Bathroom Mathematics

In the interest of improving the overall quality of human life, and also of filling up an hour of free time, I have conclusively proved that men should leave the seat up after using the toilet.

First, let’s construct a simple model. In this model, which resembles real life closely but not exactly, there are two types of people, male and female. To make calculations easier, let’s say that the populations of these people are identical – there is the same number of women in our model as men – and they both use the bathroom at the same frequency. Furthermore, there are two activities that these people engage in: we’ll call them number 1 and number 2, both of which are conducted an equal amount of times. Both before and after conducting said activities, the people have the option of lifting the seat, dropping the seat, or leaving the seat in place. For the sake of convenience, let’s say that there is one woman and one man, and that they both do number 1 and number 2 each once a day. We’ll call them Ellen and John.

We will state that when Ellen conducts either activity 1 or 2, the seat must be down. When John conducts activity 2, the seat must be down, but when he conducts activity 1, the seat must be up. The goal is accomplish these conditions with the lowest expenditure of energy. In our model, let us say that the act of moving the seat up or down costs exactly 1 unit of energy.
As you can see, when a person enters a bathroom in our model, there are four possibilities.

1. Ellen wants to do activity #1.
2. Ellen wants to do activity #2.
3. John wants to do activity #1.
4. John wants to do activity #2.

Each of these possibilities feature a starting condition: whether the seat is already up or down.

Condition 1, seat up:
1) Ellen/Activity #1: Ellen must put the seat down. Cost: 1eg.
2) Ellen/Activity #2: Ellen must put the seat down. Cost: 1eg.
3) John/Activity #1: John leaves the seat up. Cost: 0eg.
4) John/Activity #2: John must put the seat down. Cost: 1eg.
The total cost for condition 1: ¾ (3 units of energy out of a possible maximum of 4).

Condition 2, seat down:
1) Ellen/Activity #1: Ellen leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
2) Ellen/Activity #2: Ellen leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
3) John/Activity #1: John must raise the seat. Cost: 1eg.
4) John/Activity #2: John leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
The total cost for condition 2: ¼ (1 unit of energy out of a possible maximum of 4).

But we’re not done yet! There is another part to our simulation: what Ellen and John do after they finish their business. In the first scenario, John puts the toilet seat down when he finishes activity #1, so the end state is always TS-down. In the second scenario, everyone leaves the seat exactly where it is. It is these two scenarios that we will be comparing.

Scenario 1, TS-down:
1) Ellen/Activity #1: Ellen leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
2) Ellen/Activity #2: Ellen leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
3) John/Activity #1: John must lower the seat. Cost: 1eg.
4) John/Activity #2: John leaves the seat down. Cost: 0eg.
Total cost for scenario 1: ¼ (1 unit of energy out of a possible maximum of 4).

Scenario 2, TS-neutral:
No one does anything. Total cost, 0 (0 units of energy out of 4).

Okay, now let’s do some very basic math. Here’s our energy calculation formula: ProbCond1(EnergyCostCond1) + ProbCond2(EnergyCostCond2) + EnergyCostNxtM = TotalEnergyCost.

That is, the probability of encountering condition 1 multiplied by its energy cost, plus the probability of condition 2 multiplied by its energy cost, plus the energy cost of the next move (i.e. putting the seat down) equals the total energy cost of the given situation.

Given scenario #2 (TS-Neutral), when someone enters a bathroom they will encounter condition 1 (TS-up) exactly 1/4th of the time. Why? Because out of four possible combinations of participant and activity, only one results in the seat being left up. So our equation looks like this:

¼(3/4) + ¾(1/4) + 0 = 3/16 + 3/16 = 6/16 = 3/8 = average energy usage in scenario 2.

Now, let’s take scenario 1, where John must put the seat down after he concludes activity #1. In this case, no one ever encounters condition 1, because the seat is always down.

0(3/4) + 1(1/4) + ¼ = ¼ + ¼ = 2/4 = ½ (or 4/8) = average energy usage in scenario 1.

