Gone squatting

I am going to be a bit busy for a few days, I expect, so blogging rate may slow down.

In the meantime, the SMH today in its article on vegetarianism (which, it claims, no longer has good PR) pointed me towards this article on the Australian Vegetarian Society website as an example of vegetarians not exactly doing their image a favour.

The essay has a great title: "The Sitting Toilet - An Inconspicuous ‘Carcinogen’?" and goes into great detail about the alleged benefits of squatting over sitting.

There may be something to some of the points made the article, as it does actually cite at the end a lot of proper sounding medical journal articles. But a lot of it is pretty silly.

Having to use a squat toilet is, I think, more of an issue for men than women because of the, shall we say, different angles that are involved . When trying to use one while travelling, I have never worked out what to do with my pants, especially long pants. You wouldn't want to take your shoes off in the average squat toilet (to allow for complete pants removal) but crumpling long pants down well out of any danger is a real pain, and makes the balancing act required quite difficult. That is the real reason squat toilets are unpopular with western men, I think.

Any guidelines as to what I should be doing on my next trip would (seriously) be welcome. Yobbo at his blog didn't seem to be able to work it out either.