When the strategy is that the man must lower the seat after every usage and the woman does nothing: the man makes 16 efforts per day, and the woman makes 0.
When the strategy is that each partner changes the state of the toilet to their partners preference after usage: the man makes 9 efforts per day, and the woman makes 9 efforts per day.
I've spared everyone the simple and boring math and logic.
To those who factor in the event where someone sits on the toilet rim and dips into the water, well, factor it out because it's simple enough to touch the top of the toilet seat which is above the tank to measure the state of the seat. It's also simple to make an LED status thingy, and it's even easier to buy a nightlight.
I just put the lid down. They can't complain that way and still have to move a part to use the toilet.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
this is pretty darn crappy.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Wow- you must have some kind of SERIOUS inferiority complex.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Or, put another way, Marsha will willingly cause strife in her relationship with John on a daily basis to avoid something that could easily be avoided by simply looking before she sits.
John's a lucky man.
assert(lid->position==DOWN);
sit();
pee();
It works fine when they're alone, which is why they have no need to develop a nice mechanism for error handling. Time passes by...
.
.
.
Being the man in the house, you better make sure the condition is always satisfied, because you don't want to know how a woman throws an error or worse... how a female blue screen looks like!
The saddest poem
One common meme in the toilet seat up/down argument is that it sucks when, in the middle of the night, you get up to go pee and have to determine whether the seat is up or down. Like this is apparently difficult, because there is NO LIGHT OF ANY KIND in the bathroom. It's apparently pitch-black.
The hell? I've lived in half a dozen different places in my life and none of them have ever come CLOSE to being pitch black at night. Streetlights? Ambient sky glow (I live in Los Angeles)? LEDs on clocks and such? Yes, I know it's dark, but your eyes adjust -- I can see just fine when I wake up in the middle of the night, because my eyes have just spent the last couple of hours dilating. How exactly is it happening that people just can't see anything?
(For the record, my wife and I both always leave the seat down; I pee sitting down if there's no urinal, so it's never been an issue.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
They can't write their names though. At least not without Olympic level training.
My father is a wise man. One of the things my father taught me at a very young age is that you should always put down the lid on the toilet. This is for two reasons.
Reason 1, having the lid down prevents things that you DON'T want in the toilet from accidentally ending up there - like toothbrushes, pets, etc.
Reason 2, whenever you encounter a woman in your life who insists that the seat be down, you can say ok, but insist that she always put the lid down. Then you've met her needs, while at the same time have successfully bent her to your will, preserving your fragile male ego.
paintball
I can beat you there. I take Shaolin classes at our local YMCA and I change into my gi in the women's restroom because the men's is often covered in piss and I have to walk on the floor with bare feet once I'm done changing. Yech. Better to get stares from annoyed women than some funky infection in my feet.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
You know on outhouses, how there's the little moon/crescent on the door?
Originally, that was the women's outhouse, and the men's had a sun on the door. But the men's outhouse was too dirty, for the exact reasons you mentioned, so men simply migrated into the women's outhouses.
I know it's true because I heard it somewhere!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I'll have to second this and add that any janitor in the United States will tell you that women's bathrooms are generally messier than men's. Allow me to shed a little light of the reasons behind this.
Men generally have one of two tasks in the bathroom, and of those two tasks only one requires any external tools, toilet paper, for completing. Yes only two task, defecation or urination. Women on the other hand have a number of tasks, including those that men have, plus feminine hygiene as well as general cleanliness such as washing of hands. That's correct, I said it, women are more likely to wash there hands or in general clean up when using a public bathroom. But this only explains the higher potential for mess in a women's rest room than the actual cause of it.
Because, in the Unites States at least, women tend to prefer cleaner living spaces than men they tend to do more cleaning in their own homes than men, often times cleaning up after men. When women go into a public rest room the last thing they want to be doing is worrying about picking up, so if the miss the specified receptacle when discarding some refuse they don't even think twice about it and assume someone else will come along to pick it up. Men don't have this issue since they spend very little time cleaning on a regular basis.
I have no studies to back this up, though I am sure they have been completed and you might be able to google it.
In the situation provided, the toilet seat needs to be down 10 times a day, and up 8 times. Total effort expended is x*8*2 + y * 10 * 2 (or 16X+20Y), where x+y=1, and x is the distance to raise and y is the distance to lower. A distance of 1 is a full trip up or down.
Since both partners want to minimize work, the best method to do this is to ensure that work is distributed equally.
16X = 20Y
16X = 20(1-X)
16X = 20 - 20X
36X = 20
X=20/36
X=5/9
Splitting the work exactly evenly would require placing the toilet seat 5/9ths of the way down. If your toilet seat doesn't like this position, get a better toilet seat. If your partner doesn't like this suggestion and demands the toilet seat always be down, get a better partner.
Untrue. John Harington invented the flush toilet, and the word 'crap' comes to the English language in the 15th Century meaning 'dregs', derived from the Latin 'crappa' - chaff.
It was explained to me this way: It's all about getting up to pee in the dark late at night.
If a man pees standing up, and the seat is in the wrong position (down) he might get pee all over the seat. Which, since the seat is not absorbent, is no big deal.
On the other hand, if a womans pees (sitting down, of course) and the seat is in the wrong position (up) she could go to sit on nothing, and end up in the bowl with her ass in the water. She could even end up being stuck there.
I suppose the second situation really is worse. But funnier.
