Oh no...
I had one of those 'Oh no' moments last night; I was administering parental IT support, when in front of my fascinated gaze, she typed in 'butts' to google and was about to hit return. Fortunately she paused and added the qualifier 'mary' before proceeding and I was able to breathe again. I can't be the only person who finds this form of IT support quite stressful, it's slightly easier when I'm there in person, over the phone it's almost impossible. Oh well, I guess it's something I have to accept.
Lymes Disease?
I'm not very prone to self-diagnosis, but last summer I was bitten on the knee (this is/was by no means uncommon), what was unusual, however, was my bodies response to the bite: a hard central lump and an itching rash that spread slowly outwards from the centre, at one point resembling a sort of pink and white target. It was sufficiently annoying that I took it to the doctors, and was given a steroid cream to sooth the itch. I remember saying to the doctor at the time, 'I wonder if it's a tick bite?'. After three weeks, it was larger and otherwise unaffected, so on my return, I was given a new cream with an antibiotic in it, and very slowly, this has eradicated it (it's still detectable, nine months later).
Reading the paper today, I saw an article about Lymes disease, and the accompanying gallery of photos resembled my stigmata very closely. Not only that, but I had suffered many of the symptoms associated with the disease. I wonder why the doctor didn't make the connection, the surgery is primarily rural, in an area where there are a lot of deer. I guess I'll never know...
Index of social inventions #2
Ok, my idea here is in some way attached to the 'nudge theory' of change, i.e. instead of issuing edicts to encourage/enforce socially appropriate behaviour it might be more effective to use human psychology. What started me off was seeing cardboard cut-out policemen in shops, these have been demonstrated to reduce shoplifting, just by posting a gentle reminder that there are laws. I combined this with the observation that on motorways nearly everyone slows down when they see an emergency vehicle, whether or not they're in motion or stationary by the side of the road.
My first idea was simple, mark the special stopping places where police/highways agencies lurk with a cut-out of a police vehicle covered in the same reflective material as a real one, the approaching driver wouldn't know it was a fake until it was quite close by which time they would presumably have slowed down or at least become more wary (these could also be placed on bridges over the motorway, for a similar effect).
My second idea was also based on personal observation; at night when driving on an unlit motorway, distances and relative brightness are quite hard to judge, so, combining two technological ideas might be effective. I noticed that when driving along in the dark, the distant sight of blue/red flashing lights in the rear view mirror instantly causes me to slow down and be more aware of my surroundings, even if the emergency vehicle turns off or stops behind me. Experiments with leftover panto bling demonstrated to me that two LEDs and a battery smaller than the tip of my little finger were quite visible over considerable distances, remembering that the idea here is to give a nudge, not a clout. Combine two brighter LED's, a solar panel and rechargeable battery, and a simple radar speed detector (bearing in mind that this does not have to be hyper-accurate) and you are looking at an object smaller than a cricket ball that could be fixed to any motorway hardware, that would probably cost less than a fiver to manufacture in bulk.
None of these ideas will prevent someone who is intending to speed, or to shoplift, rather they ought to give a gentle reminder, just as we mostly slow down for speed cameras (even though the bulk of them have been turned off) the camera flash is still an effective reminder that there are laws and they are occasionally enforced.
