The HomeBiogas Bio-Toilet collects your poop and uses anaerobic digestion to decompose it, transforming it into biogas (methane) that you can use for cooking. The kit comes with everything you need: the toilet, the tent in which the methane conversion/collection happens, and the stove for cooking.
I'm intrigued by the idea, but I wonder if the methane would have any lingering smell. Can't find this addressed on the product website.
Along similar lines, here's an article about a university in South Korea that's using human biowaste to power a building. People who contribute their poop, by using the toilet in the building, earn "a virtual currency called Ggool, which means honey in Korean." This currency can be used to buy goods on campus.
Where a petition alleged that the plaintiff was an unmarried white lady, and that while in attendance as a guest of the defendant at a circus performance given by the defendant, and while seated in one of the seats provided by the defendant for the defendant’s guests at the circus, a horse, which was going through a dancing performance immediately in front of where the plaintiff was sitting, was by the defendant’s servant, who was riding upon the horse, caused to back towards the plaintiff, and while in this situation the horse evacuated his bowels into her lap, that this occurred in full view of many people, some of whom were the defendant’s employees, and all of whom laughed at the occurrence, that as a result thereof the plaintiff was caused much embarrassment, mortification, and mental pain and suffering, to her damage in a certain amount, that the damage alleged was due entirely to the defendant’s negligence and without any fault on the part of the plaintiff, the petition set out a cause of action and was good as against a general demurrer.
Velna Turnage was awarded $500 for her "humiliation and embarrassment".
The non-fiction book Shadows in the Sun by Wade Davis contains the following passage:
There is a well known account of an old Inuit man who refused to move into a settlement. Over the objections of his family, he made plans to stay on the ice. To stop him, they took away all of his tools. So in the midst of a winter gale, he stepped out of their igloo, defecated, and honed the feces into a frozen blade, which he sharpened with a spray of saliva. With the knife he killed a dog. Using its rib cage as a sled and its hide to harness another dog, he disappeared into the darkness.
The researchers paid close attention to detail. For instance:
In order to procure the necessary raw materials for knife production, one of us went on a diet with high protein and fatty acids, which is consistent with an arctic diet, for eight days.
However, the results were disappointing: "the knife-edge simply melted upon contact, leaving streaks of fecal matter."
Conclusion: the story of the fecal knife was an urban legend.
Back in the 1960s, while observing wood storks in Florida, biologist M. Philip Kahl, Jr. noted that on hot days the storks "have the unusual habit of frequently excreting on their legs."
He eventually concluded that, since storks don't sweat, they were doing this to cool themselves down "by means of evaporative cooling of the blood supply to the legs and feet." He named this phenomenon 'urohidrosis'.
His hypothesis is now accepted as true, and it's not only storks that cool themselves by pooping on their legs. Turkey vultures do it too.
These 1987 TV ads for Doxidan laxative, featuring the 'Doxidan Cowboy,' seem to inspire both love and hate. A lot of people on YouTube remember them fondly, but in newspapers from the time they were often cited as being among the most annoying commercials on TV.
Now I see that urine bread, of a kind, is back in the news. From bakeryandsnacks.com:
French engineer Louise Raguet baked 'Boucle d'Or' — Goldilocks bread — using wheat fertilized in urine gathered from female urinals in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris.
Raguet hopes to "break taboos over excrement" and create a more sustainable food and farming system that makes use of human refuse, while cutting farming costs and boosting crop yields.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.