farmdoc's blog post number 547

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole’s son, Lord Nelson’s cousin, and the originator of the word ‘serendipity’ which he derived from The Three Princes of Serendip – a ‘silly fairy tale’ he had read. Serendipity’s the making of a desirable discovery by accident. Blog Action Day, founded in 2007, is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Its aim’s to raise awareness and trigger global discussion. Blog Action Day 2009 was on 15 October. And its topic was Climate Change. The organisers report that almost 32,000 posts on 13,350 blogs – including the UK Government’s and the White House’s, but predictably and regrettably not the Australian Government’s – from 155 countries with almost 18 million readers took part. Thus BAD09 is one of the largest social change events ever held on the web. Farmdoc’s Blog’s 15 October post was about climate change. Serendipitously so, as it was two days later when I first learnt of Blog Action Day 2009 and its topic. As soon as I did, I signed up, and so this blog’s one of the 13,350. As the graph here shows, BAD09 increased the number of climate change blog posts from 0.1% to 0.5% of all posts, i.e. from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 200. That’s impressive. I’m happy to be part of it – albeit due to serendipity. For, as per ‘What can one person do?’, mass action’s a conglomerate of aligned individual actions.

farmdoc's blog post number 24

In the 8 May 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is an article titled ‘Etiquette-Based Medicine’. These days I only read journal articles that relate to my work, or that otherwise interest me. This one is clearly in the second category. Its author talks about dress, manners, body language and eye contact as expressions of compassion, empathy, respect, attentiveness and overall professionalism. Right on, sir. We live in a crowded, busy, noisy, impatient, angry society. And I doubt that any of us likes to. Change is necessary, but we shouldn’t wait for the arrival of some massive tipping point in societal behaviour, because it’s very unlikely one will come any time soon. As individuals we can’t change some things such as overpopulation. But we should change what we can, especially by many small acts: thanking people for doing things for us, treating young people and children courteously, considering other people’s feelings and self esteem, maintaining eye contact, not littering. This list can go on and on, but hopefully you understand my message. If each of us did a couple of etiquette-based things every day, the world would be a better place. I have a cherished cartoon – of a massive crowd. And above every single head there’s a speech bubble saying ‘What can one person do?’