• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Shit Thread: Excremental Discussion

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
19,408
I heard a discussion on this on the radio and it sounds well worth going esp. for kids (including big ones):

A peek at an exhibition of poo


Updated 03 August 2004, 16.11


Poo, poop, waste, faeces - you name it and it's at an exhibition at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum.

Clare Youell reports from Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable.

Rabbits and koalas eat their own poo.

And they're not alone - loads of animals do it.

That's just one of the many pleasing poo facts at this exhibition.

They do it, just so you know, because they can't get enough nutrients from their food the first time around. So they munch their waste and their body keeps all the good bits they need the second time around.

Nice.

Poo: A History of the Unmentionable is positively bursting with this type of fact. Everywhere you look there's poo information, real poo, pictures of poo.

And it's not just about looking - you can have a good poke around too.

There's a display of real animal waste where you have to match the pellets to the creature which, er, passed them. Is it a badger that emits those big ones with straw in, or could it be a fox? Your guess is as good as mine...

There's some rather realistic-looking brown modelling clay too, where you can mould your own poos.

Smells bad

But the best bit of the whole exhibition is without doubt the 'smelling corners'. There's two pots of animal poo for you to stick your nose into, and you have to guess which creature made it. And one of them smells really bad!

The exhibition is based on a book of the same name by Nicola Davies - a former zoologist turned children's writer.

She explained why she wrote such a grossly-gripping book.

"When you're a zoologist there's no way you can avoid poo. Poo is a very useful tool to tell you about how animals live - where they go, what they do, what they eat and what they get up to.

Science is fun!

"I realised it was a subject children would find immediately appealing because it's got that 'yuk' factor. But there's stuff in this book and exhibition about animal behaviour, ecology, palaeontology and scientific method. All, I hope, communicated in a way that children can really relate to and enjoy - because science IS fun!"

Nicola said the feedback she's had so far suggests kids enjoy her book, which makes her very happy. "They like the fun facts, the 'gee whiz' stuff - they like the biggest, the smallest and the smelliest!" she said.

Children at the exhibition certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves too.

Ellie, 9, from London, added: "It's absolutely great, it's good fun. My favourite bit is where you have to smell the poo and you don't know what kind it is - it smells nasty. I thought it was a rat poo but I'm not sure yet."

And Cleo and Ged, from Herts, had great fun trying to identify the animal poo and peering at the faeces with a giant magnifying glass.

Who would've thought poo could be so much fun?

---------------
The exhibition is on at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire, until Sunday 28 November 2004.

The book, called Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable, by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Neal Layton is on sale.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_3531000/3531718.stm
 
I'm not very good at remembering names but I never forget a faeces.
 
Ah, Rrose!
We meet at last. How do you poo?
 
Thought it worth a mention for the use of the term "poo apocalypse" oh and some excellent punning at work although they are all clearly a bunch of jobbiesworths ;)

Councillor's aide steps into fecal fracas

Last updated Feb 1 2006 11:52 AM EST
CBC News

Depending on who you talk to, a political aide who cleaned up a non-political mess deserves either a gold star or a slap on the wrist.

Mike Patton took on extra duties last Thursday when he mopped up what he called a "poo apocalypse" in a downtown public library.

Thursday afternoon, Patton got a call from a frustrated patron who opened the men's bathroom door in the Ottawa Public Library to discover a toilet seat and surrounding floor covered in feces.

"Clearly someone was not feeling well and had a bit of a diarrhea issue, and it was all over the seat and the floor and the toilet, in the stall area,"
said Patton, who revisited the scene of the grime with CBC on Tuesday.

The patron first reported the mess to library staff, then to the acting branch manager.

But three hours later, when no action was taken other than to block off the bathroom, he called the office of Coun. Rick Chiarelli, chair of the library board.

"When the call came into the office, I asked him how he wanted us to proceed, and he said, 'Just fix it,' " said Patton, Chiarelli's assistant.

"So, I came over to see if the situation had been remedied and, unfortunately, nobody had had a chance yet to get to it, so I cleaned it up myself."

He found a mop and bucket in the basement and went to work.

The response? Library officials complained the aide took work away from unionized workers and suggested he mind his own business in the future.

Officials say because the cleaners work for the city, they are responsible for a number of buildings. When the problem happened, they were busy at another building.

Chiarelli pooh-poohed their explanation.

"When there's poop on the floor, the first action has to be to clean it up, not send memos and form committees and that kind of thing," Chiarelli said.