There are typically two parts to the assembly fitted as a seat on modern residential toilets. These are the donut ring, and the lid. Both can be used as seats, although only the former whilst discharging bodily waste in a sanitary fashion. I've found that, for any given cross section of people who express a preference for toilet seat position, there will be no concensus on whether it is the donut seat or the lid to which they refer. Some will argue that it is the donut seat that concerns them, because it is "icky" to touch. Other will say that it is the lid, because the don't want the bowl to be on display. A better understanding of this important dichotomy is required. Perhaps the Slashdot community can apply for research grants from their various governments? ;o)
Russell
Yeah. I was bummed that the paper didn't discuss mixed strategy equilibria, too.
I agree completely. Why the fuck is this topic such a common argument in the US? Are people so petty over there? Now I don't know about other european nations, but I live in Sweden and I have never ever heard (or heard about) anybody have this arguent in real life.
We have so much time on our hands due to staying home because of high gas prices that we don't have anything else to do besides complain about the toilet seat. And yes I realize gas in Sweden costs more than in the US but we use more of it and therefore rely on it much more than you do (especially outside of cities where there is no mass transit).
I hope it's the typical thing of the nasty minority (like fundies in religions) making a huge ruckus, because it boggles my mind that an entire nation of people would have this argument.
So what exactly do you think the "non-fundies" in religion make a ruckus about? Or are you so biased that anyone who has religion must be a fundamentalist?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
You have made a mistake. You should let your kids fall into the toilet. It is not physically dangerous, is uncomfortable, and is completely in their control to fix. Unless they like to get their butts wet, which leaving the seat down won't stop, they will very quickly learn to check the seat before sitting. On the other hand, by leaving it down, you are teaching them now that down is the right way. For girls, this will lead them to believe that they have some inalianable right to have guys but the seat down for them, and for guys, it will lead them to believe that the expectation that they prep the toilet for other people is somehow reasonable. It might be easier in the short run, but you are creating problems for them later on down the road.
Wow, insisting that seat be down after someone is done is bad, but wanting to dictate how a person actually does the peeing... Wow, thats a whole new level of micromanagement...
Trust me... You really don't want to know how wrong you are...
This only is true if Marsha (A) is somehow inferior to John (B), as John clearly has no problem avoiding (Y), in your equation, A B. If that is the Case, A should be removed from the equation.
Yeah, same reason I am too :P
I have no idea of why you went out on the gas tangent.
What I meant by the fundie-thing was this:
A lot of people have very negative views on religions (doesn't matter which). Most of the time, the majority of these religion's practicioners are not nearly as bad as people think they are. This, I ponder, is due to the fact that those who are radical in their opinions get much more media attention than the average practicioner of a religion.
E.g. Al-Qaeda get a lot more attention than non-radical muslims, therefore people see Islam as a whole in a more negative light than they would if they had realised that there are far more non-radicals than there are radicals. Same goes for christians and Jack Thompson.
Same, hopefully, goes for Americans who argue about toilet seats. There are hopefully a lot more who don't care about it than there are people who argue about it, but the latter get media attention (through sit-com jokes etc) and are thus overrepresented. From the other replies I got to my original post, this would seem to be the case.
Take some samples from things like your toothbrush and so on and have them cultured. You will find, that despite your keeping the lid down, fecal bacteria is on it. We live in a world of microorganisms, that is just life. Take cultures from your keyboard, your kitchen, even your mouth, see how those go.
There is just no point in being super concerned about this stuff. There are little microbes EVERYWHERE and you aren't doing anything at all to change that. If you want to see a good segment, check out the Mythbusters where test it. They put toothbrushes at all sorts of different locations around the bathroom. However they also have two controls out in the kitchen. Guess what? Even the controls grew cultures.
Just stop worrying about it.
Wow.
I haven't yet seen the perspective I worked out in any of this, including the original article. The poster above has made one of the more detailed efforts, so I shall answer his.
First, let's go to my take on the original concept, and this will include a demonstration of why the original article is flawed.
Men worked out most of the game theories, and many of them fail spectacularly when applied to domestic relationships. Finally, one of the Scientific American adjunct magazines began to notice, "if 80% of people refuse to follow the 'optimal' game theory recommended action, then it *might NOT be optimal!*.
That's what is going on here. *Between two men* such as college dorm mates, this type of article makes sense. (One Partyer(P) needs the seat down to hold onto while spilling can #11 of Rolling Rock, one Regular(R) has no such need.) Those guys could use a Nash type conclusion.
***
All bets are off between man-woman relationships, and I'll leave the Modern Relationship angle to those more qualified. The poster elsewhere who stacked cannonballs had part, but not all of the correct concept. The cannonballs are secondary, however. First is:
The Principe Of Token Favors
Ask any woman about the Big Issues, and she'll thunder about Women's Rights. (If she's careful, she will *not* ask for *equality!*.)
But in a domestic relationship, something else occurs. The woman lists for herself what she perceives as her contribution to the relationship, and creates for herself a currently unmet Net Effort Expended. Through social collaboration across the country, part of the man's total contribution to repay this Net Effort Expended and repair equilibrium, is some set of Minor Graces. Toilet Seat Position is a subset of the Minor Graces; others include the Opening/Holding of Doors, and Walking Not= InFront.
Therefore, if a man fails to perform his particular woman's desired set of Minor Graces, she will add that to any otherwise existing reasons to separate as a capstone. Since the man has failed to perform these graces, he "would clearly prefer to live alone."
In Summary, the game grid must be recalculated to include a Relationship Ending component for failure to perform. The "ultimate penalty" times an undocumented Small Percentage remains to be worked out, but this at least gets this in the right direction.