Clearly, the average energy usage in scenario 1 (1/2eg) is greater then that in scenario 2 (3/8eg). The reason why is easy to understand once you think about it. In scenario 1, a unit of energy will have to be expended exactly 1 out of 4 times. The benefit you get from this is that you never have to cope with condition 1. But in scenario 2, condition 1 only costs 3/16! So in order to save 3/16, you expend 1/4. That’s not good business.

Or, you may think of it this way. In scenario 1, Ellen never has to expend energy (her seat is always down when she enters, and she never changes it). But John has to expend 2 units of energy exactly half the time he goes. If he needs to do #1, he will ALWAYS have to lift the seat up and then he will always have to put it back down.

In scenario 2, Ellen has to expend 1 unit of energy exactly 1 quarter of the time. She always needs the seat down, but there is a 1 in 4 chance that John was in before her doing a number 1. John, on the other hand, expends 0 energy 1 of the time, and 1 energy the other half. That’s because he has a ½ chance of doing a number 1, at which point he has a ¼ chance of encountering the seat already up. There’s 1/8. He also has a ½ chance of doing a number 2, in which case he has a ¾ chance of encountering the seat down. That’s 3/8. 1/8+3/8 = ½.

Scenario 2:
1/4(1) [ellen] + ½(1) [john] = 1/4 + ½ = ¾
Scenario 1:
0 + ½(2) = 1

In case you didn’t notice, the ratio 1:3/4 is the same as ½:3/8. Expressed in more conventional format, 4:3. For every 4 units of energy expended in the world of scenario 1, only three are expended in scenario 2!

So, let’s examine the advantages to scenario 2 over scenario 1. Less energy is used, of course, but what does that mean? Well, the less energy Ellen and John expend, the less food they have to consume, saving them money. Since each energy-using action also takes time, you’ll see that scenario 2 also saves time. In each case, we’re talking about only a tiny fraction….but over the course of a lifetime, this adds up! Say we considered each movement of the seat to take 1 second. Well, we already know the ratio, 3:4. If every day John and Ellen together use up 4 seconds moving the toilet lid under scenario 1, they would only use 3 if they switched to scenario 2! That’s a one second saving per day, 365 seconds over the course of a year, or just over 6 minutes. Ten years give us 3650 seconds or just slightly over an hour. Now if there are ten million couples like John and Ellen, that’s one million hours of life lost every decade for no good reason! And one million extra units of energy as well.

Furthermore, scenario 2 is clearly the more equal of the two in terms of distributing labor. In scenario 1, John does all the work while Ellen does none. Scenario 2 redistributes the labor so that John does 2/3rds of the labor and Ellen 1/3. While this is not truly equal, it is certainly better than the other option.

I find this evidence to be incontestable. Men of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but the extra energy you expend by lowering the toilet seat!

Baby please don't go

A lot of people don't realize this about me, but I'm actually a very moody person. And by "moody," I mean that every once in a while I'll dip into a funk that will last for several weeks, or even months. Usually this will be followed by a period of sunny optimism and eventually I'll settle back into my usual even-keeled emotional temper. I used to be rather bad about dealing with my little depressive episodes -- I'd withdraw from people, stop going to school, fuck up my relationships -- but in the Army I learned to glide through them without going off the deep end. I'd say that, all in all, I'm a fairly emotionally healthy person now, just one who occasionally feels the chilly walls of mortality closing in, or whatever.

Over the years, I've discovered a few methods of cheering myself up when I'm feeling down. For instance, you can smoke a pack of cigarettes and drink a bottle of bourbon. Or you can leave everything behind, drive a hundred miles in a random direction, and spend a few weeks moping in isolation. But both of these options have significant drawbacks, like hangovers and the loss of your job. So instead I immerse myself in the blues.

I fell in love with the blues in the summer of 1995, right before my senior year in High School. I remember the incident clearly: I was walking home from downtown, where I had been doing God only knows what, and I stopped in a little used record store on Connecticut Avenue, just north of Dupont Circle. I have no idea if it's still there. There was a twenty dollar bill in my wallet itching to be spent, so I picked up "The Bends" by Radiohead and, finding I still had a few bucks left over, two ancient CDs from the cut-out bin. They were both "Best Of" collections, one of Muddy Waters and one of Howlin' Wolf. I was hooked instantly. It took me a few more years to get into Radiohead.

