Friday, February 8, 2013
The End of The World
http://gawker.com/5982891/meanwhile-in-brazil-its-raining-spiders
Think Nemo’s Bad? In Brazil It’s Raining Spiders
What's that? You're worried about a little snow falling on your head? How adorable.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, it's raining spiders.
Footage posted online yesterday shows thousands of spiders "falling from the sky" in the southern Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina.
"Still do not know what causes such behavior," writes the video's uploader. "We are researching and will post the answer to the question here."
I know exactly what causes such behavior. A little something called the end of the world.
UPDATE: Brazilian news portal G1 reports that this footage was captured by 20-year-old web designer Erick Reis as he was leaving a friend's engagement party this past Sunday.
G1 spoke with a local biologist who identified the spider as Anelosimus eximius — a "social spider" species known for its massive colonies and "sheet webs." He characterized the phenomenon as "normal," which it most certainly is not.
This Graph Explains Why the U.S. Postal Service Is About to Cut Saturday Mail Delivery
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/this-graph-explains-why-the-us-postal-service-is-about-to-cut-saturday-mail-delivery/272912/
With its business hemorrhaging billions and Congress seemingly incapable of crafting a rescue plan, the U.S. Postal Service went rogue this morning and announced that it would end most Saturday mail delivery in order to save costs. This comes as a bit of a shock, as USPS is required by law to do its job six days a week. But desperate times apparently call for desperate measures.
And things are desperate. Over the last three years, the post office has lost almost $30 billion. A bit more than half of that can be blamed on Congress' financially ruinous decision to force the agency to pre-fund its retiree health benefits through 2056 by making roughly $5.5 billion in annual payments. But leaving that absurd obligation aside, the truth is that delivering mail to every corner of the country, six-days a week is becoming an untenable business model, as is illustrated plainly in this graph below from a post office financial report.
Total mail volume has fallen by 25 percent since 2007. Revenues, meanwhile, has tumbled 13 percent, and are now outstripped by its basic operating expenses, even if you don't include the retiree health payments. (Be careful how you read the chart -- neither the left or right axis starts at zero, which makes the drop-off look a bit more dramatic visually than it is financially).
So why should nixing Saturday mail -- with the exception of packages -- be part of the answer? The post office's biggest expenses are labor and transportation, and eliminating a day of service would cut down on hours worked and truck fuel burned. In the end, past estimates have suggested that the move could save the agency anywhere from around $1.6 to $3.1 billion.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Forbes Thought Of The Day
“ The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration. ”
— Allan Bloom
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The City That Never Was: How LA Almost Became New York
http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/74731/never-built-los-angeles/#.URGTOR2YuSo
As modern metropolises go, Los Angeles and New York couldn’t be more different. But it only took a few failed proposals from the early 20th century to send LA into a self-reinforcing spiral of freeways and sprawl. If a couple of prescient planners had had their way, the city might have grown into a model of urbanism besting the Big Apple (or at least Portland), with hundreds of miles of subways and elevated rail, thousands of parks linked by parkways, and even a raised bicycle freeway connecting Pasadena with downtown.
Monday, February 4, 2013
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