Free Republic

When Viggo Hansen, a county counselor from the Left Party in Sormland, Sweden, tried passing a law that required that men sit down to pee when using the public bathrooms, his motion caused a flood of reactions. Hansen argued when men sit down to pee it is better for public health because it reduces the splatter around the toilets and stops the spread of disease. Hansen is one of many—including the head of the environmental protection agency in Taiwan, Stephen Shen, who also tried mandating such an order—that believe errant urine is bad for public health. They argue that droplets...

Into the sewer February 2, 2004 Note: This column contains language that may be offensive to some readers. When Jack Paar, television's late-night talk show pioneer, died last week at 85, every obituary mentioned the time he walked off his NBC show in a huff, angry that the network's censors had cut a joke he'd recorded the day before. The joke turned on a misunderstanding of the letters "WC" -- the initials of "water closet," an Anglicism for toilet. By today's standards, it was an almost completely innocuous story -- a somewhat labored yarn about an English tourist writing to...