In Defence of Garbage

January 21, 2021

In November I wrote about my neighbour who spent a great deal of money protecting his garbage bins.

Apparently, that wasn’t good enough. We have had another crew of workers, including welders, blocking part of the lane for two days to make improvements which must have added greatly to the cost of defending their garbage bins.

They have reinforced the wire mesh and cut another door into the sliding door.

I am amazed at the expense they have gone to. It might be assumed that the gateway protects the building as well as the garbage area; but the wooden fence that covers the balance of the rear is only about five feet tall and even an out-of-shape old fart like me could get over it if I wanted.

I should also mention that the sliding door has been open a lot more than closed since it was installed in November. So I am at a loss to understand the purpose. Oh well.

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Image: Good Lie

January 21, 2021

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Young Blue Eyes

January 21, 2021

Did you know that before 6,000 to 10,000 years ago all human beings had brown eyes?  A single gene mutation in a single individual created the change, and so those of us with blue eyes all have that individual as our ancestor, according to a major study by the University of Copenhagen:

“Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” says Professor Eiberg. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Brown-eyed individuals, by contrast, have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production.”

They also note:

“The mutation of brown eyes to blue represents neither a positive nor a negative mutation. It is one of several mutations such as hair colour, baldness, freckles and beauty spots, which neither increases nor reduces a human’s chance of survival. As Professor Eiberg says, “it simply shows that nature is constantly shuffling the human genome, creating a genetic cocktail of human chromosomes and trying out different changes as it does so.”

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