So far, the maintenance workers' union has not filed a grievance. But the library apologized to the public for any inconvenience.

www.cbc.ca/ottawa/story/ot-library20060201.html
 
And this doesn't really fit in the Nasty Things Found in Food thread:

'Dog dirt slur' on packet of ham

A man has been arrested by police investigating how dog poo came to be listed on the ingredients of a packet of sliced ham.

Detectives were called after reports that the words were found on the label of a 300g packet of the cooked meat, bought in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

Meat manufacturer HR Hargreaves & Son, from Salford, Greater Manchester, is recalling the products.

A 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of tampering with the label.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "A 21-year-old man from Salford, Greater Manchester, was arrested on suspicion of making claims to have made goods appear contaminated."

The man was bailed by police as detectives continued to investigate.


----------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 665710.stm

Published: 2006/01/31 12:57:13 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
I stilll think Apoocalypse would be a better title......
 
You are, of course, quite right. :)

--------------
This is a strange sad story:

Long strange non-trip for woman and her two dogs

AP

(2/08/06 - EUGENE, OR) - Debra Schwarz and her two dogs are taking the long way home. The really long way. The three are stranded in Eugene, with no available transportation.

So Schwarz, 46, has decided to walk home to Wichita Falls, Texas, pulling a large cart she built herself and covered with handwritten tirades against people she believes have done her wrong.

The only problem is, she hasn't gotten very far. Every time she hits the road, the police stop her.

Her 4-foot-wide, 7-foot-long cart is a traffic hazard, police said, and puts Schwarz and her dogs, Lucky and Junior, at risk of being hit by a car.

Police in Eugene and Springfield have escorted her off local highways at least three times in the past month after drivers complained that they couldn't get around her.

The police have been kind, towing her cart to nearby churches and letting her camp out until she can get back to her motor home, parked with permission at a business north of Eugene.

And her lawyer and others have offered to buy her a bus ticket from here to Texas.

But Schwarz refuses to abandon her beloved dogs, and so far no one has agreed to take them on until she can return to Oregon in April for a court appearance.

"She's mostly just desperate," her Eugene attorney, Brian Cox, said. "She's a woman whose life has devolved to this point. It's really a sad story."

Schwarz and her late husband, Norris Schwarz, supported themselves in part by selling wrought-iron Christmas ornaments around the country. Each fall, they drove their motor home and a trailer full of goods to a different city and set up shop on open lots.

On her way through Oregon in 2000, Schwarz got a $350 traffic ticket for failing to obey a traffic signal while driving in Lake County. Annoyed, she tucked human feces into the envelope with the money order she sent to the Lake County Courthouse.

Schwarz was convicted of obstructing government administration, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. A judge sentenced her to a year of probation, which she violated when she refused to pay a fine. As a result, she served six months in the Lake County Jail last year.

While she went to jail, her 82-year-old husband was stranded in Lake County. Police found him disoriented and sleeping in a pickup truck.

As a result, she was charged with felony criminal mistreatment. She is scheduled for trial in April.

Her husband's adult children eventually took him back to Texas. He died of a heart attack while his wife was in jail.

After her release from jail in October, Schwarz got a lift from a friend to Eugene, but has since been trying to get home to settle her husband's estate.

She refuses to pay a fine that would restore her driver's license, so she can't drive her motor home back to Texas. She says she can't take a bus, train or airplane because of her dogs.

She spent a month building her cart, which she pulls along by a metal bar at her waist. She attached flashlights to the rear, added a reflective triangle and scrawled "caution" in big, black letters on the back.

Police and her attorney have convinced her, for now, that walking home in winter might not be the best idea. Down to her last $10, she is hoping someone will volunteer to baby sit Lucky and Junior until she returns for trial. Or maybe she can hitch a ride with a trucker.

If nothing else comes through, she said she'll make the cart smaller and try walking out of town again.

---------
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=3889526
 
Into my 'faeces' news,I must include Steve Fosset..who claims to have flown farther than any man alive (Feb 12, 2005) Rubbish!!what about the astronaunts the moon is 240,000 miles away..Fosset flew on 26,000 or so...a complete liarer!
 
I feel slightly vindicated by this:

Restaurant Offers Toilet Bowl Servings

Food Served in Miniature Toilet Bowls at Taiwanese Restaurant With Scatalogical Theme

By WALLY SANTANA
The Associated Press

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan - Taiwanese restaurateur Eric Wang has given new meaning to the traditional revelers' cry of bottoms up. His eatery in the southern city of Kaohsiung delivers its food not on conventional plates and dishes, but in miniaturized Western and Asian style toilets, both the flush and non-flush variety.

