http://poopthebook.com/blog A blog for the book Poop Culture, by Dave Praeger Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:56:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Shiny metal structures have popped up in cities all over the world: automatic toilets that give a user twenty minutes of privacy before the door opens, the person leaves, the door closes, and the robotic sanitation cycle begins. As I've said before, these units make so many design sacrifices to ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2008/07/17/seattle-to-close-its-public-toilets-and-why-this-is-good-for-poopers-everywhere/ Wrenches, spare parts for an oxygen generator, and a microbe-killing device: three things that, in space, are less important than a functioning toilet. Each of those items have been removed from the cabin of the Discovery Space Shuttle to make room for a pump needed to fix the urine collection ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2008/05/29/one-giant-leak-for-mankind/ "Never mind modern technology," said the residents of San Diego, as I discussed back in August of 2006. "Never mind science and reason. Never mind the billions of dollars of research that have gone into developing filtering and cleansing equipment capable of purifying water down to the atomic level. "Poop," said ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2008/04/02/orange-county/ In the bathroom utopia of the glorious future, pristine municipal facilities will await on every corner, their stall doors wide open to all comers and goers. This utopia will come into being only when the golden brown rule ("Doo unto others…") is held sacrosanct -- until then, as long as ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2008/02/26/finland-safe/ Last week, New York City unveiled the first of twenty futuristic new public toilets intended to give desperate citizens a choice beyond waddling to the nearest Starbucks or crouching behind the nearest trashcan. The city is relying on state-of-the-art technology to avoid the crack addicts, prostitutes, and green puddles ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2008/01/13/nycs-newest-toilet/ (What is the World Toilet Summit? Find out here.) Today I'm going to talk about how the flush toilet negatively shapes attitudes towards sanitation. And I'm going to tell you what you need to know in order to counteract the ideological influence of the flush toilet. But first, a bit about me. ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2007/11/13/address-to-toilet-summit/ As at any other conference, delegates arriving at the 2007 World Toilet Summit in New Delhi are handed a tote bag full of schwag. Unlike any other conference, however, our bags contained two small plastic containers of human waste. Composted human waste, of course. In one, a few powdery ounces of ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2007/11/01/world-toilet-summit/ On the morning of August 8, three inches of rain fell on Brooklyn. On the 3,200 Brooklyn acres that drain into the Red Hook Water Pollution Control Plant, 260 million gallons of runoff coursed into the sewers, mixing with millions of gallons of human waste already headed towards a treatment ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2007/10/19/the-great-stink/ It's every author's dream that there exists some secret pocket of the world in which his work is fully appreciated. Realizing that dream is even more unlikely when the author's work has the word "poop" in its title. So it's a strange journey indeed that begins with founding a bathroom ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2007/10/10/sanitary-visionary/ Last week, the New York Times announced it was making all the content on its website free. Whereas once you had to pay to access articles dating back to the paper's founding in 1851, now this trove of history and knowledge is accessible to anyone with a login and password. Login: ... http://poopthebook.com/blog/2007/09/27/poop-fit-to-print/