JOST A MON

The idle ramblings of a Jack of some trades, Master of none

Aug 3, 2014

Dry

Although she did not drink martinis, she graciously prepared a double for me every evening before dinner. I introduced her to Tanqueray gin and Noilly Pratt vermouth, the ingredients for a perfect martini. Sensitive husband that I was, I courteously congratulated her every day on a fine martini, cautiously suggesting that it might be a touch drier. Day after day, I congratulated her, suggesting that it might be a touch drier still. One day I sipped the martini and bathed her in kisses: “Betsey, you’re wonderful, it’s perfect.” She did not take well to my gushing. Betsey almost never raised her voice, but raise it she did: “I knew it! I knew it! Of course I’m wonderful! Of course it’s perfect! You’re drinking straight gin.”


(Eugene D. Genovese, about his wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, in Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage)

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May 30, 2014

Gun 

when I hear 
the word 
culture,
I reach 
for a gun 

the gun plays 
a major role in
contemporary 
art 

with a gun 
artists 
paint pictures 

with a gun 
poets 
draw poems 

musicians 
gather consonances 
with the gun 

filmmakers 
with a gun 
shoot 
eminent 
movies 

maybe 
even I 
can 
with the aid of a gun 
extract 
something
from myself.

An extract from the poem by the Ryazanian poet Alexei Kolchev who died in 2013. (Via Colta.ru.)

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Jan 27, 2014

Vegetable Vegetable Tricks

The boy and I have been watching This is Jinsy, a peculiarly funny brand of British television programming. We liked this song and sang it several times, giggling helplessly. You should imagine it being set to a rather soothing melody. There's also a faint background vocal, commenting ethereally on the situation.

You left a parsnip on my chair
I found some sweetcorn in my underwear
You placed a broccoli on every stair.
And it frightened me.

I found a broad bean in my wine
And a spinach on my washing line
You shoved a marrow where the sun don't shine
And it frightened me.

* You're playing vegetable vegetable tricks
Is that how you're getting your kicks?
You're playing vegetable vegetable tricks
I'm dealing with someone who's sick.

You put a cabbage in my summer hat
You force fed beetroot to my favourite cat (Anus)
Now there are purple patches where it sat
And it frightened me.

I found twelve mushrooms in my shoe (In My Shoe)
What a horrid horrid thing to do (What a h o r r i d thing to do)
I was going to use them in tomorrow's stew
You knew that, didn't you?

Repeat * twice






But you don't have to imagine the soothing melody. Here it is:





















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Dec 19, 2013




Humour China Style














Xiao barged his way through several queues, trying to remember the plainclothes training. Problem is, Chinese plainclothes cops operate so as to be noticed. The idea is not to blend but to intimidate. Only foreigners and Gansu peasants can't spot a plainclothes cop, runs the police academy joke: foreigners because they have never seen China, Gansu peasants because they have never seen clothes.







Paul Mason, Rare Earth.














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Aug 8, 2011




A Tramp Abroad











Poor Mark Twain. There he was, A Tramp Abroad, sorely missing that good ol' fashioned food which America is rightly known for - size and succulence entirely its own.
To particularize: the average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an American hotel. The milk used for it is what the French call "Christian" milk - milk which has been baptized. 
After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee", one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed. 
Next comes the European bread - fair enough, good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; and never any change, never any variety - always the same tiresome thing. 
Next, the butter - the sham and tasteless butter; no salt in it, and made of goodness knows what.

Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they don't know how to cook it. Neither will they cut it right. It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter. It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry, it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm. 
Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup - could words describe the gratitude of this exile?










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Jul 28, 2011




Toasting Butter Toast











Sidin Vadukut waxes eloquently on the pleasures of toasted bread with butter. He had, he said, fallen out of the habit, until an all-nighter of antakshari at some friend's wedding rekindled his enthusiasm. 


Half an hour later someone brought us a pot of tea and one of those small wicker baskets lined with foil and stacked with 8 slices of thick toasted sliced white bread generously buttered. I mean serious generosity. If the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation decided to butter toast–and they should–this is how they would butter it. The chef had kept going with the fat till the toasted bread could absorb no more and the remaining fat just stayed on the surface. Yellow, soft and shiny. Before this I had only ever seen butter stay yellow on bread on Amul butter billboards.