For anyone missing the point, diners are encouraged to stir up mushy, earth-colored offerings like curry chicken rice and chocolate ice cream to conjure up well, the real thing.


Located in a downtown area with a variety of competing eateries, Marton the name means toilet in Chinese attracts its customers through its dazzling bathroom decor.

Walking in through an arched door, diners are greeted with a giant toilet bowl sitting between two urinals. White ceramic toilet seats comfortably accommodate their bottoms, and urinals grace the walls.

Giggling helplessly, high school student Chen Yi-lin gulps down a chocolate ice-cream sundae served in a miniature Asian-style squat toilet, and admits that she is smitten.

"This is fun," she says.

Wang, 26, opened the Marton last year after a roadside prototype a stand offering toilet-shaped ice cream cones achieved runaway success.

Now, he says, he has moved decisively upmarket.

"Diners come and walk away with the special experience," he said. "Many try to create more fun, stirring up curry and rice so it looks exactly like when you forget to flush the toilet. Then they gulp it down."

For all its scatological excess, the Marton is following in the noblest tradition of Taiwanese novelty restaurants.

Other successful ventures have purposely confined scores of contented diners to coffins or jail cells, or exposed them to full-scale pictures of Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, Taiwan's political nemesis until his death in 1976.

-------------
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=817367

More:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8417691/
www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/20 ... ilet_x.htm
 
Call me the rotten cynic but dont you think its just a ploy to get money???
 
It was some pretty spectacular shitting though. I wouldn't have been too impressed if someone did that in my house... :(
 
Couches and beds aren't cheap to replace though. Poor woman, hope she gets some help. (my utmost sympathy is reserved for the people who had to deal with the aftermath, though! :cross eye )
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
I feel slightly vindicated by this:

Restaurant Offers Toilet Bowl Servings

Food Served in Miniature Toilet Bowls at Taiwanese Restaurant With Scatalogical Theme


I've heard about this place but I've no desire to go there. I spend a fair amount of time in Kaohsiung at the weekends, though, so if you guys want to send me over some Duane Eddies I will strain myself to go in and dump my review here.

Many would argue that Taiwanese food is shit anyway. (But not me..mmm more chicken neck? Oh I couldn't possibly!)
 
Thanks for the on the spot reporting ;)

---------
Sooooo onwards and downwards:

Young man steals schoolgirl's swimsuit to wear, defecate in

IWATA, Shizuoka -- A man who broke into a high school, stole a schoolgirl's swimsuit and then defecated in it as he pranced around wearing the garment has been arrested, police said.

Yasuhisa Matsushita, 25, a temporary employment agency worker from Fukuroi, Shizuoka Prefecture, was arrested for trespassing and willful destruction of property.

Matsushita admits to the allegations.

"I did it because it felt so good," Matsushita told the police.

Several other high schools in Iwata have recently reported break-ins and police are checking whether Matsushita was responsible for them.

Police said that Matsushita broke into a public high school in Iwata on the night of Jan. 22, sneaked into the swimming club's change room and found a schoolgirl's swimsuit, which he defecated in while wearing. (Mainichi)

---------
March 4, 2006

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/ ... 0000c.html

I'm lost for words - a new sexual perversion?
 
Emps: I'm lost for words - a new sexual perversion?


Let's see, that was 4th March. I'd estimate by now there are at least six hundred Japanese websites devoted to it*. Naming a perv. after the perp. is traditional but now I'm wondering if Matsu means swimsuit and he named himself after his hobby. :shock:

*EEEK! There are thousands of them and it seems as if another word for it is "Panasonic" !
 
waitew said:
Into my 'faeces' news,I must include Steve Fosset..who claims to have flown farther than any man alive (Feb 12, 2005) Rubbish!!what about the astronaunts the moon is 240,000 miles away..Fosset flew on 26,000 or so...a complete liarer!

Presuming they went to the moon at all ;)
 
When I was a kid , there was this Arnold Layne type character going around our neighbourhood stealing womens underwear off the washing lines . One day (and this isn't a FOAF tale - it actually happened to someone I knew ) , a woman discovered that he underwear was missing from the line . Later on that day , she went back out to the washing line as she noticed her underwear was back on the line - only then did she realize that they had been soiled . Dirty bastards.
 
India to become 'open defecation free' by 2012

March 26, 2006

By Prashant K. Nanda, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, March 26 (IANS) Come 2012 and it will be rare to see people defecating in the open in India. So claims Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, who went on to say that the country was set to achieve 'open-defecation free' status under the government's Total Sanitation Programme (TSC).