Put simpler: "Leave the seat down. End Of Line."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You seem to be assuming that the underwear is inflexible. Most guys don't wear cast iron boxers.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Once you add into the equation a half asleep daughter (~3yo) taking herself to the toilet in the middle of the night, you'll leave the toilet seat down regardless. Girls get very used to the toilet seat being down and can be surprisingly fearful of forgetting to check one day and 'falling in'.
If the toilet seat is the only battle you fight in your relationship, then I don't really think you have a problem. Get over it. I think people are allowed one or two pet peeves.
If it is, as you say, just the tip of the iceberg then I mostly agree with what you are saying, but if you are judging her purely on her preference or insistence that the seat stay down when not in use, then I think you are getting a bit ahead of yourself. If it's really a control thing there will be other (and much more unreasonable) examples.
I tried this for a bit (it means less airborne aerosol crap when the toilet flushes (pun intended :)), and I don't think my wife had a problem with it but the kids would struggle with raising the seat.
My next house will have a urinal.
qoute It should be left down always. Period. . Having it left up just reminds me of how much it needs cleaning L.... The real issue is just that no-one wants to handle the seat itself. There's very a real market for an automatic lift/lower mechanism. If you just had to touch a button for it to be lifted, you wouldn't care so much.
Big Brother watching us has got to be better than us having to watch Big Brother
Using this as your inspiration, put the lid down. Insist that the lid be down.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I've never understood the purpose of underwear.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
How exactly is it faster? You have to drop your pants (and, if applicable, underwear) either way, but when you walk into the bathroom it's usually quicker to remain on your feet than sit down, right? Of course, another advantage to sitting is that there's less chance of getting the last couple drops stuck somewhere in the urethra so that they drip out into your pants after you finish. (That's a problem for a lot of guys.)
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
As an American male I never understood this in even the slightest. The main reason being that I always close the damn toilet when I'm done using it. I mean, isn't that the very reason why there's a lid on it in the first place?
If I want to use the toilet, for whatever reason, I have to lift up the lid. If desired the seat goes up at the same time. When I'm done they both go down. I've never been in such a hurry (either before or after) that I couldn't be bothered to not leave an open toilet in my house.
Likewise I never understood how someone could use a toilet without actually looking at it. Are we to believe that people out there are so stupid that they're just blindly sitting down on toilets without even glancing at them?
Oddly enough this has sparked, though never an argument, a slightly altered problem in my household. My girlfriend sometimes, but her friends almost infallibly, leave the lid up.
It's not just my fear that something will fall in the toilet unless the lid is closed, but also the fact that it's unsightly, ignores the basic design of the device, and seems vaguely unsanitary.
Seriously, end this argument (real or imagined) for all time (not to mention the idea that dogs will apparently drink from it) by simply closing your toilet after you're done using it.
I know you were just joking, but recently I've been reading more articles about people getting arrested for "indecent exposure" for taking a piss in the bushes, then later finding out that they are now "sex offenders" and have to register with the same people who are pedophiles and child molesters. WTF? My fraternity brothers and I would piss all the time in the bushes outside the campus apartments as we stumbled from one party to the next. It's hard to believe that doing something as innocent as that would land us in jail and be grouped with rapists and other real sex offenders.
I (have to) leave the toilet seat up, how would you otherwise expect my cats to be able to use the toilet? Want them to do their business on the floor? The seats are not exactly designed for them to be easily raised using paws. And I very much doubt they'd wanna have a sip of said water after they'd done a #1 or #2.
Besides that, cats are quite fuzzy about what they eat and drink, if it wasn't clean they wouldn't eat or drink it. I also seem to recall research showing toilet seats to be one of the cleaner surfaces around a normal place.
ISO certified == THX certified
If I need to take a dump in a public restroom most likely all of the seats are down with someone else's piss. So I grab a wad of paper, wipe off the seat, put a fresh clean piece of paper on the seat and do my business. What's the big fuss? However, if there's shit on the seat, I'll go find another stall. I ain't touching no one's shit.
Folks, let's please adopt a universal rule for the public Men's room: leave the seat UP.
Leaving the seat down is a dangerous position for the seat. This is due mostly to those who think that they can pee through the seat's opening with perfect accuracy without regard to being impaired or urethrally compromised. Secondarily, your more vigarous toilets sometimes suffer from "splash up" onto the seat, which is under the control of no man. The only disadvantage I can see to the "seat up" position is that it might deter the lazy from flushing.
if you look closer, actually, you'll discover that the article was written by a Pakistani
As you know, some people are able to sexually fufill themselves even if it is against social guidelines or norms to do so. (Naturally, they don't talk about it, since it's gross and rather pointless in day-to-day discussion aside from jokes.)
Regular friendships between two people - even between a man and a woman - do not require sex even over the long term. A marital relationship, in this regard, shouldn't be different - the only difference is the sexual aspect being added. If this aspect is handled correctly, it won't interefere with the long term component.
There's also "Dr. Phil" style relationships, where there are two fighting couples that use "makeup sex" in order to settle arguments. This isn't much different than trying to use post-it-notes for duct work - eventually the passion gained from intercourse will die down and fail to even offset the negative environment.
I once went to a flat shared by several girls. I had to hold the seat up the whole time I was pissing, which doesn't improve the aim. When I commented that it looked like the toilet had been installed by a woman, they got angry!