Anyway, it was all downhill from there. My senior year, when I wasn't skipping class, I was often holding forth on the subject of Lightnin' Hopkins humor or the travesty that is virtually all covers of John Lee Hooker songs. I was a blues nut, and it didn't take me long to discover the great social advantage of the genre: it is unassailably cool. Nobody can deny that the blues is awesome and it gives you an edge in every conversation about music:

Me: Got any new records?
That jerk JP: Yeah, like, "Dookie" by Green Day.
Me: Oh, well, I've mostly just been listening to Pink Anderson lately.
Cheerleader girl: Oh Tom, that's hot! Let's have sex under the bleachers!

Okay, I made that last line up. But still, the blues is a trump card in every game of musical oneupmanship, and the only way to win against it is to whip out Miles Davis or to realize that musical oneupmanship is essentially moronic.

But while the beauty of the blues is its simplicity, that's also its downfall. There's only so far to take it and after a while it all starts to blend together. There are plenty of good contemporary blues artists -- Taj Mahal is my favorite -- but even they sound like watered down versions of the old masters. Soul is a good step forward, and bit more diverse, but it lacks the brutal truth that lies at the heart of the best blues songs. Sometimes artists from other genres will tackle the blues in a new and surprising way, but only the rare few (read: Tom Waits) can incorporate the sound into their own style without coming off as foolish or condescending.

So I'm no longer the blues nut I once was. Maybe I've matured or maybe I've just lost the willingness to bask in the misery of others. But every few months, when I start to feel depressed or lonely or trapped, I break out my collection, including those same two "Best Of" collections I purchased back in the summer of '95. Nothing soothes the pain quite as well. And I hope that a new generation of misfit High School students will take a chance on some cheap records from the cut-out bin.

Love letter to Moroccans

As I was leaving the office today, I got into the elevator with two Moroccan guys who I had never met before. In the time it took for us to travel from the 4th floor to ground level, we had exchanged names, discovered that I was from Washington and they were both from Casablanca, and discussed the differences between the various Moroccan cities. And then, as I left the building, one of them wrote down his name and his phone number, handed them to me, and told me to call him if I'm ever in Casablanca.

I doubt there are more than five people in all of the US who would invite a foreigner they have known for five minutes to visit them. And yet over the last six weeks I've had lunch, dinner, tea, or invitations to such things from countless people, many of whom I had known for only a very short time. It's not so much that Americans are unfriendly, it's that we're cynical and suspicious, and we have less of a tradition of hospitality (rumors of 'Southern Hospitality' are greatly exaggerated). It may also be a function of our relative positions in the world. Americans are taught to believe that everyone must want to come to America; Moroccans have no such myth, and are consequentially surprised and charmed by the very fact that you want to visit their country.

Whatever the reason, it's a facet of the culture that I think takes many Americans by surprise. Don't they hate us? Don't they envy our wealth and freedom? A lot of Americans operate under the assumption that they should keep their national identity secret; I've been counseled by a few people to say I'm Canadian if possible. But while many Moroccans disagree with US government policies, I've yet to meet one who has held it against me personally.

There are plenty of things I dislike about Moroccans: they drive like maniacs, they refuse to stand in lines, and God knows it wouldn't kill some of them to bathe a little more frequently. But none of these things matter much compared to their open and generous attitude towards everyone.

Breaking news: trouble in the Middle East

A few days ago, Israel, as I'm sure you all know, sent troops into Gaza to rescue a kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. As usual when armed men move into unfriendly territory -- even for the best of reasons -- a whole series of horrors have followed in their wake. Warplanes are dropping bombs, tanks are rolling into towns, naval ships are blockading ports, Hezbollah is attacking from Lebanon, and scores of people are dying on both sides. All for proximate cause of one soldier who had the bad fortune to be grabbed by Hamas militants.

I don't blame Gilad, and I regret that he will have to live with these events on his conscience for the rest of his life, at least if he is any sort of human being. I don't blame Israel for refusing to leave him rotting in some Gaza strip safehouse. And I even have a hard time blaming Hamas for fighting Israel with the only tools that they have at their disposal. In fact, I'm starting to wonder whether 'blame' or 'guilt' or 'right' are words that even apply to the Israel/Palestine question. All sides are guilty, which is just another way of saying that all sides are innocent.

As the violence escalates, I am reminded strangely of World War I. One shot in Sarajevo brought the end to millions of lives and the destruction of the political structure of the time. Seen in hindsight, there was no discernible reason for the powers of Europe to sacrifice an entire generation of their youth in the service of virtually nothing, but the actors at the time played their parts rationally. And here we are again, waiting for the logical denouement. Whatever happens, I hope Gilad suffers less for his part in this play than Sarajevo did for its part in the earlier version.

Dispatches from the surface of the sun

So for the five or six weeks I've been in Rabat, I've been fairly impressed by the moderate temperature. I was under the impression that the climate world be sweltering, Sahara-style, with old men frying eggs on the sidewalk and veiled women fainting from heat stroke as they shopped in the market. But as with many of my preconceived notions about Morocco -- formed mostly from Casablanca and the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby film Road To Morocco -- I was disappointed. With a cool breeze usually coming in from the Atlantic, the heat actually wasn't that bad.

Until today.

Today the thermostat topped off at 41 degrees Celsius. Converting to Fahrenheit, that's (41 * 8/5) + 32 = really fucking hot. Also, the air conditioning at the office decided today would be the perfect day to stop working.

We work in a Moroccan government building that's only about four or five months old. How a new facility can have so many problems is beyond me. We usually get two or three days of running water per week. The elevator regularly stops working, sometimes, maliciously, with people inside of it. And now the AC quits on the hottest day in the entire history of the universe.

Okay, that might be a little overstatement, but it doesn't feel like it. Even the Moroccans are fanning themselves and looking miserable, and these are people who regularly wear giant overcoats and scarves when the temperature drops below 70 degrees. There is a pool of sweat forming in my pants that could drown a small child and I think my tie now officially qualifies as a liquid. It's gotten to the point that I'm even considering wearing a short sleeve dress shirt tomorrow and risk looking like a chump.

Plans for tonight: swim, shower, bask in reliable Hilton air conditioning.

[Ed note: this entry was written at work, but not posted until now due to the absolutely fucking extreme slowness of the office Internet connection. No AC and ~200 bytes per second transfer rates!]

My triumphant return!

Please, please, hold your applause. I know it's been hard, but you give me too much credit. Yes it's true that, absent my moderating influence, The New Republic and DailyKos nearly destroyed each other with nuclear weapons. And, yes, I wasn't here to prevent Slate from disfiguring itself into an even more unreadable format. But somehow you all managed to muddle through. Give yourselves a hand, people! I promise never to leave again.

Meanwhile, without the distractions of blogging, I've been free to acquit myself more productively. For instance, I've had the time to spend many, many hours lounging in the sun by the pool, trying to read but mostly staring that the blonde French woman who sunbathes topless. Also, sometimes I go to work.

Not today, though! Today my stomach was seized by a hostile invading force which demanded that I remain nearby a toilet at all times. So I sat in my hotel room -- wearing a tie even, to further the illusion that I was working from home rather than nursing a rebellious gut -- and taught myself a little Visual Basic. I need to write some web applets for work, you see. It's been probably ten years since I've done any programming, aside from a little shell scripting here and there, but it comes back quickly, especially with something as easy as VB. Four hours worth of wrestling with VB Step-By-Step and what little I remember from AP Computer Science yielded the world's largest and most functional "Hello World" program. Man, what leet skillz I have.

The problem with programming is that I have very little patience for the grind. Once I've figured out how to do something, I have no interest in actually writing the code to do it. This, of course, is merely a symptom of a larger issue that has haunted me throughout my life: intense, unrelenting laziness.

I've been reading A Perfect Spy by John le Carre, an author who seems almost too appropriate for Rabat. Philip Roth, via the back cover blurb section, has declared this book to be "the best English novel since the war." Perhaps he means Gulf I or maybe he was making an ironic comment on the state of British literature. APS is an excellent book -- at halfway through, I'm prepared to say it might be le Carre's best -- but I wouldn't put it in the same realm as Graham Greene's top-notch work. Still, recommended. After all, there's only so much Graham Greene out there, and only half of it is very good.