Unexpected skaters and sharpies

Some interesting things come out when one looks closely. Recently the BBC world news podcast had a story about Fresno, California. The foreclosure rates in Fresno are extremely high. One of the overlooked side effects of the recession is the growth of unused pools in the nation's warmer cities. Stagnant water leads to a mosquito paradise which lead to scratching and can cause an increasing rate of west nile virus transmission. The causative virion, a strain in the Flaviridae family, relies on mosquitoes to be transported from birds to humans.

Punk rock skateboarders are providing a temporary solution. In fact, there is a growing movement of young boarders who are rolling around Fresno looking for For Sale signs. With an empty house, they break in, drain and clean the pool and skate until they get kicked out by police. While there is no question that these cats are trespassing, they might be doing all of us a favor by getting rid of all the stagnant water overlooked by a failing economy.

Health care reform is a polarizing issue that has an impact on all of us. President Obama's success as a leader will be intimately tied to the revitalization of affordable medical coverage. Medicare is implementing an electronic prescribing incentive program that provides a 2% refund on medicare billing for all physicians that have an accredited electronic prescribing system in place and in use for their medicare covered patients. The refund will turn into a penalty within two years in the hopes of increasing efficiency, decreasing prescription errors, and ultimately lowering costs for government funded coverage.

So wouldn't be nice if there was an easier way to save money? Proto, an excellent quarterly magazine published by the Massacusets General Hospital (sign up for free delivery), noted a study that questioned whether surgeons should be throwing out their sharpies. As per protocol, surgeons mark the site of the incision with a marker and then toss the markers to avoid contamination of one patient with the other's troublesome bacteria. A couple of doctors at the University of Alberta decided to look into this. Considering a sharpie uses alcohol based ink, the study showed that a quick alcohol swipe is all that is needed to disinfect this 2$ per writing tool. On a big scale, this can make a financial difference.

Can the knowledge that alcohol based ink is easier to disinfect be applied to other disciplines? Should we encourage skaters to drain our pools in exchange for a little noise and fun? Let's look around, maybe there are more unexpected opportunities.

A joke at every end:

A newly married man asks his wife, "Would you have married me if my father hadn't left me a fortune?"
"Honey," the woman replied sweetly, "I'd have married you no matter who left you a fortune."