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Saturday, 8 October 2011

Statistical Musings

  A close relative of ours is doing a PhD involving statistics. This may be why we are currently philosophising on this subject quite a lot.
  You may not be aware of this if you are not a blogger yourself, but Blogspot allows you to see statistics of which posts are popular; in which countries people have been reading your blog (hence our recent Germanic outburst); which websites have guided readers to it; and, interestingly, which Google search keywords have directed people to your blog. Mostly, these keywords and search phrases are fairly straightforward: "how to use chamber pots", "did roman soldiers use vinegar and sponge for toilet paper", "viking lavatory", "stages of handwashing", "action soldiers", etc. However, recently we have noticed celebrity culture seeping in, resulting in registered searches involving "celebrity toilet" and "celebrities on the toilet". (This is naturally due to the fact that a dear friend of ours is a real, bona-fide celebrity, who graciously granted us access to her inner sanctum.) While these search phrases perhaps betray a higher than usual interest in the intimate doings of celebrities, they are not as disturbing as the one that has been puzzling us most of all: "celebrity toilet camping". "Celebrity toilet camping" doesn't even yield any results on Google. Nothing. Zilch. And to be honest, we are quite grateful for that - does one want to see pictures of anyone, never mind a celebrity, on a rudimentary camping toilet? No, one doesn't.
  Do not despair, however: if your happiness depends on seeing celebrities on the toilet, the words "celebrity toilet" are most productive as Google search words, generating a wealth of images, from Kate Moss and Elle McPherson literally on the toilet to a toilet that once belonged to John Lennon, and of course the odd image (actually, quite a few images, we note proudly) from this very blog.

  In celebration of statistics and celebrity toilets, here are some of our favourite pictures from our own celebrity toilet Google search!

This type of merchandise if fairly predictable, but still amuses us: a toilet brush in the shape of George W Bush!
Image from gosublogger.com.


The Toilet of Bathsheba by Rembrandt. In this case, of course, the toilet is in the older sense "the process of dressing, later also of washing oneself" (OED).
Image from public-domain-images.blogspot.com.


A toilet with a picture of Kate and Wills! Marvellous!
Image from oddee.com/item_97703.aspx.


And, last but not least, a young Prince William cleaning a toilet! Hurrah!
Image from toiletmuseum.com.


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