'Open defecation is slowly losing popularity in rural India, and the government is doing all efforts to end this for all by 2012,' Singh told IANS.

The TSC was started in 1999 by the rural development ministry to ensure sanitation facilities across the country.

'The growth in the use of toilets from 22 percent in 2001 to 38 percent of the population in 2006 (till February) is an encouraging sign. The government has raised the grant for construction of household toilets from Rs.625 to Rs.1,500.

'While the central government would now bear 70 percent of the expenditure as against 60 percent earlier, the rest will be shared by the state government and the family,' he said, on the sidelines of a campaign on the need to wash hands.

The minister pointed out other issues related to defecation.

'In Haryana and Punjab people are not poor, what they lack is awareness. They have trucks, tractors and four-wheelers but no toilets - this is really surprising. However, states like Gujarat and Maharashtra are doing well,' he said.

Singh said that plans were afoot to extend the TSC to all districts of India by the end of 2007-08 financial year.

Speaking about other sanitation measures taken by his ministry, he said a water surveillance campaign worth Rs.2.68 billion had been launched to train five people in every panchayat (village clusters) to monitor water quality in villages.

'Currently 468 blocks in India have water surveillance laboratories. Under the new campaign, efforts would be made to extend the facility to every block.'

He said 216,000 village clusters were hit by the problem of poor quality water.

'We have reports of excessive fluoride, nitrate and presence of other chemicals in water. The authorities are working to provide quality water.'

----------
Copyright Indo-Asian News Service

Source
 
3,000 gallons of sewage forced into house

Utility workers trying to clear clog cause unintended smelly consequence

Updated: 5:06 p.m. ET April 21, 2006

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Utility workers trying to blast out a grease clog from a sewer line forced 3,000 gallons of raw sewage into a couple's home, forcing them to abandon their house while hoping that the city makes good on a promise to clean up and repair the damage.

Mac and Meg McCormick say city leaders have also promised to pay for their stay in a hotel until the repairs are complete. The couple doesn't have any of the agreement in writing, and city officials have declined to discuss the case because it's ongoing.

"We feel we have no choice but to put our trust and faith in the hands of the city," Meg McCormick said this week as movers hauled damaged furniture from her house. "And I'll be honest, that's a little scary."

Scott Denham, the risk manager for Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, declined to discuss the details of the sewage backup, but did say, "There's no question of the severity of this event."

City officials don't even know how much the repairs and cleanup will cost, Denham said. Meg McCormick said she has received estimates of $75,000 to $150,000. The house has a tax value of $101,300.

-------------
© 2006 The Associated Press.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12424916/
 
Since the late amented Poo thread is no more, this will have to go here:
Waste disposal
19 August 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.

Excreta from babies that are fed on breast milk alone tends to be fairly odourless but if they are switched to infant formula milk you get the infamous baby poo smell. What ingredient in infant milk formula causes this, er, interesting phenomenon?

The protein (mostly lactalbumin) and fat in human breast milk are more easily digested by babies than the protein (mostly casein) in cow's-milk formula, which presumably makes the end-product less smelly. However, breast milk also has a laxative effect, so breastfed babies are often notoriously prolific when it comes to filling their diapers - an interesting trade-off.

If you think the diapers of formula-fed babies are bad, wait until you have a meat-eating toddler. My husband and I play elaborate games in order to avoid changing our daughter's diaper - pretending not to smell it, having urgent chores to do, faking sleep and such like.

Compared with a toddler, a baby diaper smells lovely, regardless of whether they are fed on breast milk or on formula.

Rebecca Rose, Bunya, Queensland, Australia


As a new mum I have also asked myself this question. I breastfed my daughter, and she had diapers of the none-too-stinky kind, whereas mums in my playgroup who formula-fed their children complained about the "stinkyness" of the diapers that they changed.

Here are my findings, most of it insight from my mother-in-law, who is a lactation consultant.

Human babies have evolved to drink human milk for optimum efficient nutrient absorption, and breast milk is tailored to the baby's age, changing constantly throughout the hours, days and months of an infant's first year.

Most formula is cow-milk based, and therefore differs from human breast milk in many ways. It contains much more protein of many differing types, fats and elements such as aluminium, manganese, cadmium and iron.

Whereas breast milk is, in effect, made to order for the individual baby and its age, formula has to conform to an average by suiting a variety of infants of differing ages so, for example, a baby of 1 week gets the same nutrients as a child of 12 months. Because of this, much of the fat and protein will be excreted instead of being absorbed by the body. Another factor is the excess of iron in formula (one reason why formula-fed babies are often constipated). The iron in formula is poorly absorbed, so a large amount is required, most of which is also excreted.

