60 thoughts on “The eternal battle”

  3. Regardless of which way it was hung, do you remember when you could get TP to match the color scheme of you bathroom? Boy did that cause a lot of health and environmental problems.

          2. … uphill both ways … kids today … (extremely foreshortened “Four Yorkshiremen”)

  6. The only important thing is that you use the CORRECT TP. Blue for the GOP, Red for the Dems…the Green, well, that’s kind of self-explanatory, ain’t it? We libertarians will claim the purple.

    I don’t kaniow which of you apostates and heretics want the orange and yellow.

    2. Considering what the yellow flag traditionally means … I’ll give that a miss.

      For those that don’t know, in pre-radio days messages would be passed ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore using flags of various colours and patterns, as well as code books. It got quite sophisticated. You still see this if you go diving and your boat hoists the “letter flag” “A” to indicate “diver in the water ; keep clear and pass at low speed”.

      Anyway – a single, large-as-you-can-make, yellow flag on approaching port was “plague (communicable disease) on board ; please provide food and water supplies but otherwise prevent people coming to the vessel or departing”.

      1. And orange is of course notoriously claimed by Northern Irish Protestants.

        Also the Dutch.

        (I believe there’s a convoluted historical link).

        cr

        1. You’re right about the link. It’s not particularly convoluted, but it’s probably not worth the effort of re-telling.
          The last time I saw an Orange Lodge march, the streets were lined – several people deep in parts – with people turning their backs on the bigots. Made me feel proud of my adopted city that day. I’m glad to say that the bastards haven’t tried coming back.

        1. I wasn’t aware that toilets could be agnostic. I would have thought they could either be theistic (i.e. male and female) or atheistic (i.e. unisex).

          But the concept of a toilet being unsure-but-willing-to-be-convinced-by-evidence I find difficult to visualise.

          😉

          cr

      1. “Now I wonder who wrote that?”

        Not who you were thinking about, since the page freely quotes surveys that suggest most people favour over

        😉

        cr

        1. I must admit that I’d taken note of the fight^H^H^H^H^H titanic inter-cultural clash without particularly taking care of who was throwing which bun(s) in which direction(s).

  10. Well, I guess we can assume that a certain person who posts here at WEIT was just born transrollual.

      1. I knew my ‘orientation’ from early in life. I am now an evangelical roll reversalist.

  11. Toilet Paper Orientation is, of course, an extremely important issue, but I’d like to point out two other issues that I think are very important but seem to be neglected.

    1) You know that TP that is common (used to be anyway) in public bathrooms, particularly in Europe? The stuff that has a consistency like thin butcher’s paper and was so course that it had the occasional wood shaving the size of a nickel in it? WTF is up with that stuff?

    2) You know those security style TP holders common in public bathrooms in the US? You know, the ones where if you have Ghandi like patience and the manual dexterity of Giles Habibula you might have about a 50/50 chance of actually getting some fairly worthless TP out of it? WTF is up with those?

    2. about a 50/50 chance of actually getting some fairly worthless TP out of it? WTF is up with those?

      It’s designed to get you into the right frame of mind for being fondled by a stranger.

    3. In Cold War-era Eastern Europe, because of the non-market economy, toilet paper often looked and felt as you describe in (1). And it was scarce as well, like most goods.
      We had a joke that, to sell you toilet paper, shop assistants require you to provide a document certifying that you have eaten.
      Another joke was about an enthusiastic shop assistant who didn’t want to disappoint any customer. When asked about toilet paper, he replied, “Unfortunately, we have none right now, but I can offer you very fine sandpaper.”

  12. This whole argument is typical of our broken 2 party system. What about us independents who don’t like over or under, but would prefer the roll of TP just to sit on the top of the tank or on the floor next to the toilet? (I know this wouldn’t work in a public restroom, but it works fine in residential ones.)

  14. When I first got married, my (now ex) wife would hang it wrong. Rather than argue with her, I took the passive/aggressive route and if I changed the toilet paper I would hang it to suit my own preferences. After a couple of months she came up to me and said she thought my way was better. Of course, my way is the right way, not like that picture.

  15. I find this picture soothing save for the TP not being equal lengths.

  16. Had they hang it properly, it would look less like toiletpaper, and wouldn’t work graphically as well for a cover. At least the world goes down in style.

  18. I see Time has got the spectrum in the right order, at least.

    cr

    1. I’m waiting for Time to designate the Toilet Paper Color of the Year.

      What color is that third from left – Distressed Pumpkin?

      1. Haha. That’s the perfect name for a colour for TP, “distressed”

        1. I would’ve said Chrome Yellow, but I can see I’m going to be outvoted.

          cr

  20. I wish to congratulate Ms. MacPherson for having her subconscious pictured on the cover of Time.

      1. That’s very… colourful.

        You haven’t been partaking of illicit substances, have you? 😉

        cr

  21. And just like that poor little Indigo is gone and forgotten with nary a commenter to stand up for it.

    There are “Pluto is a Planet” activists for Pete’s sake!

    Where are the Indigo lovers?

    3. As I understand it, indigo is barely discernible, and was inserted by Isaac because he thought seven was some sort of magic number. IMO he could equally well have instead discerned ‘brown’ to the left of red, if he’d felt so inclined.

      Certainly in the resistor colour code indigo is omitted (Red = 2, up to Violet = 7)

      cr

      1. 7 is a magic number in the bible, and there are 7 notes, which I think was his motivation. (I have to check if it is actually in the _Opticks_.)

  22. This graph confuses me. Is Yellow beating the hell out of Orange, having the greater length? Or, since the bars are below the axis, is Yellow a bigger negative? Perhaps these results could better be represented in a numerical table. Let’s send it back to the designer with a note.

    1. Ha ha! This is why IT/Engineering thinks Marketing is weird and vice versa.

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