Alaska airman receives discipline for urinating in coffee maker

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Douglas Powell

Two of my four Canadian daughters are visiting for a couple of weeks to help take care of dad (and because I can’t fly, they came to me).

We spent the weekend on the beach at the Gold Coast and during the drive – it’s only an hour, pending traffic – we recounted our various automobile experiences including peeing into a coffee tin so progress would not be impeded (it wasn’t me).

David Aaro of Fox News reports an Alaska-based airman was punished for reportedly peeing in an office coffee maker.

The incident was reported in a newsletter written by the legal office of the Anchorage Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Feb. 13, although many of the details remained a mystery.

According to the newsletter, the Airman First Class violated two articles — one being Article 92, dereliction of duty, “for failure to refrain from urinating in the office coffee maker.”

The airman also allegedly violated Article 86, absence without leave, for five days away from duty.

Due to his actions, the airman received a reduction to Airman Basic — the lowest enlisted rank in the United States Air Force (USAF). The airman also received a reprimand, although it was not clear what that entailed, according to Task & Purpose, a military-focused website.

Everyone’s got a camera: Chicago bus drivers caught on video urinating, defecating on buses, face little action

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Douglas Powell

Do it in the country they like it just fine, do it in the city it’s a $20 fine,

That stench on your CTA bus? That puddle of urine? Turns out riders aren’t always the ones to blame.

The Chicago Transit Authority has disciplined three bus drivers who were caught relieving themselves on their routes in the past few years, according to CTA records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

In one bizarre, on-duty incident in September, a driver defecated on his bus after pulling over — busted by onboard surveillance camera footage.

The driver told his bosses he couldn’t hold it because he’d eaten “bad tacos.” CTA officials didn’t buy his story, according to a transit source who says the incident appeared to be “premeditated.” The agency initiated termination proceedings.

The source, who works for the CTA, says the official records don’t come close to revealing the extent of the problem, saying it’s fairly common for bus drivers to urinate or otherwise let loose on or near their buses and let the blame, and cleanup, fall to others.

“I can tell you it’s dozens we’re aware of,” the source says, adding that incidents are often ignored by supervisors or “classified as something else” in paperwork to obscure the offense. “This happens frequently, honestly. . . . There’s really no good excuse for it.”

Gotta go when ya gotta go: Pissed-off employee pissed on 50K pounds of food

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Douglas Powell

I take drugs to help my kidneys, and they work great: so great that I’m often peeing at the toilet or the backyard.

Smithfield Foods has reportedly disposed of 50,000 pounds of product after an employee allegedly relieved himself while working on the production line.

The company says the male employee has since been suspended pending an investigation.

Surveillance video on the incident, which happened over the weekend, was posted online by dwavy.com. The worker, who is dressed in a hair cap, face mask, white jacket and gloves, can be seen moving product along the conveyer belt. He then pauses to take off his gloves, appears to unzip his pants and leans forward as he seemingly relieves himself. He then puts his gloves back on and returns to work a few seconds later.

The company released a statement on the matter, saying they are investigating the “isolated incident” at the processing facility in Smithfield, Virginia.

Puke and pee is gradually destroying the world’s tallest church

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Douglas Powell

I first travelled to Germany in 1998 to give a talk.

My parents told me the Germans have no sense of humor, try to be Dr. Doug and not Doug.

I knew better.

The only response to my food safety one-liners was crickets.

In 2012 or so, I went to a U.S. military base in Germany, to give a talk about sprouts and the E. coli O104, and the 50 people dying and thousands sick and sourcing safe food and what could be done.

That sounds fairly terrible.

Yet all I really remember is that when I got off the train, I had to pee.

I’m getting older, urinary function is becoming more of a priority.

There were no public bathrooms, it cost money to piss anywhere inside, and the locals said, just piss wherever you want, no one cares.

(And don’t think you can just crawl under those toilet doors; they have reinforced steel, barriers down to the base, all so someone has to pay a buck – and I didn’t have any German currency and thought it would be rude to piss in the sink.