So you're saying the real problem isn't that they don't know how to operate the seat, but that they don't know how to operate the light switch?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Mathematically sound solution, no algebra required. Although the bigger problem I find with "seat down" isn't one of power efficiency (number of seat state changes) but that leaving the seat down on any public facility leads to it getting pissed on by slobs, which isn't much good to anybody.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I know you wouldn't want to do this in a public restroom, but the cure for this is simple -- move the hinges away from the tank. Even if it's not your bathroom, the owners will not figure out you spotted and fixed a problem, they'll just notice the damn thing doesn't fall any more.
What, you don't carry a Swiss army knife at all times?
Seriously though, sometimes all it takes is to grab the seat and wiggle it away from the tank. If it's mounted any tighter than that, and it's not yours, well then it really isn't your problem, is it? It will soon be pushed back as far as it will go by the cumulative impact of people sitting on it, but at least it won't annoy you any more for that particular visit.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Hm, I thought I'd responded to you earlier this morning. I guess Slashdot ate my comment. Yours is a good point, one I'll admit that I hadn't considered -- but as you said yourself, if it's always down or always up, then you know right where it is and don't need to search. It stands to reason, then, that agreeing to leave the toilet seat up all the time would be just as good a choice from this perspective as leaving it down all the time.
This would likely not make your girlfriend or wife happy, for exactly the same reason that my girlfriend insisting that I always leave the seat down would not make me happy. It unfairly distributes the burden of setting the toilet up for personal use to one and only one of the two people in the relationship.
The thing is, I actually have no problem putting the seat down. What I object to is the argument that some women seem to think is their right to start over the issue -- the notion that it's somehow my responsibility to leave the toilet in a state that minimizes work for her and maximizes it for me. If she would prefer to have the toilet seat down, then because I presumably care for her I'll try my best to accommodate her -- but if I forget to put it down (and I will) and she decides that something as stupid and inconsequential as that is grounds for a fight, well, she's got another thing coming if she thinks I'll take her lip.
Whenever I want to stoke my fragile male ego, I bend my wife over and fuck her up the ass.
What gratification is there in toilet lids?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Secondly, women get up more in the middle of the night needing to piss. I have no idea why. My wife gets up to pee nearly every night, and I hardly ever do.
Of course, in my house, we leave the lid shut when the toilet is not in use. One dog and one toddler necessitate that.Having sex makes you piss on the floor? This is news to me. I was having trouble sleeping, so I nailed my wife. I still couldn't sleep so here I am.
As an experiment, I just tried pissing. I had no difficulty aiming. I even turned the goddamn light on to verify.
Weird.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Well, the flaws in the approach of TFA were already discussed exhaustively, so I'm only going to quote a sign I saw in a leftist flat share's bathroom a couple of years ago:
STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS,
BUT SIT DOWN FOR YOUR PISS!
It turns out this is 180 degrees from the truth.
Men want hookups, women want relationships. As a result, while women have the power in hookup situations, men have the power in relationships. Many men do not realize it or do not wield it, but that is their problem.
This is why you see men leaving a nightclub with an unattractive woman. It also explains why you see loser men with hot women.
If you are a man, and you have gotten yourself an ugly shrew for a wife, realize that you can replace her in a heartbeat. Life is to short for obnoxious women.
If you are a woman, realize that you will have to settle when it comes time for relationships. It's for the best. You want a man who will take you seriously, rather than one who could be shagging the office receptionist over lunch each day.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
It's funny that you bring a joke which covers both of these abilities. A couple of years ago someone posted detailed instructions on this site as to how each gender could perform the other act.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Where do you find these shrewish women?Perhaps my wife has already made that calculation. That I would prefer living alone to being some woman's doormat, and that she'd be better served not acting like a stuck-up cunt.
Of course, I know her better than that, and she would never need to make such a calculation. She understands relationships and has no need for childish games. In fact, we have been known to share a few laughs when women behave like 2-year-olds and then wonder why their men leave them for their 19 year old masseuse at the club.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
This is a perfectly reasonable thing to insist on. Men are the only ones who ever can possibly benefit from the seat being up. In a woman's house, the seat would always be down, because there would never be any use at all for it being up.
If you're speaking of sharing the responsibilities evenly, why should the woman do work in order to do something whose only purpose is to save work for the man? That's not fair -- that's the man saying, "If you do this, that will make it easier for me."
If you want to consider what would be fair, here's the simplest starting point: if everyone, both man and woman, always sat down to pee, the toilet seat would always be down, and that would be an exactly symmetrical situation, and thus fair and equitable. But the man wants to take a shortcut and pee standing up, in order to save time. Fine. That shortcut is available and probably worthwhile. But it would be helpful to realize that if you leave the seat up, you have just saved yourself some work but also increased the work for the woman.
For what it's worth, the perspective I'm coming from is that I'm a man who prefers to sit down anyway, mainly because it's just easier to relax the appropriate muscles and really finish the job. (I also hate going through the drive thru at a fast food place and prefer to dine in.) So I don't view this as a war of the sexes thing. I fully understand why women find it irritating. It's not because of some feminine urge to create a source of conflict over something minor. It's because it is irritating.
Just so you know, the toilet seat argument was long ago settled between us thusly:
Her: Leave the seat down.
Me: Why? You know how to work it.
Her: I could fall in
Me: I could piss on it
Meanwhile, the dog goes and takes a good, long drink out of the toilet bowl.
Her: It seems the seat is the least of our problems. Maybe we had better close the lid.
