When was the last time you heard the "W" word at a university - "Wisdom"? Macquarie University Vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz's annual VCs lecture is very inspiring. I particularly liked the quote from Confucious regarding the 3 ways of attaining wisdom - Reflection, Imitation (gosh - could this be a throwback to the unpopular concept of virtue ethics absorbed from the virtuous?), and Experience. If the link above is broken you can track down the transcripts and other talks by Professor Schwartz
here.
He also highlights the danger of judging morality from the consequences of a decision - in a complex world we can rarely know the longterm consequences of our actions - so better to keep ourselves good in the present.
Commonwealth Games reports are dominated by accounts of "Delhi" Belly among swimmers today. My bet is that norovirus is the culprit - a highly infectious gastrointestinal bug that is easily spread from person to person. Fingers are pointing at the swimming pool but it could be clustered among swimmers due to social contact or sharing the same facilities. Norovirus is killed by chlorine but maybe not quickly enough if there is massive contamination of the pool and swimmers are swallowing the water immediately after the water is contaminated. From the media reports it appears that some have been swimming in the pool within days of experiencing gastro when they could still be shedding virus - even though they have no symptoms. Additionally, there are reports of swimmers having to leave the pool due to illness - suggesting they may be actively contaminating the pool.