Breastfed babies absorb almost 100 per cent of what they take in - and rarely become constipated. Their excreta is mostly water, with very little protein, fat or trace elements. The excess fats, proteins and nutrients of formula milk that a baby cannot absorb lead to the stinkier faeces in non-breastfed babies.

Jo Resnick, Rockville, Maryland, US
http://tinyurl.com/ha7lc
 
In the mid-90s, before the internet, there were zines. One of the more famous ones was called BMQ, Bowel Movement Quarterly.

I can still remember the Xeroxed picture of a turd, floating in a bowl, with the caption, "Yet another unverified photo of the Log Ness Monster."

Fortean, indeed.
 
ogopogo3 said:
In the mid-90s, before the internet, there were zines. One of the more famous ones was called BMQ, Bowel Movement Quarterly.

.


They probably have a web site now but I'm afraid to Google for it, I really am......... :shock:


-
 
How toilet habits killed off Dead Sea Scrolls sect
By Andrew Gumbel
Published: 15 November 2006

Sometimes, the best survival instincts can be deadly. According to intriguing new research by an international team of Biblical scholars, the religious sect associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls may have been done in by its own scrupulous toilet habits.

The Essenes, who established an ascetic community at Qumran on the north-western shores of the Dead Sea, rejected the common Bedouin practice of relieving themselves in the open. Instead, they assigned a dumping ground about half a mile from their community and buried their waste there, believing the practice to be more hygienic.

All that effort, though, appears to have been counterproductive. The parasites and harmful bacteria associated with human waste would have been quickly killed off by the desert sun had they remained above ground. Once buried, they could survive and thrive, creating a toxic environment that infected members of the Essene sect as they walked to and from their toilet area. The parasites almost certainly bred in a special cistern used in religious cleansing ceremonies, providing a compelling reason for the early deaths of many Essenes.

"Some people might laugh, but it is terribly sad," one of the scholars, James Tabor of the University of North Carolina, told the Los Angeles Times. "They were so dedicated and had such a strenuous lifestyle, but they were probably lowering their life expectancy and ruining their health in an effort to do what is right." The toilet research conducted by Dr Tabor and his colleagues stemmed, curiously, from a much broader controversy over the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Several scholars have questioned whether the Essenes really wrote them, or even if they ever established a community at Qumran.

Dr Tabor and Joseph Zias of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem took their cue from passages in the Scrolls specifying rules for toilet hygiene. They found an area of soft ground north-west of Qumran, took soil samples and sent them to a French colleague for analysis. The colleague, Stephnie Harter-Lailheugue, found preserved eggs and other remnants of roundworms, tapeworms, whipworms and pinworms. Samples taken from surrounding areas were, by contrast, entirely barren.

The toilet area is now an important piece of evidence linking the Qumran site to the Scrolls and thus belies recent theories that, for example, the Scrolls were hidden in the caves at Qumran by Jews from Jerusalem fleeing the oppression of Roman occupation.

The toilet also provides a compelling explanation for earlier research into the Qumran cemetery, which established that barely one in 20 bodies buried there had survived to the age of 40. Cemeteries from the same period excavated near Jericho have shown that, more typically, half the population would survive beyond 40.

"The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group I have ever studied in over 30 years," Dr Zias told the Times.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been a constant source of fascination since their chance discovery by Bedouin tribesmen in 1947. They provide a rare, if not unique, insight into life and customs around the time of Jesus's life and death. They are also the only Biblical-era documents known to have been written before AD100. In other words, they predate the Gospels.

Just about every aspect of the scrolls has been subject to theorising. While religious scholars have agonised over the question of whether, say, the Scrolls were written by the Essenes themselves or by an Essene splinter group, conspiracy theorists have posited that the Scrolls were somehow fabricated or planted by extra-terrestrials.

One intriguing, but almost entirely unsupported, theory suggests the Catholic Church deliberately suppressed publication of the Scrolls to protect its image of Jesus and his life.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame ... 984457.ece

Years ago I worked on an oil rig in the Sahara: the rig had no toilets, so we had to wander off into the desert clutching a bog-roll to do our business... Interesting to learn that this was actually quite hygienic - it didn't seem so at the time!
 
Yup, and I bet you remember in 'Ice Cold In Alex' when it is said, 'in the desert, when a man walks away with a shovel, you do not ask him where he is going!' :lol:

Of course, that particular man with a shovel was actually on the radio to the enemy. But that's a different matter. ;)
 
Back
Top