This simply never happened in real life.



And the toast. Oh the toast. The toast was of the perfect temperature and consistency. It was not so hot that you could hardly ruminate–as you must–between the imminent delight of biting and the animal violence of chewing. It was not so cold that the butter was beginning to coagulate into grease. And the texture. Toasted stiff, but not so much that at each bite the corners of your mouth hurt from the crumbs. Yet the centre was tender, without getting soggy under the pressure of all that cholesterol.










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Jul 26, 2011




Worcester? Wooster.











Recently, a letter allegedly written by Bertram Wooster was discovered in America. It was published in the Conning Tower column of the New York Tribune, and complained about the graphic nature of Grantland Rice's writings on boxing:
Grantland, Priceless Old Bea, Is Off in Florida, But He Shall Ever So Well Be Spoken To, We Mean to Say

My Dear Old Soul:


I hate to bother and all that sort of thing, but if you've a spare moment I wish you'd toddle down the passage and speak to Grantland Rice. I mean to say, all that stuff he wrote in yesterday's jolly old issue about chappies being "chopped into pink ribbons" and the blighter with the "red grin that bubbled gore." What I mean is, he doesn't seem to realize that we lads who take in the Tribune read it at breakfast, and, believe me, dear old son, when Jeeves, my man, slipped a couple of fried eggs in front of me just at what you might call the psychological moment, it was a near thing, laddie, a very near thing. Jolly old Rice, I've no doubt, is one of those healthy, hearty fellows who skip out of bed like two-year-olds and feel perfectly topping before breakfast, but in my case - well, you know how it is. I'm never much of a lad until after the morning meal. And, when it comes to having to breakfast on red grins and bubbling gore, well, I mean to say, what! I mean, you know what I mean, I mean!
Well, that's all. Cheerio and all that sort of rot! Godd-bye-ee!

Bertie Wooster

(per pro P. G. Wodehouse, Secy.)










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Jun 20, 2011




Traumatic Brain Injury











Rush out and grab this study, folks. [Via here.] Below is the abstract:


Traumatic brain injuries in illustrated literature: experience from a series of over 700 head injuries in the Asterix comic books



Acta Neurochir (Wien). 2011 Jun;153(6):1351-5.



Kamp MA, Slotty P, Sarikaya-Seiwert S, Steiger HJ, Hänggi D.



Department for Neurosurgery

Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf




Background: The goal of the present study was to analyze the epidemiology and specific risk factors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Asterix illustrated comic books. Among the illustrated literature, TBI is a predominating injury pattern.



Methods: A retrospective analysis of TBI in all 34 Asterix comic books was performed by examining the initial neurological status and signs of TBI. Clinical data were correlated to information regarding the trauma mechanism, the sociocultural background of victims and offenders, and the circumstances of the traumata, to identify specific risk factors.



Results: Seven hundred and four TBIs were identified. The majority of persons involved were adult and male. The major cause of trauma was assault (98.8%). Traumata were classified to be severe in over 50% (GCS 3-8). Different neurological deficits and signs of basal skull fractures were identified. Although over half of head-injury victims had a severe initial impairment of consciousness, no case of death or permanent neurological deficit was found. The largest group of head-injured characters was constituted by Romans (63.9%), while Gauls caused nearly 90% of the TBIs. A helmet had been worn by 70.5% of victims but had been lost in the vast majority of cases (87.7%). In 83% of cases, TBIs were caused under the influence of a doping agent called “the magic potion”.



Conclusions: Although over half of patients had an initially severe impairment of consciousness after TBI, no permanent deficit could be found. Roman nationality, hypoglossal paresis, lost helmet, and ingestion of the magic potion were significantly correlated with severe initial impairment of consciousness (p ≤ 0.05).










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Mar 12, 2011




Mathumour











I have learned over the years that what is amusing to one person is far from amusing to another. This is not surprising. Many people - some as young as five years old (see yesterday's post) - have told me that what I find interesting is less than crudworthy to them. Neither trivia nor humour really translates well.