So I did it outside.

According to River Donaghey of Vice, a seemingly endless stream of drunk people’s urine is eroding the stone foundation of the world’s tallest church in the German city of Ulm, and no one quite knows how to stop it, CNN reports.

Late-night revelers already face a $109 fine if they’re caught emptying their bladders on the 531-foot-tall Ulm Minster church, but the monetary threat hasn’t thwarted drunken partiers drawn to the hulking piss-beacon.

The damage to the stone base of the church comes from the acids and salt in the pee, not to mention other bodily fluids drunk folks might leave behind, like puke.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on it for half a year now and, once again, it’s coated with urine and vomit,” the church’s head of maintenance, Michael Hilbert, told a local paper. “This is about preserving law and order.”

What law and order means in this case is probably just some Ulm city officials dishing out a few bucks for more public toilets or for city cops to up their ticketing. But the easiest solution may lie in the bottom of a few five-gallon buckets of that pee-proof paint.

BTW, Australia has the best public facilities I’ve ever seen.

It’s a f***ing island, of course they have to keep it clean.

How to stop people peeing in pools? Australian finds way to keep cow pee out of waterways

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Douglas Powell

I’ve left the mic on before.

Jennifer Nichols of ABC reports that Amanda Neilen discovered that if carbon was added to paddocks, it could reduce nitrogen run-off, fertilise pasture, and prevent the pollution of creeks, rivers and reefs.

“Cow urine is a problem in waterways because it is readily available for algae,” Ms Neilen said.

“Algae gobble it up and they can form into blooms, which means we can’t swim in our waterways and also it costs more money to treat the water, so we really want to keep the food source for algae out.

“Your average cow can have up to five or six urination events a day, and each time a cow pees it can produce between half a litre to about two litres of liquid.”

Multiplied by 26.1 million cattle in Australia, it is estimated that between 65 to 312 million litres of cow urine enter our environment every day.

The PhD student at Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute worked with farmers, environmentalists and other scientists during the two-year research project.

“I think from when I first started and suggested this topic to my supervisor, she found it instantly novel and funny and she said, ‘Yes, you should look at what keeps cow piss out of waterways’,” Ms Neilen said.

“I collected fresh cow urine from Maleny Dairies and I was able to apply this to different treatments, and look at the different pathways that kept urine in the soil and stopped it from leaching out of the soil.

“We did find that we could add carbon to the soil, which was a pretty novel and exciting finding, because the carbon was actually like a great food source for the microbes and made them start increasing their productivity.

“They were able to hold the nitrogen in the soil, which is what we wanted.

“Adding carbon to the soil made quite a big difference. For example, grass uptake reduced nitrogen leaching by 70 per cent.”

Urine included: Virgin boy eggs a delicacy in China

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Douglas Powell

In spring, residents of Dongyang, in coastal Zhejiang Province, China, according to the N.Y. Times, chow down on eggs simmered in steaming pots of boys’ urine.

Sold since ancient times as “virgin boy eggs,” the local delicacy was officially listed as “intangible cultural heritage” in Dongyang in 2008. Many residents believe they energize the body, improve blood circulation and prevent heat stroke. They are also a bargain at around 25 cents an egg, urine included.

Across Dongyang, a bustling city of nearly one million people, fresh urine is collected every day from buckets placed in elementary school hallways, where boys under the age of 10 are instructed to answer nature’s call — as long as they are not sick, out of concern for, um, food safety. Some vendors even carry around empty bottles and wait in parks or public bathrooms until they find a parent who is willing to let their prepubescent son participate in the custom.

Chinese medicine practitioners are divided on the supposed benefits of ingesting urine, which modern science has shown to have no nutritional value. But the locals in Dongyang are happy to shower praise on the eggs they call “the taste of spring.”

To prepare the eggs, chefs generally stick to a time-tested recipe: First, soak the eggs in pots of urine and bring to a boil. Remove the eggs, crack the shells, then return the eggs to the pot and simmer for about a day, adding more urine as necessary, sometimes with herbs. The marinade gives the egg whites a pale golden hue, while the yolks turn green. They are also quite salty, according to Wu Bei, 39, an employee at the Zhang Yuming Chinese Medicine Clinic in Dongyang.

“They taste a bit like urine, but not too much,” she said. “It’s delicious, you should try one sometime!”

FDA investigates video of Kellogg’s worker pissing on Rice Krispies

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Douglas Powell

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has opened a criminal investigation after a video of a man urinating on a Kellogg factory assembly line surfaced online, the company announced.

The video, which was uploaded to worldstarhiphop.com on Friday, shows a man urinating on cereal as it comes off the assembly line. It then pans to a sign featuring the Kellogg’s logo.

An internal investigation by the food giant found that the video was recorded in 2014 at a factory in Memphis, Tennessee.

A statement from the company said products “potentially affected” by the urine would be past their expiration dates by now.

Battle Creek-based Kellogg on Monday apologized to customers over a video in which a man urinated into a Rice Krispies Treats production line.

Everyone’s got a camera: Having a pee on Kellogg’s cereal machines edition

Posted on March 12, 2016 by Douglas Powell

A video has surfaced of a man urinating on what he claims in a conveyer belt inside a Kellogg’s factory.

With cereal dust seen on the floor next to the machine, the gross and graphic video is definitely not safe for work as the man’s ‘hose’ is clearly visible.

While it would’ve been hilarious if this was posted by WikiLeaks, it was uploaded to the website World Star Hip Hop. Comments from the post suggest the incident took place in the US.

Kellogg’s UK communications team was apparently unaware of the video when contacted by RT, and may comment once the US folks wake up.

Pee-cycling? Vermont effort to piss on farms

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Douglas Powell

A small group of environmentalists in Vermont are collecting urine with special toilets that separate no. 1 and no. 2.

Eliza Barclay of NPR – The Salt writes, then they’re pooling the urine of the 170 volunteers in their pilot project (a quart or so, per person, daily) and eventually giving it to a farmer, who’s putting it on her hay fields in place of synthetic fertilizer. The goal is to collect 6,000 gallons this year.

The logic driving this avant-garde project of the Rich Earth Institute, based in Brattleboro, Vt., is that it’s foolish and wasteful to part with the precious nitrogen and phosphorus that moves from the food we eat right through us — especially when farmers have to buy fertilizer at great expense to put those very same nutrients back into the soil.

What’s more, founders Abraham Noe-Hays and Kim Nace tell The Salt, once our urine enters the wastewater system, drinking water carries it to a treatment facility, where the nutrients become pollutants that can contaminate waterways and cause algal blooms, among other issues.

The idea of “pee-cycling” has much in common with the “night soil” tradition, as well as the newer practice of using biosolids, or sewage sludge that’s been transformed into soil amendment for farmers. Several wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. have been making and donating biosolids, which are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, to farmers for years. But the practice is controversial because some activists claim that even certified biosolids could contain harmful chemicals.d

Portland to flush 38M gallon reservoir after teen uses it as a toilet

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Douglas Powell

Portland will dispose of 38 million gallons of treated reservoir water after learning that a 19-year-old man urinated into it, even though urine-tainted drinking water is apparently not much of a health risk.

Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff said that animals urinate into the reservoir often and that there’s no real problem with that, but this is different because it (naturally) makes everyone feel super weird — or, as he put it, “I could be wrong on that, but the reality is our customers don’t anticipate drinking water that’s been contaminated by some yahoo who decided to pee into a reservoir.”

The perp was seen peeing through an iron fence into Mount Tabor Reservoir No. 5 around 1 a.m. by security cameras and has been cited for public urination. He was accompanied by two others, ages 18 and 19, who tried (only one succeeded) to scale the fence surrounding the reservoir. All three have been given citations for trespassing.

In describing the footage, Shaff said that there’s “really no doubt” what he’s doing. “When you see the video, he’s leaning right up because he has to get his little wee wee right up to the iron bars.”

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