Yesterday morning, when we were watching the TV reports about the horrific fire at the Nursing Home at Quakers Hill, Sydney, I couldn’t help but be suspicious about the Asian male nurse who was being interviewed about the fire. He was very camp and extremely solicitous. He was also saying how much he was helping with the rescue of the residents.

Somehow, it struck me at the time that he was enjoying the attention just a bit too much. So I wondered whether it was a case of Munchhausen by Proxy.

This man has now been named as Roger Dean and charged with arson and murder. As a result of the charge Dean’s face is being covered up, but it is obvious who it is, since he was the only male nurse to be interviewed by the media.

I think that sometimes we should really pay attention to our gut feelings. As Blaise Pascal, the Seventeenth Century French philosopher, writer, mathematician and scientist wrote:- “the heart has it reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

I wonder, though, if there really is such a thing as gut feeling or is it a kind of fast assessment based on quick observation, an educated guess?

Perhaps it has to do with our prehistoric instincts for survival, a gut feeling of imminent danger followed by Exit stage left.