Me: Ya.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I can attest to this method. I am however disappointed to see Malaclypse the Younger suggesting this and not the reverse, this would make a great Discordian prank.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I lived in a house with 3 women and I figured that to be equal to everyone, and generally make things tidier, we only needed 1 rule:
Everyone put Everything down all the time
How hard can that be? But, I was outvoted (practically speaking), so I just went to leaving it however I felt like, and of course that wasn't appreciated either. Can't win with 'em....
assume that the need for #1 arises with a probability p
Install a urinal. The initial cost may be higher, but over time the investment will pay for itself.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Now I don't know about America vs the rest of the world -- sitcoms aren't documentaries -- but it seems to me that by the time in a household the toilet seat's a major reason for screaming at each other, they have a big problem. That's already a dysfunctional family, and the toilet seat is just a symptom of it. Either one of them is a complete control freak (which still doesn't make it a fun marriage) or already thoroughly dislikes the other, if such details get blown out of proportion as yet another proof that the other sucks.
Which I suppose is one reason why it's used so much by dramas and sitcoms. Nothing says "geeze, these two can barely stand each other" as a good ol' quarrel over the position of the toilet seat.
At any rate, IMHO the toilet seat isn't the problem, it's a symptom of a bigger problem. Addressing the symptom will solve about as much as taking two aspirins solves a toothache: going to a dentist might be a better long term solution.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I understand it. If you don't put the seat down and the woman half asleep or distracted or whatever else misses that fact, she gets a lot of cold porcellain and perhaps pee (and even shit if you're a slob) on her ass, and can even get stuck half in. Disgusting. You know how women are conditioned in our society not to like roughing it. (I'm talking generally, there are women who like roughing it). Well getting cold surprises, pee and shit shatters their little pretty and clean illusion of what a house should be.
What happens if a guy forgets. At worst he pees on the toilet seat. If he realises he wipes his own pee off the seat, end of story.
I'm male and I get it.
I still think the best way is to close the lid so if it's stinky it don't stink up the whole house. On the other hand any woman that throughly worried about the position of the toilet seat and got worked up about it wouldn't be very attractive to me. There are more important things in life.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I've known men who like to run down the street peeing backwards. I haven't known them for long though.
I always smirk at the idea of standing in a toilet cubicle and peeing while spinning. I'd never actually do it, but I find the thought amusing. I guess some people don't know when an amusing thought should just remain a though.
A theatre is also no huge surprise. People are a little tipsy and they know they won't be held accountable and just do whatever. Animals yes. Difficult to understand no. Certainly not enough to make me ashamed of being a guy.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Karma? What's that again?
Um, thanks for making me feel really inadequate!
Actually, men can have multiple orgasms, too. Not necessarily multiple ejaculations, but I know from experience that it's possible to climax more than once in rapid succession. (It's difficult, of course, and I've only managed a few times, but it does work.)
butter the donkey
I'm 198cm *and* quite heavy (with a BMI well into the 30s), and I don't usually have a problem with peeing while sitting down while flaccid. It's more difficult when you've got an erection, but then, I don't usually have a problem with that simply because if I've got an erection, I can't really pee at all. And while my penis isn't big, it's not terribly small, either (in fact, it's about average), so that's not a factor, either.
Maybe you do, but unless your toilet seats are considerably smaller than the one I'm used to, I don't think the generalisation is valid.
Ah, yes, those are annoying; myself, I haven't encountered them in... I don't know, 20 years or so, fortunately.
Not in the slightest. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but I'm still not convinced whether you're actually being objective or whether you're trying to justify an existing dislike for sitting down while peeing; and in any case, even if it genuinely doesn't work for you (for whatever reason), the question is far from ridiculous. Don't get all pissy about it. ;)
butter the donkey
Maybe I shouldn't reply to this comments, since it does come across as rather flamebait-y, but... actually, the GP has a point. She (I'm assuming she's female because of the "lena" part of her name) is quite correct insofar as that many heterosexual relationships do seem to work this way; likewise, you are correct when you say that they *shouldn't* (and that people who think they should are deluded and/or pathetic - I personally think they're both, no matter what their gender is), but keep in mind that "ought" does not imply "is".
butter the donkey
That's rubbish. Have you ever been in a (literal) pissing contest with a woman? They've got much more control over these things than you might think.
butter the donkey
I agree completely. Why the fuck is this topic such a common argument in the US? Are people so petty over there? Now I don't know about other european nations, but I live in Sweden and I have never ever heard (or heard about) anybody have this arguent in real life.
You didn't say and so I have to ask: is it common for men to put the seat back down in Sweden then? Or do your partners not mind either way?
Nobody talks about it. I usually put both the toilet seat and lid down, but I haven't keep track of others.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please stop stalking me, bro.
That's because you can just pee sitting down(which is better for you medically)
not to harrass you or anything, but references please? I'm sincerely interested.
I'm willing to put the seat down for women, but I balk at admitting that it's a matter of right and wrong, which I've run into a lot. It's a matter of courtesy and chivalry and the guy being a nice guy. It took my girlfriend a looooooong time to understand that my inconvenience at having to lift the toilet seat was as important as her inconvenience at having to put it down. We compromise and leave the actual cover down as well, which is at least more sanitary and therefore is beneficial to us both. (no I will not provide references. lol)
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I think this is a joke, right?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
There's an easy way out, and the women can't argue, and it actually is the only "fair" solution. Close the lid. If we have to raise the seat every time to use the toilet, then they have to raise the lid every time. I have been doing this so long, that if I am around mixed company, it's automatic. :D
My empirical survey suggests that the average Marsha is inferior to the average John in detecting a seat-up condition. YMMV. This is not surprising since John has been checking every time he performed any operation (sitting or standing) since he was three. Marsha has not. While Marsha could learn a new habit (a cost not addressed in TFA), she doesn't have that habit to defend her at the start of their cohabitation.
