Litter

I got up very early this morning and went for a short run along the seawall -- I thought it was a good opportunity to get some exercise and listen to a podcast before the hustle and bustle of the day began. I was tuned in to Todd Park Mohr's philosophy podcast, but truth be told, I wasn't listening particularly intently. I have the iPod for something to concentrate on while I'm running, but I mostly use the podcasts as jumping off points for my own mind's wandering.

At any rate, I was staring at the ground and noticed some litter there -- a few cigarette butts. At first my reaction was, as it usually is, negative: annoyance that people throw their garbage out wherever they happen to be. Then I thought a little more broadly. Right next to the cigarette butts were some old, dried up, dead leaves. Why am I not annoyed that some tree littered? In fact, I kind of liked the look of the leaves and dead grass there on the ground, so why is one kind of litter appealing and the other annoying?

The leaves are a product of a natural process -- part of what trees do. Like it or not, cigarette butts are too: a natural by-product of something that people do. Why shouldn't I just accept human generated litter the way I accept the litter and waste associated with the rest of the natural world?

Science Fair Idea: Color Preferences

I was just listening to Todd Mohr's Philosophy Podcast and he said that 'our preferences are like our DNA -- we can't choose them'. It makes me wonder if our preferences are in our DNA.

It'd be interesting if someone would do this science fair experiment. Make a sheet of color swatches -- you can probably assemble one from color chips from the local paint store -- and then show it to people and as many of their family members as you can find, going back as far as possible. Ask everyone to choose their favorite color and see if there's any genetic correlation.

11 days

Oh my, 11 days without a blog post. A while back I started trying to post daily, but that has tailed off dramatically since I got the new job. And it seems that I get all these great ideas for blog postings when I'm out and about, but never seem to remember them when I sit down at the computer.

But you don't want to read about that. In fact, most of you aren't even reading this blog entry, and I don't blame you: it's pretty boring. I hate it when people post about their blogs and blogging, rather than about the subject of their blog. My favourites are ones like this one which say "hey! I'm going to start blogging again" and then terminate abruptly.

Someone should do a study on metablogging, counting up the average number of posts on each blog that talk about the blog itself, or blogging, or the oft-promised "site redesign". Or that guy who is going to write his own comments system real soon now. Count all that stuff up and subtract it from all the blogosphere statistics showing exponential growth. That should flatten out that curve a little.

Damn. Just thought of something I could have written about: Python. I'm learning Python. Oh well, maybe in another 10 days.

Unconventional Thinking

I enjoy unique ideas. I like to think about things that are outside the mainstream, and I think it's fun when you get a really good idea or observation that seems surprising at first, but makes a lot of sense when considered. Here's such a thought.

Every year up to half a billion people suffer from malaria and up to 3 million people die of it. Malaria is caused by a parasite and is transmitted by a particular species of mosquito. Virtually all attempts to combat malaria have treated the mosquitos as the problem. But the mosquitos are victims too -- they get sick from malaria parasites just like we do. The interesting idea is refocus our efforts on the parasite rather than the mosquito. Rather than killing the mosquitos, maybe we should be trying to cure them.

And it takes two to tango. Humans are the vector for malaria transmission to mosquitos. When someone has malaria we can treat them for the disease, sure, but we should also prescribe heavy doses of insect repellent and try to make sure they don't get bitten by mosquitos while they're infectious. I don't know if this is part of the standard protocol, but it should be.