Safe Neighborhoods

This post was inspired by a burglary in a friend’s neighborhood. 

I’m going to recall the following from memory so please excuse any minor flaws. 

Louis Pasteur once did some experiments on the contamination of Petri dishes filled with agar-agar. Stay with me … you’ll soon see the connection.

He first left one dish uncovered to the air and overnight it had a bacterial culture growing in it. He then covered a fresh one, but with an open straight glass tube through the cover. It took two days to get contaminated. Then he put a L-bend in the tube to the next Petei dish. It took a week for a culture to start growing. Two bends kept the surface clean for two months. And finally, three bends never allowed contamination to take place within his window of patience … even though air could go through the bent tube.

Interesting … but I think this Pasteur experiment has application outside of the biology of bacterial contamination. What is that you ask?

Well pilgrim, if you want a home that is relatively safe from being burgled, make sure that it is at least three street turns required to get there from from a main thoroughfare. 

No guarantees … but it seems to work. I think it has something to do with a burglar needing a quick escape without getting lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

STAND UP FOR LAW & ORDER!