Getting to the Bottom of Things

   I recently offered a post “On Barfing” and thought of labeling this one “On Pooping”, but Peeing is also involved and I did not want to sell this post short. I am dealing again with a subject that was covered in the post titled, oddly enough, "Duct Cleaning" and it has to do with the current catastrophic shortage of Toilet Paper.

   My purpose here is to point you to an article which explains why we have run out of TP.  In it, the author notes that “The economics and logistics of the problem are a bit controversial,” so controversial in fact, that some of the theories offered are substantial enough to be broken into parts. The article is found in the Washington Post  and that is all I am saying, because you should pay for good journalism and, by now, even Jeff Bezos probably needs some money.

   I anticipate your disappointment and will provide some older examples of how academics have long been studying our various bodily functions. I will also attempt to allay your anxiety since solutions to problems with all of them should soon be near.

   Here is an example from several years ago about another kind of TP problem. I will only say that I could have taken two screen shots to illustrate how complicated this issue is.

   Here is another example which will indicate that all of our bathroom activities are being subjected to scholarly scrutiny. It involves micturation and even you gents who don’t recognize the word will be familiar with some of the difficulties one can experience when arriving at the urinal after standing in a long line with a bursting bladder. A related issue has to do with 'stall choice'.

ABSTRACT: "Tested the hypothesis that personal space invasions produce arousal in a men's lavatory where norms for privacy were salient, where personal space invasions could occur in the case of men urinating, where the opportunity for compensatory responses to invasion were minimal, and where proximity-induced arousal could be measured. Research on micturation indicates that social stressors inhibit relaxation of the external urethral sphincter, which would delay the onset of micturation, and that they increase intravesical pressure, which would shorten the duration of micturation once begun. 60 lavatory users were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 levels of interpersonal distance and their micturation times were recorded. In a 3-urinal lavatory, a confederate stood immediately adjacent to an S, one urinal removed, or was absent. Paralleling the results of a correlational pilot study, close interpersonal distances increased the delay of onset and decreased the persistence of micturation. Findings provide objective evidence that personal space invasions produce physiological changes associated with arousal." 

Middlemist, R. D., Knowles, E. S., & Matter, C. F. (1976). Personal space invasions in the lavatory: Suggestive evidence for arousal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33(5), 541–546.

Sources:

"Flushing out the True Cause of the Global Toilet Paper Shortage Amid Coronavirus Pandemic," Marc Fisher, Washington Post, , April 7.

"The Toilet Paper Problem," Donald E. Knuth, The American Mathematical Monthly 

Volume 91, 1984 - Issue 8

Two whole books for those of you who are really, really interested:

The Bonus: Speaking of selling short...
You have probably received many emails from those handling your money, beseeching you to stay calm. Well, there is one investment manager who is not staying calm, he is ecstatic! Mark Spitznagel’s Universa Investments just posted a 4000% GAIN. He must have known even more about what was happening than President Trump and also invested in Kohler bidets.