In any event, removing Marsha from the equation simply because she has a fault would be pretty dumb. It is only sensible to remove some one from the equation if their fault-to-benefit ratio exceeds that of the next best available alternative. The alternatives are no one (fewer benefits), a John (different faults and benefits), and a different Marsha (if available). Good luck.
---
"Applying logic to relationships is, to a certain extent, irrational." --Anonymous
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I don't know if this has any significant impact on the results...
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Men always have to check, and adjust if necessary, the state of the toilet seat. Every time. It's hardly a big deal.
;-)
Women can simply do the same.
Any woman who sits down backwards towards a hole filled with water without checking that it's safe to do so first gets exactly what she deserves.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
FWIW, your cat's drinking from the toilet is probably one of the more sanitary things he does. You've watched him clean himself, right?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
he didn't sell the toilet seat; He's GOBLIN developer for sure.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Jeez, it'd be much simpler if they could just remember the combo: up up down down left right left right B A START!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My logic for standing up is this:
If I don't then things are much more likely to end up in contact with various bits of the toilet. This varies across the world because designs change, but the basic principle is it's not nice to either touch the ceramic (Who knows what else has been down it?) or the water.
Not to mention it's faster. And it's only less messy if you're a particularly poor aim.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
When you turn on a firehose attached to a dinghy it will fly out of control.
When you turn on a firehose attached to a barge it generally doesn't affect the direction of the barge.
Just sayin'.
Press +++ for Sysop access
Well I've never done any martial arts (unless fencing counts as such), but anybody who has lived in a college dorm with "communal" bathrooms should be very, very well versed in the use of sandals in the bathroom. Not only was the bathroom just generally dirty, but during my time at college I was witness to:
- one toilet being ripped out of the floor
- vomit all over the floor (kinda trailing towards the toilet, though very little ended up there)
- piss all over the floor
- a big pile of feces on the shower floor (twice)
Thought not in the bathroom, I've also witnessed an elevator full of piss on several occasions as well. I hated even going into the bathrooms (but naturally given that the showers were there, it was kinda necessary), but when I went you can be sure I was sporting my sandals every time. Generally for when I had to take a dump I'd hike over to an academic building and use a bathroom there. Those were far, far cleaner.
One of the most important lessons I learned: I think statistically, college freshman are the most immature and annoying sub-group of humanity. They're like high schoolers, but without the parental supervision part.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If your current Marsha is unable to adapt to environments where Johns are also functioning, then it certainly makes sense to recycle the current Marsha, and get a new Marsha that is more compatible. While a flaw that makes your average Marsha inferior at a specific task would not normally be a reason to replace said unit, the inability for the particular Marsha, combined with the specific intentional act of generating incompatibilities into the Marsha John communication stream, indicates that there is a fundamental flaw in the Marsha that will resurface during other tasks. This flaw is of intentional design to create incompatibility when environments are not specifically designed for use by a Marsha. Given that there are Marshas available that do not exhibit this system wide flaw, one would be better served by putting the specific Marsha into the recycle bin so that someone else can deal with the futile job of trying to make this particular inferior Marsha compatible with a John.
A similar analysis can be applied to the position of the driver's seat in shared automobiles.
Men are typically taller than women, so they want the seat pushed back (so they can enter the car without bruising their kneecaps on the dashboard, or kneeling outside the car to move the seat back).
Women want the seat forward, so they can reach the controls.
Both sexes tend to leave the seat in their preferred position when they leave the car.
The "natural" position for the seat is forward, at least for non-powered seats - typically there are springs that pull the seat there, so it takes effort to push the seat back.
The same sort of social analysis applied to toilet seats leads to the position that women should push the seat back when they leave the car.
The game theory analysis, though, leads to the more common result of women leaving the seat forward, because the cost to them is lower - it is rare for a man to yell at a woman about this enough to make her change her behavior.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
-thegnu (557446)" (557446)/(43455)~=13
Nah... Senile.
geschild (43455)
Karma? What's that again?
We have two daughters. I have lost.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
The men's toilets in our place are real stinkrooms. We ran out of toilet paper once, so I had to nick some from the ladies toilet. I went in there, and it was like some kind of boutique. It was an almost magical land.
The comedian Ben Elton once observed that in the men's toilets it was almost as if the men stood in the urinals and pissed outwards.
I think the sarcasm may have gone over your head, but I suppose that maybe there's sarcasm going somewhere over my head right now as well. But yes, I am a colossal /. noob compared to you. :-)
-Nathan
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I didn't need to see your badge or security clearances to know that you must work for nasa... what with the confusing of meters with other unites of measure and all.
You can't wrap your head around it, really? It seems pretty simple to me: sometimes you need it up, sometimes you need it down; she always needs it down. The toilet is used more often in the down position (even assuming equal bathroom use frequency, which of course isn't the case--she'll use it more), and since you just pissed, it's pretty likely the next person to use it will need it down. And that's not even really the point, the point is that the consequences of a "mistake" are much greater in the one direction (falling in) than in the other (having to wipe up the seat).
Now, you may not agree with the above (I like the lid down solution, myself), but to not understand it? That reveals a complete inability or unwillingness to see things someone else's way, even when it's logical.
demi
It would be interesting to actually have a structured study of this; as someone who has cleaned out public restrooms for a job it was my experience that the men's room was worse, invariably (for example, I have a hard time imagining that women's restroom have semen on the walls, and in that pair of restrooms there were never smears of shit where there wasn't supposed to be). But it would be nice to actually have an answer, rather than personal anecdotes.
demi
- I'd really consider keeping the bathroom door closed entirely. There are too many other dangers in the bathroom like crawling into the tub and turning on the water (burning and drowning hazard), the towel on the floor (slipping/tripping hazard), the toilet paper (irritating mess hazard), the shower curtain (climbing/falling hazard), grabbing at objects on the counter such as hairdryers (head bonking hazard), etc.
