Ian Brock, 31, was caught on CCTV pulling his trousers down and defecating in a corner.
He then smeared his own excrement on the walls and threw a lump of it at the camera.
Brock, of Rectory Road, Llangwm, pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage when he appeared before Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on Tuesday (October 4).
Prosecutor Vaughan Pritchard-Jones said Brock had been arrested for an unrelated matter and was “highly intoxicated” when he carried out the dirty protest.
“In interview, he admitted what he had done and said he was disgusted with himself,” said Mr Pritchard-Jones.
Andrew Mytelka of The Chronicle of Higher Education reports four philosophy professors who were involved in a dust-up with Brian Leiter, an influential figure in the field, received packages of excrement in the mail last summer, and critics of Mr. Leiter are accusing him of being at the bottom of the fecal attack, reports BuzzFeed.
Mr. Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago and founding editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, a powerful ranking of graduate programs, is known for his combative style and caustic judgments of colleagues and programs, but he has forcefully denied the accusations.
“This is about trying to embarrass me,” he told BuzzFeed. “This isn’t about the recipients.”
The four professors — Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins of the University of British Columbia, Sally Haslanger of MIT, J. David Velleman of NYU, and Carolyn D. Jennings of the University of California at Merced — said the poop packages were unequivocal threats and attempts to silence them. The incident presumably stems from Ms. Jenkins’s criticism two years ago of philosophers who don’t treat their colleagues, especially “professionally vulnerable” junior scholars, with respect — an implicit critique of Mr. Leiter and his Philosophical Gourmet Report. The other professors supported her perspective.
Coaching little kids hockey is just as bad (not the kids, the parents).
We compared the whole genomes of 30 S. Enteritidis strains isolated from gulls, domestic chicken eggs, and humans in Chile, to investigate their phylogenetic relationships and to establish their relatedness to international strains. Core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) analysis showed that only 246/4,065 shared loci differed among these Chilean strains, separating them into two clusters (I and II), with cluster II being further divided into five subclusters. One subcluster (subcluster 2) contained strains from all surveyed sources that differed at 1 to 18 loci (of 4,065 loci) with 1 to 18 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), suggesting interspecies transmission of S. Enteritidis in Chile. Moreover, clusters were formed by strains that were distant geographically, which could imply that gulls might be spreading the pathogen throughout the country.
Our cgMLST analysis, using other S. Enteritidis genomes available in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, showed that S. Enteritidis strains from Chile and the United States belonged to different lineages, which suggests that S. Enteritidis regional markers might exist and could be used for trace-back investigations.
Whole-genome sequencing analysis of Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis isolates in Chile provides insights into possible contamination between gulls, poultry, and humans
Appl Environ Microbiol 82:6223–6232. doi:10.1128/AEM.01760-16.
M Toro, P Retamal, S Ayers, M Barreto, M Allard, EW Brown, N Gonzalez-Escalona
Sam Blum of Thrillist writes human poop is readily available anywhere humans are, and Toyota’s about to cash in on all that crap: The Japanese automaker is using the bountiful resource to make fuel for the Mirai, a hydrogen-based car, and according to Quartz, the process comes together through pretty simple science.
At a wastewater plant in Fukuoka, Japan, Toyota is creating biogas by adding microorganisms to liquid and solid waste. After that, scientists filter out all carbon dioxide, and add more water vapor to create hydrogen.
It’s the same poo-to-hydrogen conversion that’s proven quite useful in India, where “they have loads of biogas plants in villages and such that are just part of their energy infrastructure,” according to Marc Melaina of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
It’s a process that Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the Toyota Mirai, would ultimately like to see create a “hydrogen society,” but poo isn’t known for its renewable potential, at least in the United States. Bill Elrick, executive director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, laid bare the dilemma to Quartz, saying “There’s only some few hundred Mirais in the state of California right now…that’s not enough to turn it into a full business from Toyota’s perspective or the energy producers’ perspectives.”