And I do not even mean translating from one language to another. In a recent paper on an algebraic formula for the computation of p(n), the number of partitions of an integer n (a partition of n being any non-increasing sequence of positive integers that add up to n) - by all accounts a major development in number theory, having been an open problem for nearly 80 years - the authors write "We give an amusing proof of the fact that p(1) = 1."



When I saw the proof, I laughed. Hollowly. Here it is (following the statement of their main theorem, for which, see original paper):


In this case, we have that 24n - 1 = 23, and we use the G0(6)-representatives








The corresponding CM points are










Using the explicit Fourier expansion of P(z), we find that








Using these numerics, we can prove that









We have that Tr(1) = 23, confirming that p(1) = Tr(1)/23 = 1.
Quod bloody erat freakin' demonstrandum.










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Feb 13, 2011




My Dear, How Ever Did You Think Up This Delicious Salad?











Ogden Nash, poet par excellence, cast his brilliant eye on many human foibles. Food is a major foible, particularly that prepared by people who refuse to accept they will never be good cooks. Look at this:



My Dear, How Ever Did You Think Up This Delicious Salad?

This is a very sad ballad,
Because it's about the way too many people make a salad.
Generally they start with bananas.
And they might as well just use gila monsters or iguanas.
Pineapples are another popular ingredient,
Although there is one school that holds
Preserves pears or peaches more expedient,
And you occasionally meet your fate
In the form of a prune or a date.
Rarely you may chance to find a soggy piece
Of tomato looking very forlorn and Cinderella-ry,
But for the most part you are confronted by apples and celery,
And it's not a bit of use at this point to turn pale
Or break out in a cold perspiration
Because all this is only the foundation,
Because if you think the foundation sounds unenticing,
Just wait until we get to the dressing, or rather the icing.
There are various methods of covering up the body,
And to some, marshmallows are the pall supreme,
And others prefer whipped cream,
And then they deck the grave with
Ground-up peanuts and maraschinos
And you get the effect of a funeral like Valentino's
And about the only thing
That in this kind of salad is never seen
Is any kind of green
And oil and vinegar and salt and pepper are at a minimum,
But there's a maximum of sugar and syrup
And ginger and nutmeg and cinnamum.











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Feb 11, 2011




Protection Egyptian Style











Okay, this is too funny not to pass along. None of it is mine, and the commentary is ‘as is’.



"So just to outline here – these are makeshift helmets made by the Egyptians whilst scrapping in their current predicament. I shall guide you through these pieces of registered army kit thus:
ATT00001 
Your classic 1979 ‘Tribottle rag’ helmet – a must in any type of combat



ATT00002 
A late 80’s ‘boxhat’. The bloke next to him doesn’t appear too sure of its effectiveness



ATT00003 
A renaissance period piece of brickwear teamed with a black and cream scarf. Textbook



ATT00004 
I’m not sure that tuna sarnie he is about to lob is gonna cause to much destruction. Old skool 80’s broken bin helmet. I personally love the fact he needs to lift it up to see – does he spend the rest of the time walking in to things??



ATT00005 
Textbook saucepaning with lifejacket combo. He does not take, ANY!!



ATT00006 
I literally have no idea what this is.



ATT00007 
And the winner by 100 miles. This bloke is going to war with 2 baguettes strapped to his ears and a ham salad roll sellotaped to his forehead. I’d def wanna be behind him if someone lobs a load of bricks at me."










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Feb 8, 2011




Ogden Nash Cocktail











Ogden Nash complained against ridiculous additives in salads. Time, I think, to move onto his witty observations on sundry liqueurs. Here's his Mint Julep:
There is something about a mint julep.
It is nectar imbibed in a dream,
As fresh as the bud of the tulip,
As cool as the bed of the stream.
There is something about a mint julep,
A fragrance beloved by the lucky.
And perhaps it's the tint of the frost and the mint,
But I think it was born in Kentucky.
And here is his Highball:
There is something they put in a highball
That awakens the torpidest brain,
That kindles a spark in the eyeball,
Gliding, singing through vein after vein.
There is something they put in a highball
Which you'll notice one day, if you watch;
And it may be the soda, but judged by the odor,
I rather believe it's the Scotch.
And, in the same vein, he goes on to extol the Old-Fashioned:
There is something about an old-fashioned
That kindles a cardiac glow;
It is soothing and soft and impassioned
As a lyric by Swinburne or Poe.
There is something about an old-fashioned
When dusk has enveloped the sky,
And it may be the ice, or the pineapple slice,
But I strongly suspect it's the Rye.