- I have a hard time imagining a 1-2 year old toddler opening a toilet seat lid and crawling in without being noticed. At that age, I'd advise keeping a closer eye on the kid, or if not possible, invest in a play yard. At 2, you're thinking about potty training, anyhow.
- I'm a believer in baby-proofing the kid as well as the living space. The living space should be proofed against anything that will cause immediate bodily harm or death, of course (I don't think there's any wiggle room here... if you have your kitchen knives within a toddler's reach, you are begging for blood). The kid should be proofed against other hazards. It's easy to go overboard on proofing. I like to let a kid fall down and skin his knee every now and again. It builds character.
As always, all of this depends on the kid. Only you know your kid and living situation. If your kid is especially determined and/or agile, then yeah, by all means, latch the toilet seat. If you have a baby taking your attention away from the toddler, again, you're going to have to proof more.I guess my point is that I bristle when I hear, "You need to do <blank>". For most things, it depends on the situation.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
All meant in good fun, so I hope you had some!
/. so there you have it.
Oh, I don't think 'seniority' means much here on
Bye!
Karma? What's that again?
The problem with discussions such as these is that they only deal with normative conditions. I.E.: you leisurely wander into the restroom and do your thing at your convenience.
Look at the situation from the standpoint of Emergency Planning:
Imagine that you are in *IMMEDIATE* need of restroom facilities. Every second that passes greatly increases the chances of "something untoward" happening.
Got that image firmly in your head? Good. Now, which operation ( #1 or #2 ) are you envisioning yourself being in need of performing?
Chances are you're thinking about #2.
If you're about to lose the contents of your bowels at any instant, which position would you rather see the seat in?
I kinda want to add both a urinal and a bidet. The problem is that this would require a bathroom as large as a small bedroom. But it'd certainly be cool!
I don't get all these comments about dropping things in toilets. I've never--ever--accidentally dropped something into a toilet. What do you people do, brush your teeth over the toilet? Count change over an open toilet? Sign mortgages over a toilet? I mean, sheesh...
Vomiting into a toilet requires the seat up regardless of gender.
Also does not analyze the well-known strategy of putting the seat _and lid_ down _and not flushing_ for "#1".
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Which cultures is this a big deal in?
;).
I'm sure that, (for example) most people in Japan would have a rather different view on this "toilet stuff".
And in a number of places around the world there are squat toilets that have no seats or lids anyway, just be happy if it's fairly clean and there's clean water from tap etc.
On the topic of hygiene, what's so clean about partially wiping/smearing your shit off with toilet paper? How effective is that? Why not wash your shit off thoroughly with water and soap, or use whatever it is you consider good enough to wash your hands clean _enough_ (go check the CDC's recommendation - AFAIK 60-90% alcohol solutions work well at killing stuff, but are not so good for removing stuff ). There is no 100% clean in most houses/places, and your hands will get dirty the instant you touch something anyway, you're just going to have to live with it - or die trying
As for what Other People do, why be so bothered on whether they leave the lid up or down? How about whether they washed their hands properly before they touched other stuff, and whether they left traces of shit on the tap knobs or elsewhere. I'm not immune compromised so even if that thought may sometimes seem gross, I'm not going to let it gross me out a lot.
Ah, but does (normally) leaving the seat down really lower the probability of sitting in the bowl? Men are accustomed to the seat being in different positions and very rarely make that mistake (maybe once every 20 years). However, if a woman is accustomed to the seat
being always down, then there is a high probability that on those ocassions (guests, trembling-hand, men using the ladies room, ladies room being cleaned, etc) when there is an exception to the rule of the seat being down that they will sit in the bowl. So leaving the seat up may actually reduce the occurance. If sitting in the bowl happens in a public rest room, it is also significantly more traumatic than when it occurs at home (where you likely know the health of the people using it). So much for the study's assertion that leaving the seat down is trembling hand perfect. There are two different probabilities that she will sit in the bowl depending
on whether she has been properly potty trained by having the seat left up regularly. If the ratio of those probabilities exceeds
the probability of an error in seat position, then leaving the seat down is not trembling hand perfect. If you want to assert
that leaving the seat down is trembling-hand perfect, you need to study in much more detail and ultimately it will depend on
the specific people involved.
The study neglected to consider a lot of things. Sitting on the rim or bowl accidently, males who flunked potty training (urinating on seats), and "Waaaaaa! you don't love me!".
My rules:
- when sharing a living space with women, always leave the seat down. Unless you have discussed all the ramifications.
This is in contradiction to the explanation above and has to do with women's perceptions.
- when using a public mens room, always leave the seat up, even if you have to lift it to do so, particularly where lower class
males, drunks, or both may be present. Otherwise, the seat may be covered in urine next time you use it.
- when using a public women's room (potty parity reverses after midnight at many bars, for example), always leave the seat down and
clean unless you know the next person using it will be male.
