Ah, toilets. The basis of our entire culture. I found this article about toilet activism astonishing - who would’ve thought such political conundrums could be caused by the old Kidderminster? Even more remarkable is the linked article about designing toilets compatible with Islam:

Islam prohibits facing the Qiblah while defecating. The Prophet said “if you go to defecate, do not face the Qiblah nor turn your back toward it.

Well Mr. Prophet, I’ll see your Qu’ran and I’ll raise you some science. Facing the Qiblah means facing Mecca, which is in Saudi Arabia. This means that there is a spot on the spherical Earth exactly diametrically opposite Mecca (somewhere in French Polynesia, I believe) at which every direction faces Mecca. In fact at this point, you are both facing mecca and turning your back toward it, so Allah has you coming and going. Maybe there’s already a sign there - “Dump here, burn in hell.”;

Of course some may counter this by saying that one faces Mecca in a straight line, meaning a kind of chord through the Earth’s mantle. That’s a tricky equation to solve when you’re desperate. Even trickier when you’re a 9th century subsistence farmer who thinks the Earth is flat. In fact, perhaps this is why Islamic culture was inspired to make big contributions to mathematics. You know the saying - behind every great theorem is a guy who badly needed to take a crap.

Returning to the problem, we notice the question of accuracy. How does one know if one is really facing Mecca, or just a few degrees off? What angle does Mecca subtend in one’s field of view? I may be wrong, but I think Mecca proper is just the small black cuboid building (otherwise how would anyone go to the toilet at all when they are in the city of Makkah? Or maybe that’s what fasting is for…), so the angle is microscopic, providing you are sufficiently far away from Saudi Arabia. That means the long triangle joining you to Mecca is very thin. If facing Mecca means looking directly down that line, you are probably safe, providing your vision does not waver across it during your bowel movement. Since we’re talking about eternal damnation, better not to risk it, and remove the triangle/line entirely from your field of view. Since you are also not allowed to turn your back on Mecca, the only acceptable position is precisely orthogonal to the triangle/line. You may require one of those surgeon’s head-clamps to keep your head absolutely steady during rectum evacuation.

I won’t go into the whole wiping-with-three-rocks thing since nobody is likely to have survived the above ordeal without forfeiting their mortal soul anyway.

Besides, there are yet more problems with the straight-line interpretation. That’s right: I’m talking about gravitational lenses. What does it mean for a line to be straight when space itself is curved? Perhaps one could use the path light follows as the definition of a straight line, but there is a problem there too. While I don’t think it’s possible for light to do a u-turn around a black hole, I see no reason why a sequence of properly placed large masses couldn’t slingshot light around in a pentagon and back at us. So even if you are looking right up at the sky when you curl one out, it’s possible that Einstein is conspiring to condemn you to a life of infinite suffering.

It seems clear to me that a full interpretation of the Qu’ran requires heavy investment in cutting edge physics. 11-dimensional M-theory could have a devastating impact on the shitting habits of Muslims worldwide.

Disclaimer

Since Muslims are a semitic people, I stand a fair chance of being denounced as anti-semitic for this post. I assure everyone that any incidental anti-semitism occurs only as a subcrime of anti-theism in general. In fact anti-theism is too strong a word. All I’d really want is for the muslim world to abandon petty legalism and undergo a kind of protestant reformation. But I will admit that a reductio ad absurdum of ass-emptying tactics may not be the best way to go about it…

The following code took 1 minute to design and type, and about 5
minutes to run:

#!/usr/bin/python
d = 0
for i in range(0,15000):
        x = 2**i
        lead = int(str(x)[0])
        if lead == 1:
                d += 1
print float(d)/(i+1)

If it had been in C, it would’ve taken 5 minutes to design and type, and 1 minute to run. Some people like C’s tradeoff. I, on the other hand, think Python’s is the reason why it’s the greatest language in modern times.

(Incidentally, I tried using Psyco, but that actually made it slower!)

(Not incidentally, the code is meant to illustrate Benford’s Law, a remarkable ‘law’ which Mathworld describes as phenomenological. There are reasonable justifications, but it’s still weird, I tells ya.)