okay, so a couple of weeks ago i was reading about this ridiculous event where elgoog ceo eric schmidt was facing off with a politician who stated that there are more outhouses in the world than users of tivo…schmidt says he uses elgoog all of the time, as a “truth squad” and commented (after the politician left) that “we live in a world where people make all sorts of claims, and i always wonder if they’re true“…using elgoog, schmidt then claims that the outhouses-exceed-tivo data is old (yeah, like that was a fucking study that took place) and added, “having the ability to search and get the answer is a nice way to live your life”

the point? this kind of arrogance just rubs me the wrong fucking way...as a naturally curious person, a single dad trapped at home and given to wanton fits of nocturnal internet sleuthing while my boys snooze away, i found myself wrestling with a more common sense approach to resolving this issue - using elgoog of course - and would like to present my debunking-schmidt logic for you…now entitled, “eric schmidt might be full of shit”

step 1: what’s the question again?

again, who the fuck ever studied tivo and outhouses? exactly…so let’s rethink outhouses - they’re for people without toilets, right? (without flushable toilets, of which there are nearly a million homes in just the united states, which i know from using elgoog!)…and tivo? tivo claims over 4 million users…

…so a search on elgoog for “people without toilets” leads to a study from results of the “children’s world water forum” which reports that, “Over half of all people without toilets live in India and China - 1.5 billion in total - creating an environment polluted with human waste.” (note about that 1.5billion - it includes the additional 36 percent of people in subsaharan africa living without toilets, along with the rest of the world…in fact, in urban india alone over 75 million people live without toilets...all of which i also found out using elgoog!”)

step 2: uh, i need a formula…

yeah, so how many outhouses per person if we’ve got 1.5 billion globally without toilets? well, let’s start by being sane, no math, just using tivo as a metric: there are 4 million tivo users, so if it were just 4 million plus one (so as to exceed the 4 million outhouses), that implies one outhouse or portable toilet/latrine/ditch etc for every 375 people in the world currently living without toilets…but does that sound right to you? that’s like the second woodstock, right? people rolling in shit, piss and mud…

…of course if we use just the urban india number as a relative point, then that 75 million on a 4 million total available basis results in one toilet for every 18.75 people - which seems to jibe closely with fema guidlines…so read on:

step 2a: who creates those guidelines? who even wrestles with toilets-per-population standards?

a quick search for guidelines for portable toilets leads to FEMA resources, per this bit, “The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) maintains Initial Response Resources (IRR) kit(s). The IRR contains critical goods that are typically needed in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, e.g., food, water, emergency generators, etc. ”

summary: fema suggests one for every 15 persons...but that’s really generous…we all know how awesome and super-duper generous FEMA is!

really, if we even get gross and imagine one outhouse for every 100 people that puts it at over 15 million total for that 1.5 billion…in reality, in villages like kumi in uganda (population estimate is 17 thousand) latrines serve a community in ‘public places’ but each home also has one built outside near the home or kitchen (typically a hole with a slab over it)…using this do-it-yourself approach, that 15 million crude number above might be more like 37 to 40 million if we give one hole or outdoor latrine to every 40 or so people…which is double the FEMA guideline (is that okay?)

step 7 (where was i?): some other points for comparison and thought…

so 2 am and there was still nothing on cable, leading me to take a long wasteful visit into wikipedia’s bit on toilets- fascinating…

…then followed a train of thought, in which i think about how india and south africa alone must have serious outhouse issues…which leads to…population of india…which returns a link to census data, which reports a leap past 1 billion in 2001 (and still outgrowing china…in fact, interesting factoid: country of india produces more live births in one week than all of the EU members combined in one year) wikipedia reports population as: 1095351995 (wow, wikipedia knows it all huh?)…oh, and the population of south africa (search on elgoog) returns the cia factbook data:44,344,136

um, but let’s look at just india, okay? i think you’ll see my point…a quick google search for “without toilets” india returns an excerpt from the census which reports that “the findings reveal that while urban households with toilets increased from 58 per cent in 1981 to 64 per cent in 1991 and 74 per cent in 2001 (the increase in later years due to urban reclassifications and increase in the number of towns), the more significant fact is that the number of people without toilets increased from 66 million to 77 million and then marginally dropped to 75 million over the same period in urban India.”

step 8: now send a letter to schmidt

okay, so do you see my point here? i’m thoroughly convinced that eric schmidt completely made this up…in fact, i’d be willing to bet my left nut (which is really just seminal vessicle, which i know from using elgoog!) that this research endeavor was assigned to some moronic intern who used the help section of elgoog to find some oddball resources and in the end was unwilling to show exactly how schmidt proved this point….

seriously schmidt, measure twice and cut once or we’re going to think that you make shit up all of the time…

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