Everything2

A chamber pot is the proverbial pot to piss in. Way back in the old days, before we had toilets that automatically dispensed disposable covers and flushed by themselves, people had to use less dignified means to do their business. In rural areas, it wasn't as big of a problem, of course — there's always places to go. But in urban centers, people went in chamber pots, which were, well, pots. They were generally emptied into the public sanitary sewers of the day — that is, the street.

A brief history of waste

The cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in ancient India are the oldest known examples of public sewer systems, dating to around 2600 BCE. At the time, the concern was simply conducting sewage away from cities; toilets were built into houses on the street side, and water was poured down to clear them, making them the earliest version of the flush toilet. Toilets even existed on the second…

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -

Day 11 - Hall's Creek YHLC to Alice Springs YBAS

We woke up in Hall's Creek to an early breakfast, which turned out to be a bit late because they were delayed opening the restaurant. This made our tour leader Val a bit nervous - she is perpetually harping about getting an early start. Going east and south, it's even more important - we're losing a few minutes of daylight each day due to the increasing south latitude, and as we head east we're losing clock time as we traverse…