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Feb 7, 2011




Amblongus Pie











Edward Lear has some fun with food. Here's one of his 'receipts for domestic cookery' - an Amblongus Pie:


TO MAKE AN AMBLONGUS PIE 



Take 4 pounds (say 4 1/2 pounds) of fresh Amblongusses, and put them in a small pipkin. 



Cover them with water and boil them for 8 hours incessantly, after which add 2 pints of new milk, and proceed to boil for 4 hours more. 



When you have ascertained that the Amblongusses are quite soft, take them out and place them in a wide pan, taking care to shake them well previously. 



Grate some nutmeg over the surface, and cover them carefully with powdered gingerbread, curry-powder, and a sufficient quantity of Cayenne pepper. 



Remove the pan into the next room, and place it on the floor. Bring it back again, and let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Shake the pan violently till all the Amblongusses have become a pale purple colour. 



Then, having prepared a paste, insert the whole carefully, adding at the same time a small pigeon, 2 slices of beef, 4 cauliflowers, and any number of oysters. 



Watch patiently till the crust begins to rise, and add a pinch of salt from time to time. 



Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of the window as fast as possible. 










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Jan 12, 2011




London Tales











I've been quite lax with posts about London, so here's a couple to liven up (or, possibly, depress) your January. These are from London's history, and speak much about the kinds of things that amused Englishmen over the ages. None of that stiff upper lip until Victorian times, then?



Firstly is the story of Whipping Tom of Fleet Street, who - in the 1670s - dressed in black, covered his face, waylaid unsuspecting women as they went about their duties, and spanked them: he lifted their skirts and beat 'an Alarum' upon 'their Tobies' and cried, 'Spanko!'



He was never caught, and most people thought him an object of fun as his assaults were mainly on women of the night. The intensity of his spanking varied as well: he once 'swinged her tail' so hard 'that tis thought, she will not be capable of her Trade for some time' while at another time he knocked down a peas-vendor, who was so stunned by his assault that she couldn't resist, and then he proceeded to 'Tyranize her posteriors at pleasure.'



And then one day, he silently vanished, never to be seen again.



Next is a tale of gas: in Henry II's reign, a fellow from Suffolk called 'Roland the Farter' appeared at the King's court for Christmas, and performed (records say), "Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum" ('one jump, one whistle and one fart)'. For this annual performance, Henry munificently granted him a manor in Suffolk.



I mentioned this story to one of my friends, who immediately responded that her hubby was from Suffolk, and notably flatulent himself. (Too much information, I thought, but there you go.) 



Clearly, said my pal, 'flatulence has been bred into the Suffolk folk from early times.'



Further Reading (if you must)



On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages










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Jan 11, 2011




Drinking Iodex











A Fernet Branca is, it appears to me, a rather poisonous tipple tasting vaguely of Iodex, and it serves admirably as the backdrop to the utterly riotously funny tale of misunderstanding, high camp, pretension and the most bizarre recipes I have yet encountered in any fiction. James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking With Fernet Branca was longlisted for the Booker prize five years ago, and here's a description of Tuscan bread that I found particularly enticing.
There is something radically wrong with Tuscan bread. Frankly, it's a disgrace: the one thing to disfigure and otherwise classic cuisine. Even Italians from other regions make ribald remarks about it - like for instance that it's the only bread in the world to emerge from the oven already stale. This is merely a slight exaggeration. Tuscan bread is non-fattening once it is over three hours old because cutting a slice requires energy equal to the slice's calorific value. (This is henceforth known as Samper's Law.)  It is a feature the Italian slimming industry should do more to promote. It now occurs to me that when Robert Graves coined his appallingly sentimental image of 'women good as bread' he may have had Tuscan bread in mind, in which case he meant the far more likely women hard as nails. 
The reason I mention this is because in the days following that first dinner with Marta I had a great craving for bland nursery food and found a good use for Tuscan bread in bread-and-milk: little bowls of pap I ate slowly with a spoon that trembled...










