I’ve always found it interesting when disparate objects or ideas come together.
One such collision was the subject of an earlier barfblog contribution when I wrote about a norovirus at a boy scout camp, integrating my interest in food safety and the the volunteer work I do with the boy scouts.
It also happened twice this week. The first example has nothing to do with food safety, but hey, if Doug can write about Blacky the donkey, all’s fair. I just can’t resist plugging this amazing YouTube video, where the band Phish covers the Lou Reed classic "Sweet Jane". Hippy culture meets New York grit. Cool stuff.
Anyway, on with the food safety story, sort of. I need to explain: I’m a productivity pr0n addict. For more on this addiction look here. I think that one of the most entertaining and useful productivity gurus out there is Merlin Mann (yes, that’s his real name), the editor and founder of productivity website 43Folders.com. Anyway, when Merlin is not blogging about productivity, talking at The Google or Macworld, he’s scouring the interweb looking for cool stuff.
And… now we get to the point of this article… and the second collision, where productivity guru meets food safety: Bottom Toilet Tissue Aid Self-wipe Cleaning: Health & Personal Care. As Merlin quips, "Why is all the cool stuff for "disabled" people? I could totally use this". And maybe he right. This might be something we could all use, and as Amazon notes "After use the tissue is discarded by pressing an easy-to-use release button on the end of the handle.
This might be the solution to fecal cross contamination, and allow us all to avoid what O. Pete Snyder calls "toilet paper slips", helping us all to eat less poop.
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Don Schaffner is an Extension Specialist in Food Science at Rutgers University, the newly appointed director of the Center for Advanced Food Technology, and a self-confessed productivity pr0n addict.