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  • From: "Desert Eagle" <jimi@hdc-nm.com>
  • To: "Desert Eagle" <jimi@hdc-nm.com>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] 24 THINGS ABOUT TO BECOME EXTINCT
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:14:24 -0700

Especially #1, and most of the others of importance for survival.
Jimi

24 THINGS ABOUT TO BECOME EXTINCT..KIND OF SAD.
24 THINGS ABOUT TO BECOME EXTINCT

24. Yellow Pages

This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow
Pages industry. Much like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to
bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow
Pages (IYPs), to local search engines and combination search/listing
services like Reach Local and Yodle Factors like an acceleration of the
print 'fade rate' and the looming recession will contribute to the
onslaught. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of newspapers and
print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year -- much higher than the
2%-3% fade rate seen in past years.

Another in the category is 'Public pay telephones'. Seen one
lately? I read an article recently indicating there were less than 15,000
in the US and nearly all of them are in Bus Stations and Airports.

23. Classified Ads

The Internet has made so many things obsolete that
newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a
long list. But this is one of those harbingers of the future that could
signal the end of civilization as we know it. The argument is that if
newspaper classifieds are replaced by free online listings at sites like
Craigslist.org and Google Base, then newspapers are not far behind them.

How long has it been since you've looked at a classified ad?


22. Movie Rental Stores

While Netflix is looking up at the moment,
Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds. It still has
about 6,000 left across the world, but those keep dwindling and the stock is
down considerably in 2008, especially since the company gave up a quest of
Circuit City . Movie Gallery, which owned the Hollywood Video brand,
totally closed up shop earlier this year. Countless small video chains and
mom-and-pop stores have given up the ghost already.

21. Dial-up Internet Access

Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001
to 10% in 2008. The combination of an infrastructure to accommodate
affordable high speed Internet connections and the disappearing home phone
have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet
access.

I have five or six Global Village 56K modems around here I'd make
someone a good deal on.

20. Phone Landlines

According to a survey from the National Center
for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes was
cell-only and, of those homes that had landlines, one in eight only received
calls on their cells.

The rate would drop faster if there was an economical alternative
to Home Alarm System monitoring.


19. Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs

Maryland 's icon, the blue crab, has been fading
away in Chesapeake Bay . Last year Maryland saw the lowest harvest (22
million pounds) since 1945. Just four decades ago the bay produced 96
million pounds. The population is down 70% since 1990, when they first did a
formal count. There are only about 120 million crabs in the bay and they
think they need 200 million for a sustainable population. Overfishing,
pollution, invasive species and global warming get the blame.

Fortunately the problem is receiving some attention. Shorter
harvest seasons, catch limits, etc. An additional contributor to the
decline has recently been identified and is being addressed. Nitrogen
enriched runoff into the bay from the manure of the many poultry farms in
the area is now considered to be a major factor is the decline.


18. VCRs

For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a
best-seller and staple in every American household until being completely
decimated by the DVD, and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In fact, the
only remnants of the VHS age at your local Wal-Mart or Radio Shack are blank
VHS tapes these days. Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS decks
are practically nowhere to be found. They served us so well.

The currently evolving technology is 'Blu-ray'. The same
dimensions as a CD or DVD disc buy capable of storing much more data on a
single disc. A dual layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 50 Gigabytes of data
which is 10.5 times more than a single layer DVD disc. The unfortunate
issue here is the Blu-ray technology is not backward compatible to existing
CDs and DVDs.


17. Ash Trees

In the late 1990s, a pretty, irridescent green species of
beetle, now known as the emerald ash borer EAB), hitched a ride to North
America with ash wood products imported from eastern Asia . In less than a
decade, its larvae have killed millions of trees in the midwest, and
continue to spread. They've killed more than 30 million ash trees in
southeastern Michigan alone, with tens of millions more lost in Ohio and
Indiana . More than 7.5 billion ash trees are currently at risk.

The spread of the EAB has not yet reached central Indiana and,
according to Purdue there is a preventative 'treatment' available once it
does. It involves an insecticide treatment for trees in the quarantined
area. Here is a link to more information
http://www.emeraldashborer.info/files/E2955.pdf. In the meantime annual
fertilizing to maintain optimum health is advised.


