Why close that thread? A quick Google search shows lots of interesting cites for urine toothpaste including the SDMB favourite Wikipedia. Even if whitening isn’t the important action it seems people aught to know why urine was commonly used as an ingredient in toothpaste prior to modern times.
Wiki link states
Since urine contains ammonia, it was probably actually effective in whitening teeth
Interesting is a way to put it.
A google of urine+teeth yeilded these on the first page. I bet with more searching one could find more.
Makeup 101
First-century Roman doctors believed that urine whitened teeth and also kept them
firmly in place. Yuk! But it must have worked, because it was used as an … www.beautyriot.com/article.php?id=2102&c_id=9
Cow urine for dazzling teeth?- The Times of India
NEW DELHI; Cow urine for dazzling teeth, glowing skin and a slim body? Not for
the queasy but seemingly recommended by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), … timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1034529.cms
Toothcare
Why Portuguese urine is so important for oral hygiene. … ammonia molecules (still
used in modern pastes) in the urine does a great job at whitening teeth. … home.nycap.rr.com/useless/toothcare/
I normally don’t quibble with mod actions, but I too would like to know huccome the thread was locked. I thought it might shape up to be an interesting debunking of an UL (eventually, once everybody got all the pee jokes out of their system) and isn’t that what we’re all about?
I also found Colibri’s comment to be puzzling:
Umm…every time someone comes in to GQ and asks, “Will drinking Mountain Dew really make my 'nads shrink?” we don’t normally testily demand a cite from him that the effect actually occurs before we fight his ignorance.
We also, when people come into GQ asking about Trivial Pursuit/John’s Bathroom Reader-type factoids, don’t normally sigh mightily and kick in a gratuitous mild ad hominem, to the effect that “we just knew who would be asking the question”… What, is he bustin’ your butt with an endless stream of Trivial Pursuit-type factoids? Then don’t open any of his threads, eh?
Let me say, upfront, wikipedia is not one of MY favorites. I have serious issues with much of its content. I haven’t really examined its cites on this issue. Just saying that wikipedia doesn’t automatically cut it as a cite in my experience.
Saying that there are “lots of interesting cites for urine toothpaste” on a Google search isn’t what I’m interested in. Starkist don’t want cites that are “interesting.”
I want cites that are based on something other than pure fluff and crap.
I’ll reopen it for now. Thanks for your input.
But someone give me some kind of factual cites. And I don’t mean something that was copied from some internet site. Give me a primary source. They’re out there. They just take more work.
I wasn’t trying to answer the question (cuz, I mean what do I care- not like I’m ever gonna try it) I was just trying to say that it’s not as absolutely dumb and pointless of a question as I had originally thought.
My comment was more aimed at Surreal in particular, who has a habit of reading about some weird sexual practice or fetish on the internet and then asking us to explain it all. Surreal rarely gives any background on why he/she thinks the practice actually exists in the first place.
I don’t mind cutting a newbie some slack, but this is SOP for Surreal.
THIS is also one of the reasons I closed the thread originally. I’m tired of the OP’s crap.
It’s hot as Hell here in Akron. I live on the third floor of an apartment that gets sun all day. And the humidity and heat are terrible right now. No A/C.
But I should have not allowed that to influence me.
And maybe I should comment on this as well. This may be a reasonable enough comment for MPSIMS, IMHO, or the Pit. But we’re talking about GQ here. If someone was consistenly posting inane questions about bizarre urban legends, and never provided any background on where they thought they were true, I’m pretty sure that after a while they’d be catching flack from you too.
I can name three people, long-standing posters, right away, whose GQ threads I no longer open, precisely because I know it’ll be more of the same old-same old (and none of them is Surreal). I do not feel obligated to come into their threads to point out that they are posting the same old-same old.
Aye, the only person on my ignore list is there because they constantly post inane GQ threads that I used to open and waste precious seconds trying to make sense of before realizing it was one of that person’s OPs.
(My sympathy for your sweltering existence, samclem.)
We went around on a similar topic recently - Tuckerfan’s penchant for opening one line OPs on space news. The verdict was, post as many of them as he likes - nobody makes anyone read them - with a codicil that it wouldn’t hurt him to lump a few together and do a “Daily Report on Space News” type thread.
Thanks samclem I didn’t realise Surreal was getting a reputation for starting fluff, and maybe that OP was fluff to begin with (and my first wise arse reply was deffinately fluff) but once sites starte soming in I thought it had become a proper SDMB question of the type suitable for SDMB and Cecil’s Colomn. To have it closed in its infancy was a shame as it lead to all sorts of questions about bleaching through the use of urine etc.
What, is he bustin’ your butt with an endless stream of Trivial Pursuit-type factoids? Then don’t open any of his threads, eh?