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Jan 10, 2011




In Praise of Slavic, Umm, Cuisine











James Hamilton-Paterson's hilarious Cooking With Fernet Branca doesn't just skewer culinary pretensions, it makes an active effort to demolish any notion of respectability to the food of an entire region. I mean, of course, that gastronomically benighted land of the Slavs, which - in this book - is proxied by the fictional Voynovia.
'For you, Gerree, all Voynovia fooding tonight,' she said as we eventually reeled to our seats at the kitchen table, having first pitched off bundles of sheets. By then we had finished most of a bottle of Fernet Branca and even the electric light was beginning to have a brownish tinge. With a flourish she plonked before me a gross sausage the colour of rubberwear and as full of lumps as a prison mattress. It was a little larger than those things in Bavaria that just fit into bowls the size of chamber pots. 
'Is shonka,' I think she said, resting her breasts on the table on either side of her own plate. Smiling weakly, I made the good guest's obligatory 'mm' noises and gingerly poked it with the point of my knife. There was the sound of a boil being lanced. A spurt of boiling fat shot across the table and even on that late June evening my spectacles misted over. The contents of the sausage, bright red with paprika, lay there before me like an anatomy lesson. 'My sister Marja she send me from Voynovia. We eat like this, Gerree.' Cheekily she speared one of the lumps on my plate with her fork, dipped it into a pot of black treacle and held it playfully to my lips. Mechanically I opened my mouth and allowed it entry but thereafter there was nothing mechanical about my chewing. It was exactly like trying to cross a hot beach barefoot. When I say black treacle I only mean that was what it looked like, though I'm damned if it really wasn't mainly molasses. What the rest was, I cannot say, but my impressions included saffron, pickled walnuts and lavender, with perhaps a pinch of plutonium. The only missing thing, surprisingly, was Fernet Branca. 
Once one mouthful of shonka and sauce was down a kind of local anaesthesia set in and the next forkful was marginally less lethal. And you know how it is, l'appetito vien mangiando and all that, it wasn't long before I had eaten a good two inches of the thing, with a mere yard to go...










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Dec 8, 2010




Wine Snobs Iranian Style











The only Iranian nationals allowed to consume alcohol are those of Armenian origin, the idea being that they are Christians and so not subject to Islamic law. So Armenians are the major purveyors of spirits and wines to the rest of their unfortunate compatriots. Each Muslim family will have its own Armenian supplier, and the best ones are treasured above their price in rubies. As one expects.



But Iranians also like the idea of making wine at home (as do most Arabs) - not surprising, considering they claim to be one of the first wine-making nations (remember Shiraz?) And so, they like to compete with each other, going so far as to hold tasting sessions that are as cut-throat as anything in France. There are difficulties - no readily available bottles to store the wine in, or stemware to drink from. So they make do with styrofoam cups and plastic bottles. But every little advantage helps to assert one's superiority, as Nahal Tajadod reveals in her exasperated-and-funny memoir Tehran, Lipstick and Loopholes.
A French-speaking cousin of mine, who has pronounced herself a wine connoisseur, always starts by asking for a large wine glass with a stem. She pours wine into it, commenting on the colour in the process, then swirls the glass slowly in her hand, puts her redesigned nose into it, moistens her gums, keeps the wine in her mouth for a moment with half-closed eyes, and eventually - watched in fascination by everyone else - delivers her peremptory and definitive opinion. Every time she goes to Paris she makes a point of learning by heart the vintage and price of a few famous wines so she can bewitch her entourage (and these are people who serve wine in Coke bottles) by quoting endless lists of enchanting mythical names such as Romanée-Conti 1929 or Mouton-Rothschild 1982, oh, if you only knew...










