The world is not fair (enough)

The New York Times had an interesting article today about how children in a rural Wisconsin community commute to school. This community is on an island that doesn't have a bridge to the mainland, where the school is. The water around the island is frozen for part of the year. When it is not frozen, the children commute by ferry; when it is frozen and solid enough, the children commute by school bus across an ice road. However, the problem happens when the ice is only partially frozen -- too much ice for a ferry, but not enough for a boat.

The ingenious device that they came up with is called a windsled, and is essentially a hovercraft, redesigned to float across partially-frozen ice. It runs at about 19 miles an hour, and has interior heating and seats about 20 (Slide show here). It is a marvel of engineering -- in order to stay light enough to float on top of the ice and not break it to pieces, it uses some sort of forward-backward motion to disperse its weight evenly across the base.

The cost of running this, per year, tops USD20k. The article also gave the cost of running the ferry that replaces it when the water is relatively more ice-free, USD30k. The number of children who are served: 20.

Not to begrudge those children their education, but it's clear that the world doesn't lack in resources. The lack is in equitable distribution of resources. Simply put, the world is not fair enough.

But that shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose.