Yes, In the northern hemisphere, the swirl goes clockwise. In the south it goes the other way. At the equator, its a toss-up.

Nope! That's a myth. The direction water drains is actually determined by traits of the toilet itself (e.g. shape of the bowl). While the coriolis effect is real and does effect the movement of large air masses, the effect on toilet water is too small to overcome other variables. If you don't believe me, check out this link: http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.htm

As stated in one of the comments, I went to Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. Neat place. I got food poisoning and had more than an adequate look at the swirl of the matter. Not just once. It's a myth. KarmaKitty is right. The swirl is more a thing of bowl geometrics and other bowl traits than anything else. Another popular myth says the alcohol in beer will kill bad bacteria in food, so a free flowing keg and a never-empty mug will keep you safe. Eat all you want. You'll be fine if you've had enough beer - NOT! Big myth.

Just to add to other answers, No. I think the coriolis force (an imaginary force BTW) has an acceleration of 0.002 m/s/s on an object travelling at 20m/s at mid latitudes. If you did leave a (perfectly shaped) sink full of water for long enough (weeks) and carefully pulled the plug it would always spin the same way depending on the hemisphere - but it would require a carfefully controlled experiment!!! In ordinary circumstances the acceleration is not great enough to have a significant impact. <EDIT> The coriolis force is called an imaginary force because, if viewed from an outside observer, we would just see the normal Newtonian forces acting. It is because we are observing a phenomenon whilst standing on a spinning globe that we introduce the concept of a coriolis force to describe it. Take the plane flying towards the north pole - in the plane we fly North but the earth rotates underneath us as we do so, tracing a curved path! That is the concept of the coriolis force, although NO force has actually been imparted to us. To the outside observer it is easy to see that we are flying north but the earth is spinning underneath us. Essentially we use the concept to calibrate (I guess!) what we observe to our point of reference. <END EDIT>