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Dec 2, 2010




Congregation of Hemons











I can go on and on about Aleksandar Hemon's delightful The Question of Bruno. It is funny and moving and deliciously written; the language is glorious, and even Bosnian food gets a look in:
Then the lunch was served, and everyone sat around the long table, with Grandfather floating on the Lethe at its head. The table was creaking under heaps of pork and chicken limbs. There were big-ear soup bowls, which were reverently passed around the table, as steam was enthusiastically gushing up, like smoke from a snoozy volcano. There were plates of green onions, stacked like timber, and tomato slices sunk in their own slobber. After the lunch, everyone became drowsy, descending from the mountains of meat to the lowlands of sleep. Snippets of conversation died off within seconds, for no one's blood was capable of reaching the brain.










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Nov 27, 2010




Foodie Comics At L’Enclume











In the BBC series The Trip (directed by Michael Winterbottom – how about that?), Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon potter about the North of England, taking in the scenery, discussing life, and eating at some of the finest restaurants of the region. In Cartmel, they partake of the tasting menu at L’Enclume, where a French waiter describes to them each dish they have:
  
   
tapioca crackers There we have some little canapés to begin with. A little duet of tapioca-based crackers, spiced popcorns and the lollipops are made out of duck fat with peanuts.
    
mallowleafliquor There we are gentlemens. To begin with we have a nice little appetiser. We have liquor made out of mallow leaves, topped with a fizz which is made out of ginger beer, whiskey, as well as chilli.
    
It’s a Cote du Rhone Guigal winemaker 2006, will be a blend of Viognier, Roussane and Marsanne, a fresh, floral and rounded, and you will find a nice crisp finish as well. 
    
shreddedradish There we are, gentlemens, at the bottom of those little sacks we got some diced smoked kale as well as shredded radishes, covered with very smooth duck foie gras mousse. 
    
humphriespool There we are gentlemens. Your next course is what we call the Humphries Pool. It’s a shellfish broth made out of mussels, clams, cockles which are cooked in their own juices, before to be garnished with a shred of local seaweed. 
    
goatcheesemousse So what we have at the base of the dish, we got a goat cheese mousse and globe artichoke puree, and is garnished with deep-fried globe artichoke leaves, as well as baby Jerusalem artichoke.
    
manxqueenies It’s a cold dish this one, you’ve got some Manx queenies, which are baby queen scallops. They are resting on griddled baby gem and parsley coulis as well as a light creamy horseradish sauce.
    
To follow with that, a red, which is from France, Loire Valley which is in the northwest of France, Cabernet from grape, 100%, light fruity easy to follow.
    
cutofskate Here is your next dish, gentlemen, which is a cut of the skate, pan-seared, served with a little langoustine, which are resting on a base of cauliflower puree and some baby celery stems. 
    
pippinsorbet I have a Pippin apple sorbet, served with a apple cake and butterscotch powder,  and a roasted quince. 
    
candlemintcake More little goodies for you. Candle mint cake. 
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  










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Apr 28, 2010




The Socioeconomics of Toilet Seat Positioning











In 2002, Jay Pil Choi wrote a neat little paper1 on the economics of the position of a toilet seat. It is a remarkable tour-de-force, very tongue-in cheek but also filled with insight. He investigates whether there is any economic rationale for women insisting that men leave the toilet seat down after use. His use of the word 'economic', of course, is rather general - the cost of inconvenience to women is not merely financial, but also, very likely, hygienic and psychological.

It is fairly clear that the perpetually 'down' position is not efficient over the entire population of toilet users. Men will have to raise the seat and lower it after use, whereas women don't have to touch the seat at all. (We ignore the horrible consequences of flushing without closing the lid.) An alternative formulation is the 'selfish' one (Choi's usage), where men leave the seat up after use, and for women to leave it down. The inconvenience cost applies only when the previous user was of the opposite gender. The worst case scenario is for the toilet to be used alternately by men and women, with each incurring the operational cost of moving the seat up or down. If we assume that men and women use the toilet at random, the overall inconvenience cost is less. The selfish strategy is better than the perpetually 'down' strategy.

