Daniel Lemire's blog

, 1 min read

Damn cold!

I’ve been suffering for the last two days from a terrible cold. My brain power is running at 20%. Not only can’t we cure the common cold, but we also cannot efficiently take away the most severe. Yet, we can presumably clone human beings relatively cheaply. It is really troubling. It goes to show that science is often unable to address common and very important problems.

Whenever I present my research work to my wife, she asks why I’m not working on something really important, like curing cancer or stopping world hunger… I guess the answer is that scientific research is not about solving problems, it is about trying to make some patterns unfold, and these patterns lead you where they do.