16. Ham Radio

Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often
worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support
their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary,
while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory.
However, proliferation of the Internet and its popularity among youth has
caused the decline of amateur radio. In the past five years alone, the
number of people holding active ham radio licenses has dropped by 50,000,
even though proficiency in Morse Code is no longer a requirement. Cell
Phones and Text messaging plus the Internet chat tooms as communication
tools have all led to the fast declining interest in Ham Radio.


15. The Swimming Hole

Thanks to our litigious society, swimming holes are
becoming a thing of the past. '20/20' reports that swimming hole owners,
like Robert Every in High Falls, N.Y., are shutting them down out of worry
that if someone gets hurt, they'll sue. And that's exactly what happened in
Seattle . The city of Bellingham was sued by Katie Hofstetter who was
paralyzed in a fall at a popular swimming hole in Whatcom Falls Park . As
injuries occur and lawsuits follow, expect more swimming holes to post 'Keep
out!' signs.

14. Answering Machines

The increasing disappearance of answering machines
is directly tied to No 20 on our list -- the decline of landlines. According
to USA Today, the number of homes that only use cell phones jumped 159%
between 2004 and 2007. It has been particularly bad in New York ; since
2000, landline usage has dropped 55%. It's logical that as cell phones usage
rise, many of them replacing traditional landlines, that there will be fewer
answering machines.

13. Cameras That Use Film

It doesn't require a statistician to prove the rapid
disappearance of the film camera in America . Just look to companies like
Nikon, the professional's choice for quality camera equipment. In 2006, it
announced that it would stop making film cameras, pointing to the shrinking
market -- only 3% of its sales in 2005, compared to 75% of sales from
digital cameras and equipment.

12. Incandescent Bulbs

Before a few years ago, the standard 60-watt (or,
yikes, 100-watt) bulb was the mainstay of every U.S. home. With the green
movement and all-things-sustainable-energy crowd, the Compact Fluorescent
Lightbulb (CFL) is largely replacing the older, Edison-era incandescent
bulb. The EPA reports that 2007 sales for Energy Star CFLs nearly doubled
from 2006, and these sales accounted for approximately 20 percent of the
U.S. light bulb market. And according to USA Today, a new energy bill plans
to phase out incandescent bulbs in the next four to 12 years.

I have yet to find a CFL that makes a good reading light. Sound's
like I'd better stalk up on 3way incadescents.

11. Stand-Alone Bowling Alleys

BowlingBalls.US claims there are still 60 million
Americans who bowl at least once a year, but many are not bowling in
stand-alone bowling alleys. Today most new bowling alleys are part of
facilities for all types or recreation including laser tag, go-karts, bumper
cars, video game arcades, climbing walls and glow miniature golf. Bowling
lanes also have been added to many non-traditional venues such as adult
communities, hotels and resorts, and gambling casinos.

10. The Milkman

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in
1950, over half of the milk delivered was to the home in glass quart
bottles, by 1963, it was about a third and by 2001, it represented only 0.4%
percent. Nowadays most milk is sold through supermarkets in plastic gallon
jugs. The steady decline in home-delivered milk is blamed, of course, on the
rise of the supermarket, better home refrigeration and longer-lasting milk.
Although some milkmen still make the rounds in small pockets of the U.S. ,
they are certainly a dying breed.

9 Hand-Written Letters

In 2006, the Radicati Group estimated that,
worldwide, 183 billion e-mails were sent each day. Two million each second.
By November of 2007, an estimated 3.3 billion Earthlings owned cell phones,
and 80% of the world's population had access to cell phone coverage. In
2004, half-a-trillion text messages were sent, and the number has no doubt
increased exponentially since then. So where amongst this gorge of gabble is
there room for the elegant, polite hand-written letter?

8. Wild Horses

It is estimated that 100 years ago, as many as two
million horses were roaming free within the United States . In 2001,
National Geographic News estimated that the wild horse population had
decreased to about 50,000 head. Currently, the National Wild Horse and Burro
Advisory board states that there are 32,000 free roaming horses in ten
Western states, with half of them residing in Nevada . The Bureau of Land
Management is seeking to reduce the total number of free range horses to
27,000, possibly by selective euthanasia.

