Wednesday, November 10, 2004

don't miss the spectacular Toiletship exhibit!

7 November to 19 November 2004 - World Toilet Summit 2004

THE WORLD OF TOILETS CONGREGATE IN BEIJING, CHINA

The World Toilet Summit will be held in Beijing, China from 17th Nov. to 19th Nov. 2004. The theme of this Summit is: Human, Environment & Living. Centered on this theme, workshops will be organized on such hot topics as: humanized toilet, the popularization of the environmental toilet, toilet management and hygiene, toilet designing and energy-saving measures and so on. Visitors will be arranged to see the achievements of the toilet constructions in Beijing in recent years. We warmly welcome the participation of organizations, groups, individuals from various countries and regions of the world, who are dedicated themselves to the development of the world toilets. And discuss the trend of the world toilet development and show to the world the latest toilet technology. [...]

A Preview on World Toilet Summit 2004

Summit Highlights:

A Global Perspective - Relationship between Toilets & Quality of Human Life

World Class Tourism & Toilets

Entrepreneurship: Social & Economic Returns on Investments

Maintenance - Good Toilets Improve Heartland Community Living

Design - The Challenges and Considerations in Establishing the Code of Practice for Toilets.

Catering to the diversity of Culture - toilets for different cultures

Water Conservation: The Cost Effective Use of a Valuable Resource, Water

Toilet - The Past, Present and Future of Public Toilets in Beijing

Many more….

Wide ranging toilet-related topics covered by the Experts!

Benefit from an interesting mix of plenary sessions covering in-depth situational studies and invaluable experiences from not less than 25 international and
local speakers on Tourism, Design, Maintenance, Water Conservation, and Challenges and Considerations of the Toilet Code of Practice!

Network, exchange and share ideas, knowledge and skills with industry experts and your peers from around the world

Celebrate World Toilet Day on 19 November 2004!

In-depth situational studies?

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 448:
When emptied of people, the interior is steel gray. When crowded, it's green, a comfortable acid green. Sunlight comes in through portholes in the higher of the bulkheads (the Rücksichtslos here lists at a permanent angle of 23# 27'), and steel washbowls line the lower bulkheads. At the end of each sub-latrine are coffee messes and hand-cranked peep shows. You'll find all the older, less glamorous, un-Teutonic-looking women in the enlisted men's machines. The real stacked and more racially golden tomatoes go to the officers, natürlich. This is some of that Nazi fanaticism.

The Rücksichtslos itself is the issue of another kind of fanaticism: that of the specialist. This vessel here is a Toiletship, a triumph of the German mania for subdividing. "If the house is organic," argued the crafty early Toiletship advocates, "family lives in the house, family's organic, house is outward-and-visible sign, you see," behind their smoked glasses and under their gray crewcuts not believing a word of it, Machiavellian and youthful, not quite ripe yet for paranoia, "and if the bathroom's part of the house house-is-organic! ha-hah," singing, chiding, pointing out the broad blond-faced engineer, hair parted in the middle and slicked back, actually blushing and looking at his knees among the good-natured smiling teeth of his fellow technologists because he'd been about to forget that point (Albert Speer, himself, in a gray suit with a smudge of chalk on the sleeve, all the way in the back leaning akimbo the wall and looking remarkably like American cowboy actor Henry Fonda, has already forgotten about the house being organic, and nobody points at him, RHIP). "Then the Toiletship is to the Kriegsmarine as the bathroom is to the house. Because the Navy is organic, we all know that, ha-hah!" [General, or maybe Admiral, laughter.] The Rücksichtslos was intended to be the flagship of a whole Geschwader of Toiletships. But the steel quotas were diverted clear out of the Navy over to the A4 rocket program.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Sunday, November 07, 2004

he helped write the jokes

Sez the Orlando Sentinel, regarding the new season for The Simpsons:
For the Nov. 14 episode, the show repeats a coup from last season. It again has landed Thomas Pynchon, the secretive author of Gravity's Rainbow. '"We depict him with a bag on his head," Jean said. "He helped write the jokes. One reason he did the show is he has a son who's a fan."