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Economic Analysis of Toilet Seat Position
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jun 03, 2007 07:16 AM
from the why-is-this-so-hard? dept.
from the why-is-this-so-hard? dept.
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.
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What about the lid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the lid? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What about the lid? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What about the lid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Around our house, we have a good reason to keep toilet lids closed. Due to my wife's allergies to nearly everything furry (except me
The most common cause of accidental death of pet birds is drowning in toilets. Please close the lid when you're done.
This pretty much decides the issue here.
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Re:What about the lid? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I did that to keep the dog out (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Simple solution... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What about the lid? (Score:5, Funny)
There is an innate need within women to group a collection of shortcomings for later use. It's similar to stacking cannonballs in a nice neet pile for use should a skirmish arise. The toilet seat issue (as well as the toilet paper over/under issue) is simply an assured way of having enough cannon balls for the pile. Ergo:
- If the seat is up when you piss, you must remember to put it down.
- If the seat is down when you piss, you must remember to put it up.
Furthermore, if toilet paper is to be replaced on the roll holder, you must examine the toilet paper to see which way the pretty design is printed. This design must be visible and dictates which way the roll should hang. (Note: the same rule is applied to paper towel). I do not understand the reason for artwork on something I wipe my ass with, but surmise it is solely there for the reason of stockpiling cannonballs.
I find it less trouble to simply piss in the sink.
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Depends entirely on the artwork (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.jinx.com/other_swag/other/geek/riaa_to
Re:What about the lid? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What about the lid? (Score:5, Informative)
This was documented in a mildly famous study by Charles Gerba [arizona.edu]. It has been amusingly dubbed the F3: the Fecal Fountain Factor [brynmawr.edu].
Now, tiny droplets of shit and piss water won't kill you--if you are healthy, you could likely french kiss your toilet seat and not get sick, but that doesn't mean you wanna. I find the mere knowlege that, if I don't shut the toilet first, I will be bathed an a microscopic shit shower to be sufficiently unappealing that I always do so. And, this way is equitable to all parties involved--no matter if you are a stander, or a sitter, you still have to lift the lid to use the toilet.
Luckily, the ages-old controversy is being brought back by the Japanese. New toilets there have infrared sensors that detect your approach and lift the lid and/or seat for you. Sounds ridiculous, but once you get used to it (that is, use it once), you come around to liking it. And happily, this technology reignites the debate with your female counterpart: you can argue about whether Mr. Smarty Toilet should be programmed to lift the lid, or both lid and seat. That is, until they come up with the next generation of toilets than can differentiate between individual people...
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fragile Male Ego? (Score:5, Funny)
What gratification is there in toilet lids?
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You insensitive clod... (Score:3, Funny)
(I'm lots of fun at the office, too... those silk plants sure look real)
Solve your problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Among its various additional benefits, squatting really helps pushing out number-two's.
Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Academic detachment (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I fear that I have to point out that a hole in the ground is the traditional toilet for all cultures.
The Unconsidered Factor (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Easy solution (Score:4, Funny)
Remove the toilet seat.
No toilet seat, no arguments, no problem.
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Funny)
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This toilet seat thing is a pet peeve of mine... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This toilet seat thing is a pet peeve of mine.. (Score:3, Insightful)
When we look for a job,
Re:This toilet seat thing is a pet peeve of mine.. (Score:3, Funny)
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."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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 bi
Re:This toilet seat thing is a pet peeve of mine.. (Score:3, Funny)
Eugenics starts in the bathroom!
Re:This toilet seat thing is a pet peeve of mine.. (Score:5, Funny)
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".
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Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Leave the toilet cover down. problem solved (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem solved. Also keeps pets out of the toilet.
fun topic (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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!)
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's the first time i hear this ...! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:It's the first time i hear this ...! (Score:5, Funny)
Or you're against asses? Or you're for asses? Or you want to trade your toilet for an ass? I'm confused! Maybe you're just against people who try to keep their fucking asses clean! That must be it. I don't like sitting in piss, regardless of how far from an animal I see myself as.
In any case, you assume several times in your post that i'm an american, which i'm not, so I will directly forward your flaming text to the trash (or recycle bin, if your text is recyclable.)
And by the way, the noise is a perfectly good issue. My office is close to a toilet. Hearing your splinkler while i'm on the phone with a client is mostly unwelcomed, but maybe in whatever country you're from (since you bash USA, you're probably not from there) maybe that sound is joyful and a great conversation piece.
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that's way easier than pulling down the elastic band a bit.
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds like a problem unrelated to your pants.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 si
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:What's the big deal.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Re:I demand new and interesting ways to have a shi (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude!
[John]
Re:Simple Solution - Have Separate Bathrooms (Score:5, Funny)
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