urinal etiquette

While I was at Yale, the neuroscience major was tied in to the psych department. Because of that, neuroscience majors were required to take a few ‘soft’ psych classes. Which is how, in my sophomore year, I ended up in Psych 150 – Social Psychology. Frankly, I hated the class. The research we studied was garbage, and the teaching was at a third grade level. When we were assigned a final project – executing a piece of original field research – I realized I had my chance to let the teacher know what I thought of the class. In an effort to mock the careful study of the inane that characterizes social psychology, I chose the topic of urinal etiquette. Ironically, I got an A.

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The “Number One” Social Norm

Very few social norms are completely rigid; most are violated, at least occasionally or under special circumstances. Riding in an elevator, for example, people will speak to each other instead of simply looking at the door if they already know their fellow riders. Occasionally, even strangers will strike up conversations during an elevator ride. Other norms, like eating with utensils or not sitting on the table, are sometimes ignored as well. Although the violators may be looked down upon, these violators do exist. However, up to the time of my experiment, I had neither seen nor heard of anyone breaking the strict laws of urinal etiquette. For the benefit of my female readers, I must first try to explain the tacit yet complex code that governs men

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March 1, 2002

on user interface

From Joel Spolsky’s otherwise mediocre User Interface Design for Programmers:

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

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irving the unnerving

The story, something as it was relayed to me by one of my colleagues:
“We were sophomores at the University of Chicago, and prone to ‘urban exploration.’ We’d wander the campus, sneaking in to closed buildings, exploring steam tunnels and the like. We had gotten into one of the old science buildings and were wandering around when we stumbled upon a room full of skeletons and pickled biology samples. The place was great – we poked around for a while, and eventually came across a human fetus floating in a cube filled with formaldehyde. We were transfixed. We stared at it for maybe an hour before deciding we needed to have it. We wrapped it in a jacket, and carefully brought it out of the building and back down to our dorm room.
“We didn’t really know what to do with it, so we stashed it behind the radiator. We named him Irving the Unnerving. We’d take him out regularly, to shock dorm-mates and other visitors. One of his fingers had come unattached and floated around at the top of the cube – we spent whole afternoons observing it. Eventually, however, we had shown Irving to everyone we knew, and his appeal began to wane. We wanted to find Irving a good home, with someone who would appreciate him, and my roommate had a cousin at a different college who we were convinced would love him.
“We decided to ship Irving out, but, this being college, it took us almost a month to actually find a box and packing material. All through that time, we would leave messages for my roommate’s cousin. ‘Irving’s coming,’ we would say. ‘We’re sending you Irving the Unnerving.’ He had no idea what the hell we were talking about, but the mystery got to him. He would leave us messages in response: ‘Send me Irving. I’m dying to meet him.’
“Eventually, we said our goodbyes, packed Irving up, and UPS’ed him out. ‘Irving is finally on his way,’ we told the cousin. ‘Get ready for Irving.’ A few days later, the cousin was notified about having received a UPS package. The box was soaked through and fairly foul smelling, but he dutifully brought the box back to his dorm and opened it. The glass had shattered during shipping, and Irving lay at the bottom of the box, partially dried out, dismembered finger and all.
“I don’t know how the cousin reacted at first, but he called to say that Irving had been set free. He had brought Irving into the dorm’s lounge and propped him up in one of the chairs. I don’t know what finally became of Irving. But sometimes, I really do miss him.”

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