Seen Donations and Unseen Neglect

I was asking for one dollar toy donations today for children without parents for the holidays. People, who were alone when I approached them, were far less likely to donate than people traveling in a group.

Possibly a solo person had an important destination to go to. Or that person was caught up in thinking, so he or she brushed it off. Bullshit.

People donated to make themselves look good. If it was friends together, they donated to demonstrate their kindness. If it was a parent and child, the parent donated to teach the child good values as an ideal parent would do. If it were two partners, they donated to show that they are loving people. "The Mother Teresa Effect" is when people donate and give only when others take notice.

If a tree falls in a forest, does anyone notice? If a small child cries on Christmas Day, does anyone care?

Of the people that denied giving, many people excused themselves from donating because they had donated through their church. The church people donated in church because other's noticed.

Donating is entirely a social interaction. To receive overwhelming charity, the charitable must know other's being charitable (hosting a charity dinner is a good way to accomplish this). Are people cold hearted? Yes, but as one dwells into the souls of others love is found.

Have a wonderful end to your Thanksgiving weekend.

Next Generation of Traffic

Stop signs, stop lights…is stopping really necessary when progressing from point A to point B?

Transportation on the flat surface of the earth, whether it be automobiles, trains, bikes, is mostly limited to two-dimensional travel. To promote full speed travel at an intersection, gravity must be overcome. Roads must be lifted over the top of other roads with vast amounts of resources of land and concrete. Trains require energy to have their routes dug underground or amounts of steel to be lifted in the sky.

Land and space is valuable. A flying vehicle requires no such space on the earth to be used up nor vast amounts of resources. Flying cars may be fictional at the moment. However, helicopters are a real answer to this problem we face today.

Rewind to the early 1900s, if the government had not subsidized the car, we may have found ourselves flying without delay to our next destination.

Ponder that next time you find yourself in a sea of break lights.