Previous research indicated that pigeons may be a reservoir for a population of verotoxigenic E. coli producing the VT2f variant. We used whole-genome sequencing to characterize a set of VT2f-producing E. coli strains from human patients with diarrhea or HUS and from healthy pigeons. We describe a phage conveying the vtx2f genes and provide evidence that the strains causing milder diarrheal disease may be transmitted to humans from pigeons.
The strains causing HUS could derive from VT2f phage acquisition by E. coli strains with a virulence genes asset resembling that of typical HUS-associated verotoxigenic E. coli.
Whole-Genome characterization and strain comparison of VT2f- producing Eschericha coli causing hemolytic uremic syndrome
Emerging Infectious Dieseaes, Volume 22, Number 12- December 2016, DOI: 10.3201/eid2212.160017
The 39-year-old man surnamed Zhang from Henan told a Beijing court that he simply couldn’t hold it, the Beijing Times reports. Rather than try to make it to the bathroom, Zhang took a dump right beside the poor victim’s bed. Think of it as a trade?
This being the age of CSI, the critical clump of evidence turned out to be Zhang’s downfall. Beijing police extracted DNA from the poop and matched it to Zhang, who already had a criminal record, receiving a 3-year prison sentence for theft in 2008.
This time, it doesn’t look like Zhang will get off so easy. Thanks to that fateful dump, he has been charged with a whopping 286 cases of theft and 1 case of robbery over the past 4 years. It’s not clear how Beijing police managed to link Zhang to 300 odd thefts, we assume that he didn’t leave his calling card at each one.
Sorenne usually goes to the bathroom after school.
Today she found something of interest, so took my iPhone and took a picture.
The rest of this post is hers.
I found this poop on the toilet seat in the girls toilet. It was very disgusting. I wanted to clean it up so I wiped it with toilet paper so I washed my hands five times.
Debbie Schipp of news.om.au reports that a condition which makes people too petrified to poo in public means some Australians avoid going out because they fear not only using public toilets, but are also scared they won’t make it in time.
At its most extreme, toilet anxiety, shy bladder and shy bowel syndromes can be so crippling that sufferers stay home rather than risk peeing or pooing in public toilets.
And the fear people might hear you doing a number two is worse than that of doing a number one (pee) researchers from Swineburne University found when they developed a scale aimed at assessing the anxiety people commonly experience when needing to use a public rest room.
Dr Simon Knowles is one of the study’s authors, and a clinical psychologist who specialises in gastrointestinal conditions and working with people with severe anxiety about using public toilets. His said both Paruresis (anxiety associated with urinating in public: shy bladder) and Parcopresis (anxiety related to having a bowel motion: shy bowel) can be so extreme people can struggle to socialise, study or even hold down a job because they only feel comfortable using their own toilet.
The study involving 334 adults reveals that shy bladder and shy bowel symptoms were both associated with increased stress, anxiety and depression.
“Those who experience toilet anxiety frequently worry about using a public toilet due to fears that others may hear or see them,” Dr Knowles said.
“Although the prevalence of toilet anxiety is not clear, it is suggested to be around six per cent to 35 per cent of the population may be affected to some degree.”
Dr Knowles developed his scale of toilet anxiety measure in an effort to better understand the causes of the condition, and tested it on the 300-plus people involved in the study.
Basically, the ‘how scared are you to poo scale’ will help experts to better judge whether general self consciousness has spiralled into full blown social anxiety. If it’s the latter, Dr Knowles says, you’re far from alone, and it’s treatable.
The results of the research were recently printed in the Journal of Cognitive Behaviour and more information and the survey are available at toiletanxiety.org
Some parents are disgusted after learning a “serial pooper” is targeting the playground.
“I have three kids, one is a cancer survivor. You run into something like that?” Andy Delafield, who takes his kids to Fort Barnard Park, said. “Oh my God. Just … ugh. Who would be sick enough to do something like that?”
Arlington County Parks and recreation officials say human poop has been found about four or five times in the last few months.
Whoever is responsible is covering the poop with a shirt or jacket.
Park workers believe it happens after hours in the dark. Each time it is reported, workers clean it up and disinfect the area.
Ian Brock, 31, was caught on CCTV pulling his trousers down and defecating in a corner.
