As IF Times

 link Will Five-Day Delivery Save the Postal Service? – Newsweek.com.

If this article is leading to what it implies, that is the closing down of many postal offices, it will have a signficant impact upon American culture.  Where are people supposed to go to get really angry? Who will dogs chase around?  What will lonely housewives do to pass the day?  Where do you mount wanted posters?

Something’s illogical here.  Not the usual diatribe about the inefficient post office, but just big picture logic.  With the onset of the computer age, the world has moved towards sending messages, greetings, advertisements and yes, even bill paying on to electronic media.  If this is the case, there MUST have been a coincidental decline in regular mail over the past decade and a half.  Wouldn’t this have been obvious from the revenue statements from year to year?   Yet in the article, it states that it was only in 2008 that red ink began to show at the U.S. Post Office.

How can it be possible that the Post Office is projected to lose 23 billion dollars a year for the next decade?  The obvious answer is fixed costs, in particular labor costs.  While the rate for a letter has gone up from $0.32 in 1995 to just south of $0.50 cents today according to the UPS website, this apparently hasn’t been enough to cover salary and pension benefits for all  the hard working posties.  Heck, the Postmaster General John Potter is forced to scrape by on only $845,000 a year,  a pittance compared to what he could be making if he ran UPS or Fedex. 

As mentioned, not only has electronic communications cut off one stream of revenue for the Post Office, private carriers like UPS and Fedex are also formidable competitors for delivery service.  The downside is, the Post Office still tries to maintain the offices and staffing levels as if they were still the monopoly.  We know some cutbacks will happen, but before then, there will be an enormous hand extended to the government for money to support an old, inefficient business model.  The article states that much of the business is from catalogs and magazines and which still contributes substantial revenue.  Do people really need to spend over 230 billion dollars over the next 10 years to get catalogs?  It seems more reasonable to let those companies find an alternate way to send their junk mail and stop having the public subsidize their business model.  At the very least, we’ll likely receive less junk mail.

As heart wrenching as the ultimate demise of the Post Office will be, modern times have eclipsed the business model.  They are still selling allegorical blocks of ice to consumers who now all own refrigerators.  It still appears that there will be room for a federal postal service, but on a significantly reduced scale.  Not to worry, there’s another big government industry being created now to absorb some of the displaced workers creating something else for them to deliver.  Healthcare.  Hopefully, it won’t be just 5 day delivery.

link Israeli MP plans popcorn law for movie munchers.

Israel, which is threatened with nuclear annihilation every day and which suffers the odd rocket attack in the suburbs, has finally got around to addressing the great ill facing their society.  Yes, overpriced popcorn.  On the one hand the epitome of insouciance, on the other, a severe case of nothing better to do. 

Who among us has not fretted over the looney tunes price of popcorn at the movie concession stands, where the price of a bag comes close to the price of admission.  Have we not all cried quietly to ourselves as we are compelled to buy popcorn against our will in order to simply watch some forgettable flick?  If only popcorn and movies didn’t go together like fish net stockings and sex. 

Come to think of it, this all makes sense now.  Movie makers spend some nominal amount of money to make a film, hype it up and then use that as a conduit for popcorn sales!  Track the activities of James Cameron thoroughly enough and I bet you’ll find the hand of Orville Redenbacher at work.  Don’ t forget when you consume popcorn, you are also required to drink drum sized containers of soda pop, which also costs about an hour of minimum wage work, gross of taxes.

Finally, someone looking out for the regular folk.  The minister Shama says:

“…We have to put an end to this. The public should not have to mortgage their houses for a soft drink and a snack…”

While I have frowned on using this kind of hyperbole a million times, the minister is showing that he is doing some public good and is deserved of office.  He would fit easily into Canadian society.  As an example, I’m not saying that a beer and a hot dog are expensive at a hockey game, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that a pawn shop has opened up in the arena next to the cash machines.  Just saying.