Of Torii Shrines and Plastic Flies

I was looking through a journal entry of mine from 1992 today and was reminded of an ingenious invention I noticed on a trip to Tokyo. "to keep men from urinating on alley walls, merchants painted small images of the sacred torii gate and shrines on the walls at knee-level."

This in turn reminded me of a remark that Chen Shui-bien, currently the president of Taiwan, said in a meeting I was in some years ago when he was mayor of Taipei. With some excitement he told us that he had just had a brilliant idea on how to clean up public toilets around the city. "I'll have our sanitation department glue plastic flies in strategic places in men's urinals so they'll aim better." This is how leaders think.