Choi goes on to show that the 'selfish' strategy is in general the best possible strategy for toilet users - if the inconvenience cost of changing the toilet seat position is the same for both genders.

This assumption may appear to be a rather big one. There are some hidden inconvenience costs involved, which Choi helpfully lists: "unwittingly placing one's bottom directly on the bowl"; "risk of falling in by sitting down without looking when the seat is up"; "leaving sprinkles on the seat when it is down." Women may accuse men of that last inconvenience, but as Ellen Degeneres has pointed out, women are not exactly saints in this matter either. (I wish I could find the video where she announces this finding.) Men might claim they are better aimers of the stream, but let's face it - the aim is not always great and anyway we do it from a greater height, and the spray is not always deterministic in direction. And inebriation does not help.

Choi shows that if the proportion of male users in any given period is α, and the inconvenience cost of lowering the seat for women is cf, and the inconvenience cost of raising the seat for men is cm, then the women-friendly perpetually 'down' rule is better than the men-friendly perpetually 'up' rule if and only if
Further, he shows that the perpetually 'down' rule is better than the 'selfish' rule if and only if
So if men and women visit the toilet with the same frequency (α = ½), the inconvenience to women should be three times higher than that to men to justify the 'perpetually' up policy.

When you consider that men are afflicted with nocturia more commonly than women, it makes sense that - at night, at least - the 'down' rule is patently unfair.

Choi goes on to try variations on the policy governing the toilet position, and shows that the selfish rule outperforms all of them.

In all this analysis, Choi misses out one glaring fact: the reason for the toilet visit is the chief determinant for the seat position. After all, men do lower the seat to poop. So we have need for a finer discrimination in our analysis. This is provided by Richard Harter2.

If we assume that men and women perform toilet actions at the same frequency, but perform one operation (which he euphemistically calls #1) with probability p, then the cost to a bachelorette is 0, because she'll always leave the seat down, whereas for a bachelor, the cost is
 where C is the inconvenience cost to the bachelor.

If the man and woman are living together, both of them will find their inconvenience cost jump. Harter studies the 'why does it matter if the seat is up or down' strategy proposed by the man, and the perpetually 'down' strategy, and determines the cost (M, for men, W for women) under each:

The marginal costs (difference between bachelorhood and cohabitation) then are

Clearly, the woman's cost is greater than the man's for any p less than 1. She therefore objects.

Under the perpetually 'down' strategy, the woman incurs no incremental cost at all, whereas the man faces
In the interests of marital harmony, therefore, neither strategy is fully satisfactory. The only via media is for both parties to equalise the respective incremental costs. Harter shows that this can happen only if the man leaves the seat up after performing operation #1 with a frequency
He goes on to say that since p is not readily measurable, we can assume p = 2/3;, in which case f = ½, and so the man should follow the simple strategy: in the morning, after performing operation #1, leave the seat up; in the evening, put it down.

This is not the end of the story, of course. As Hammad Siddiqi points out3, if the woman finds the seat up, she will yell at the man, leading to an incremental cost to him of D over and above the inconvenience cost C he incurs in moving the seat down. The yelling is somewhat shrill, so we can assume that D is much, much greater than C. 

In this case, the Harter approach of a cooperative game is flawed, and Siddiqi proposes a non-cooperative game, and determines its Nash equilibrium. He finds, to his dismay,  that the social norm of always leaving the toilet seat down after use is not only a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies but is also trembling-hand perfect. So, we can complain all we like, but this norm is not likely to go away.

Fortunately, though, all hope is not lost. Siddiqi notes that an important part of social norms is to improve social welfare. He is able to show that the perpetually 'down' strategy decreases social welfare, and makes a strong plea that this particular social norm be quickly amended.

This is why I think the Eastern-style squat toilet is the answer to all these ills.


References

1. Jay Pil Choi, "Up or Down? A Male Economist's Manifesto on the Toilet Seat Etiquette", Michigan State University, November 2002.
2. Richard Harter, A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Toilet Seat Problem, Science Creative Quarterly, Number 4, January 2006.
3. Hammad Siddiqi, "The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: A game theoretic analysis," MPRA Paper 856, University Library of Munich, Germany.










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