).7. Personal Checks

According to an American Bankers Assoc. report, a
net 23% of consumers plan to decrease their use of checks over the next two
years, while a net 14% plan to increase their use of PIN debit. Bill payment
remains the last stronghold of paper-based payments -- for the time being.
Checks continue to be the most commonly used bill payment method, with 71%
of consumers paying at least one recurring bill per month by writing a
check. However, on a bill-by-bill basis, checks account for only 49% of
consumers' recurring bill payments (down from 72% in 2001 and 60% in 2003).

6. Drive-in Theaters

During the peak in 1958, there were more than 4,000
drive-in theaters in this country, but in 2007 only 405 drive-ins were still
operating. Exactly zero new drive-ins have been built since 2005. Only one
reopened in 2005 and five reopened in 2006, so there isn't much of a
movement toward reviving the closed ones.

5 Mumps & Measles

Despite what's been in the news lately, the measles
and mumps actually, truly are disappearing from the United States . In 1964,
212,000 cases of mumps were reported in the U.S. By 1983, this figure had
dropped to 3,000, thanks to a vigorous vaccination program. Prior to the
introduction of the measles vaccine, approximately half a million cases of
measles were reported in the U.S. annually, resulting in 450 deaths. In
2005, only 66 cases were recorded.

4. Honey Bees

Perhaps nothing on our list of disappearing America
is so dire; plummeting so enormously; and so necessary to the survival of
our food supply as the honey bee. Very scary. 'Colony Collapse Disorder,' or
CCD, has spread throughout the U.S and Europe over the past few years,
wiping out 50% to 90% of the colonies of many beekeepers -- and along with
it, their livelihood.

The 'Vanishing Bee Syndrome' is getting major attention in several
areas. There appear to be several contributing factors, including the idea
that this is simply an indicator of the general health of the world. The
honey bees, we have today are not native to this continent (introduced in
the 1600's) and have been genetically 'fined tuned' over the years to obtain
an optimum 'safe, effective pollinator'. This makes them susceptible to the
slightest environmental changes. The Vanishing Bee Syndrome isn't new, but
it's increased significantly in the past decade. There is a very good
article generated by Penn State Research if you would like more information
http://www.rps .psu.edu/indepth/bees1.html.



3. News Magazines and TV News

While the TV evening newscasts haven't gone anywhere
over the last several decades, their audiences have. In 1984, in a story
about the diminishing returns of the evening news, the New York Times
reported that all three network evening-news programs combined had only 40.9
million viewers. Fast forward to 2008, and what they have today is half
that.

There are all kinds of opinions as to the decline of the new
media. My favorite is as the education level of the population increases
the need for having the biased interpretation of the 'media' decreases.
Another generation or so and it may disappear entirely. If you took a poll
of today's 'evening news audience' I'm convinced the age level would be
predominately 50+ years. Why? The Internet, primarily. You can peruse in
5 minutes all the information it takes the 'evening news' and hour plus to
generate. And! There are no commercials and it's not 'interpreted' for
you. Additionally the news publications are 'going', too. One of the
better weekly publications, US New and World Report, had already gone to
bi-weekly publishing and will soon change their format to be only longer
term study reports. But, they have converted th eir 'live reporting' to the
internet, check it out. It's a great place to see the summary of daily
happenings. http://www.usnews.com/


2. Analog TV

According to the Consumer Electronics Association,
85% of homes in the U.S. get their television programming through cable or
satellite providers. For the remaining 15% -- or 13 million individuals --
who are using rabbit ears or a large outdoor antenna to get their local
stations, change is in the air. If you are one of these people you'l l need
to get a new TV or a converter box in order to get the new stations which
will only be broadcast in digital in 6 weeks from now.

1. The Family Farm

Since the 1930s, the number of family farms has been
declining rapidly. According to the USDA, 5.3 million farms dotted the
nation in 1950, but this number had declined to 2.1 million by the 2003 farm
census (data from the 2007 census hasn't yet been published). Ninety-one
percent of the U.S.farms are small family farms.

Unfortunately this is an extension of the 'mom & pop' issue of the
retail sales industry. It's impossible to compete on a smaller volume
basis. Even the Amish are finding it nearly impossible to 'buck the tide'.





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