Lifeblood of Transportation and Commerce

[AlohaSteven]

If you have Quicktime installed on your computer then you may enjoy going to http://www.airportcodes.org and watching the flux of flights coming and going throughout the USA on 20-21NOV2006. Each little red dot marks an airplane and the time factor is sped up such that an hour of actual flight time is reduced a second or two in the animation, so the dots flow swiftly.

Watching the patterns throughout a one-day cycle is fascinating, or maybe I am just easily entertained. It is one thing to intellectually know there is a flux throughout the day to flights departing from various parts of the USA and quite another to see it all displayed dynamically together like this. The East Coast certainly is a flight-hog! Honolulu and Anchorage light up a bit against the darkness at a couple of points, Anchorage mainly as a swirling hiccup in the flow of red dots on the Great Circle route.

Imagine how much fuel is burned and exhaust is generated by each of those "dots" with this happening daily, the trade-off for quick and convenient travel. I will not say "cheap" as well as quick and convenient because imho there are some significant costs to all this which are being deferred and for which the bill has not come entirely due, yet. What was it, only a hundred years ago or so most Americans lived their whole lives and died within about 30 to 60 miles of where they were born, never having set foot anywhere beyond that short leash? Probably still is the way of it for most of the 6 billion people on the planet, as (relatively speaking) I doubt a whole lot of people in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and throughout much of Africa, South America, and Asia in general are doing much flying.

These red dots remind me of RBC's (red blood corpuscles) flowing in the arteries and capillaries of a body, coursing from major organs to various tissues while carrying oxygen and sugars, the tissues lighting up as with muscles during exercise.

The Hawaii connection? Visible out there in the middle of the Pacific, with those red dots carrying all of the medicines, foods, and products which are not locally produced in Hawaii as well as most of those visitors who pump tourism cash into the local economy.


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A pleasant slideshow: http://www.thejoymovie.com

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