“The panel also backed the USPS’ proposal to offer a “Forever Stamp”, a stamp that would continue to cover the cost to mail a first-class, one-ounce letter even if the Postal Service instituted another rate hike.
Besides allowing consumers to hedge against future rate increases, the “Forever Stamp” would help eliminate the need to purchase 2-cent stamps and also help shrink lines at the post office, the Postal Regulatory Commission said.”
The bottled water business is amazing. Much of the bottled water consumed in the US is actually filtered municipal water. The same type of stuff we’ve bathed in and swallowed for years. When reduced to its elementary components one water should be little different than another. As with many things, you’re mostly buying an idea, the concept of health, taste, and purity. But, as a business, bottled water seems simple and the barriers for entry seem low, especially if you’re bottling purified municipal supplies. Some of the pieces:
Bottled water is good, but the best way to go if you drink lots of it is to invest in a good filtration system and filter your tap water. In fact, it would be a good experiment to take several identical plastic bottles and fill them up thusly: one bottle tap water, one bottle filtered water, one bottle distilled water, one bottle spring water, and one bottle of purified pre-bottled water. Refrigerate the group and then set up a taste test. I’d be curious as to the results in ranking.
Related:
I’ve just started reading the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son over at Project Gutenberg. I have not dug far into it, but the book is very interesting in several respects. One, as these are private letters to his son, the subject matter is candid and honest. Two, as Lord Chesterfield intends to educate his son on the finer points of manhood and engagement in society (ie. the role of the gentleman) he makes many noteworthy observations and presents essentially a work of practical social philosophy. From the very beginning, it is insightful and thought-provoking:
If care and application are necessary to the acquiring of those
qualifications, without which you can never be considerable, nor make a
figure in the world, they are not less necessary with regard to the
lesser accomplishments, which are requisite to make you agreeable and
pleasing in society. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth
doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore
carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to
dancing and dress. Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a
young man; therefore mind it while you learn it that you may learn to do
it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Dress is of
the same nature; you must dress; therefore attend to it; not in order to
rival or to excel a fop in it, but in order to avoid singularity, and
consequently ridicule. Take great care always to be dressed like the
reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose
dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or
too much studied.
As a society, have we become so busy and preoccupied that we have forgotten how to live? Have we lost sight of what matters most?
I live in a neighborhood infused with Mexican and Central American immigrants. It is commonplace to see cowboy-boot-wearing Norteños pushing strollers with their families. It would be no stretch to say that the Mexicans are the dominant demographic in my little slice of Dallas. In fact, last year Dallas had one of the largest pro-immigration protests in the country with several thousand people marching to city hall, which gives you some idea of the environment here. Like any frontier town, Dallas is very diverse in every respect but also strained because of it. It is a place boiling with activity and competition…life.
Around my neighborhood, I get the chance to observe my neighbors whose lives seem very different from mine. Where white America seems spoiled, isolated, and decadent, brown America seems eager, united, and vital. I drive past a park every day on my way home. Every day it is packed with families and kids playing. Friends playing basketball or soccer under the live oak trees. Women walking together with their babies. Life. I compare this to when I visit my Uncle who lives in the suburbs near Fort Worth. In his neighborhood, the homes are lovely, but you never see anyone. Everyone is inside somewhere. Inside watching 300 channels on their plasma televisions, inside their SUV’s with the kids zoned out to the Finding Nemo DVD, inside the Starbucks loading up on $4 triple Venti lattes. Everyone tricking themselves into thinking that they are happy with all this crap, but maybe their eyes say otherwise.
Our society is crumbling and it will not be held together by Starbucks. It will not be held together by self-deception. Our task is to remember what is important, who we are and who we want to be. To feel hunger not for more, more, more, but for better, better, better… for ourselves and, most importantly, for others.
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