The secret of happy relationships where at least one of the parties is female: it is better to annoy women deliberately than through neglect. Most women need frequent reminders that you care about them. If you leave the seat up, women tend to see this as a sign you don't care enough about them to lower the seat - annoyance through neglect. When you deliberately annoy them (within reason), however, they see this as a sign of affection. They may say "Hey, cut that out!" but really they are flattered as you can tell from their tone of voice. It is like when you are reading and your cat comes and lays down on top of the book; annoying, but in a good way. Besides, women will find something to be annoyed about anyway (and will much more actively look for something if you are not deliberately annoying them) - best to make the annoyances positive ones. Also, deliberate annoyances add an element of unpredictibility and playfullness that helps keep the relationship from becoming bland. So, by all means, surprise her with a pinched nipple or a swat on the ass when she isn't expecting it (and even when she is), just don't overdo it. If you don't, things like the position of the toilet seat become elevated to a litmus test.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I grew up in a household with 8 boys. My big sisters were the first to teach us to put the seat up. Because a six year old, or three year old is not going to wait around to find out. Seat lifting was invented for women.
That this is an issue at all is part and parcel of the great castratying man-hate that is part and parcell of all manistream women in the US. Then some of them wonder why they are unmarried at 38 and have to buy sperm.
Hears a clue. Men have to put up with female biology all the time. It is considered rude for men to explicitly point out what behaviroal crap they are having to put up with a quarter of the time. cCommon decency would suggest the women consder doing the same.
My own personal experience has been the opposite. No woman has ever punitively denied me sex in the context of an existing sexual relationship. They stand to lose more than I. Women in general tend to have more powerful sexual responses than men but often a higher threshold to trigger those responses. Unfortunately, the Locker Room Academy of Male Sexual Technique is not an accredited institution of higher learning. Even women who appear to have significant sexual dysfunction can be orgasm machines. I can also go without sex longer. And I can also satisfy myself which is not the case for some of my lovers. I have the power but I do
not use it punitively. I say this not to brag but to point out to men that if you are having this kind of problem you should
consider whether exercising more due diligence in the bedroom (including learning more) would help.
I did have a girlfriend who refused to let me hug her during a heated argument. I called an immediate time out and explained that not only was she cutting off an important channel of communication but that it was perceived as emotional violence. Solved that problem.
Some things I never do during a fight:
- refuse to receive basic physical affection (hugs, snuggling, sleeping together)
- refuse to give basic level of physical affection
- withhold sex in order to hurt, manipulate, or punish
I might conceivably delay it, explicitly, until I was not distracted from doing it properly.
- say anything for the purpose of hurting her.
Hurt may be an unavoidable side effect of something that is said but it is never the reason something is said.
Those would tend to be emotional violence.
Gotta run...
Are you serious?
Zip. Pee. Zip. it doesn't get any easier than that.
Why the heck would I want to undo my belt, button and zipper, pull down my pants, get into contact with a toilet that I don't have to get in contact with, stuff my penis down between my legs, and let backspray cover it in urinary mist from a close perspective, be totally unable to "shake" adequately (instead awkwardly bumping it from above with my fingertips), then get back up and redo the zipper/button belt?
I wipe things down if I miss. Frankly, I see spots on the rim I know damn well I didn't put there, and there are no other guys in the house (cue unfaithfulness jokes, har har).... I don't think girls are much better. The only thing is she won't ever accidentally pee on the floor, and if I do that because it's dark and I"m tired and not paying attention, you bet your ass that I'm the one who cleans it up.
Selfish? Maybe. But I pee four or five times a day at least.. I'm not doing all that if I don't have to. I'm more than happy to instead clean if I make a mess, which I don't usually, because aiming isn't all that hard. Once in awhile, it comes out cockeyed.. big deal. If you've ever had sex in your life or for that matter KISSED anyone with tongue, you've been exposed to a lot worse than a little urinary residue on a toilet rim. Get over yourself.
I could blame it on the tiny British houses that I currently have to put up with, but a small bathroom is pretty much the same size no matter which country you live in. I suspect even if I had the bathroom out of my sister's Mc-mansion, my tooth brush would still manage to travel the fifteen feet from the sink, around the corner, through the door, and plunk straight into the toilet.
"Further assume that the need for #1 arises with a probability p."
That...is funny!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
It is, unfortunately, more common than you think. I used to have a (girl)friend who was a toilet seat nazi. If it was at her place, fine. Her hour, her rules, and I put the lid down becuase I respected that. But what got me was when she would come over to my place and come out of the bathroom bitching about how the toilet seat was always up. My response to her once, when I'd finally had enough, was along the lines of:
"No shit. There are three guys living here. Now leave it the fuck up."
I think that pretty much ended the discussion.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
In Soviet Russia, floor shits on you!
Pranks don't generally extend to inconveniencing yourself! As mentioned, any good done will undoubtedly be taken care of soon enough, since the hinges are still free to slide back toward the tank. The whole point is to keep it from annoying you for the remainder of that visit.
A proper Discordian prank might involve rigging the toilet so that the lid falls every time the toilet is flushed. This would be both creative (preventing a shitstorm) and disruptive (as it runs counter to expectation). I can imagine a few rather easy ways to do this with time and a few tools, but not generally ones I carry away from home. Better still would be to eliminate the flush handle entirely, using the lid in its place -- when business is concluded, lower the lid and the toilet flushes. I'd even be willing to replace the "1 Hour Parking" sign over the toilet with "Lower Lid to Flush".
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Go F yourself. Seriously, you should go F yourself, since your brain levels must be off or something.
I pee sitting down. There, I said it! My name is Cyrus Mack, and I pee sitting down! /me hangs head in shame.
IMHO, IANAL, TINLA, etc...
How do those "slippers" and "sandals" prevent your shirt/pants from soaking up liquid when the fall on a piss covered floor? There are other gains to using a clean floor as opposed to simply trying to prove you can walk on water.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0