There is much misery and suffering in the world, some of it due to natural disasters, others due to human actions. In the former category was the recent 7.3 earthquake that hit Iran and Iraq and killed over 500 people and caused greater damage and death in Iran. So it was nice to watch this clip of a little boy bringing his friend to an emergency food station run by the Red Crescent and telling the workers that she had not had any food and asking that she be given some. He did not ask for anything for himself but an aid worker stopped him as he walked away and gave him some food too.

Carla Sinclair highlights how some people in the Dutch town of Nijmegen, who happened to be behavioral change experts, noticed a problem at an intersection where bicyclists who were turning right were being crowded off to the side due to congestion. So they took matters into their own hands and used duct tape to create separate lanes to nudge the cyclists into different lanes leading to much smoother flow.

Though crude, it worked and the city is now going to make the lanes official. What struck me was that there seem to a lot of cyclists and that they are pretty law abiding folk.

Caitlin Doughty writes about two recent cases where people came across the bodies of dead people but then dumped them, thinking that they were mannequins put out as pranks. She is the owner of a funeral home and she says that part of the problem is that too few people spend any time at all with their deceased loved ones, thinking that they must quickly shunt them off to funeral homes, and thus have little idea of what a dead person looks like.
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A story has emerged of a drunken Uber passenger in Texas berating the driver using insults and profanity. There is audio of the exchange taken after the driver stopped the car and called the police after she refused to leave. What struck me while listening is how calm and patient the driver is.
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One of the first things that struck me when I came to the US is the massive wastage of food. The most obvious signs of this can be found in the dumpsters behind grocery stores and restaurants where plenty of perfectly good food is thrown away because it is easier to do so than it is to make arrangements to divert it to people who might be able to use it, or because of dates stamped on the product that suggest that it is unsafe to eat when it is not, or because they are afraid of being held liable if someone falls ill. There are poor and homeless people who depend upon finding edible food in dumpsters in order to survive but surely there must be a better way of getting that food to them?
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Periodically I read media reports such as this one of someone getting busted for clandestinely taking ‘upskirt’ photos, which I understand to mean that they position their cameras in such a way that they can see up the skirts worn by women.
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Roc Morin interviews Ishii Yuichi, the 36-year old founder of an 800-person company in Japan that provides people with fake family and friends when needed, ranging from infants to the elderly. In the interview he gives examples of the roles that he and his staff have played.
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Philosopher Karl Popper is supposed to have said that it is impossible to speak in such a manner that one cannot be misunderstood. This is a sentiment that any teacher would agree with because however much you think you have explained something very clearly, there will always be someone that finds an interpretation that was unanticipated by you.
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As you know, you can preview a comment and edit out any errors but once you post a comment, you cannot make any further changes. If by any chance some typos or other error sneaks through and it is driving you crazy, you can send me an email (see the bio box on the left for the address) and I am willing to make the change on your behalf.

Via David Pescovitz, I came across this remarkable video of a collision at an intersection when a ‘ghost’ car appears out of nowhere right into the path of another car.

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