The Postal Service is Shrinking Fast

The United States Postal Service is lobbying Congress hard to reduce its number of delivery days from the current six a week to five a week. The USPS wants to eliminate Saturday mail deliveries in order to reduce costs and cope with less revenue from the dwindling number of pieces of "Snail Mail" that the public sends out in the new age of E-mails and texting options. In the year 2000 the postal service handled a record number of pieces of mail. That year it was over 55.1 billion. In 2010 the projected number is set to be about 29.8 billion. The argument against the reduction in the weekly number of delivery days has to do with some of the things that the public receives through the mail that they cannot do without such as prescription drugs, Social Security checks, and getting their bills on time. Those in favor of the change argue that most people wont miss the reduced amounts of junk mail that may occur and that nowadays many people pay their bills online and can have their SSI checks directly transferred to their bank accounts and such. The Postal Service is expected to suffer a loss this year of over 8.5 billion dollars due to the reduced volume of mail and by reducing the delivery days to 5 instead of 6 it would go a good deal of the way towards reducing that operating loss. If Congress approves the change (which is required) the USPS will be able to cut its work force of over 600,000 employees by about 80,000.

NYPD Fighting Crime By Taking Fewer Shots

If you are a cop in the NYPD you know that there is the possibility that at some point you may have to take a shot at a suspect in your career. Over the last several years, decades even, that likelihood has become less and less likely. In 2009 the NYPD set a record for the fewest shots that it has ever fired at suspects in it's history for a twelve month period since they started keeping records of it in 1971. In 09 The NYPD fired 296 total rounds from their guns which resulted in the killing of 12 suspects. This broke their previous record low of 352 rounds in 2004.
It has not always been this way. In the past the NYPD has had to use many more rounds in order to police the city streets. Back in 1971 they fired a total of 2113 rounds and ended up killing 93 total suspects. Since 1971 the trend has definitely been downward. In 1995 they fired 1728 total rounds. In 1997 1040. In 2000 that number dropped to 504. In 2005 it spiked up a bit and rose to 616. By 2008 it had dropped back down to 364 which was just an average of 1 bullet a day.
The reason the numbers trend downward over the years may have to do with less crime on the streets but may also have to do with policy changes in the department. Back in 1971 when the NYPD fired over 2000 shots police officers were in the habit of firing "Warning Shots" at suspects which is a policy that the NYPD no longer practices.

Complete History Of NYC MTA Fare Increases

If you live in New York City you have not been able to escape the current debate about how much the MTA Bus and Subway fare is going to increase again this year. It seems like it goes up every year now and that this has become the new normal. If you might be interested in a brief recap of how many fare increases have occurred since the subway system first opened in 1904 then here is a complete list of them all:

• Oct. 27, 1904 - Subway Opens, Fare: 5 Cents


• 7/1/48 - Fare: 10 cents


• 7/25/53 - Fare: 15 cents


• 7/15/66 - Fare: 20 cents


• 1/1/70 - Fare: 30 cents


• 1/1/72 - Fare: 35 cents


• 9/1/75 - Fare: 50 cents


• 6/29/80 - Fare: 60 cents


• 7/4/81 - Fare: 75 cents


• 1/1/84 - Fare: 90 cents


• 1/1/86 - Fare: $1


• 1/1/90 - Fare: $1.15


• 1/1/92 - Fare: $1.25


• 11/12/95 - Fare: $1.50


• 7/4/98 ---30 day metro card debuts. Cost $63


• 5/4/03 - Base fare rises to $2/30 day metro card cost $70


• 2/27/05 - 30 day metro card cost $76


• 3/2/08 -- 30 day metro card cost $81


• 3/25/09 - Base fare rises from $2 to $2.50/30 day metro card now $103

Superpower Nuclear Stockpiles In Steep Decline

As far as the possibility of a nuclear war occurring goes there is good news and bad news. The bad news is it is still possible. The good news is that there are many fewer nukes that either side could throw at each other. The nuclear stockpiles are way down from their highs in the past.
The largest nuclear arsenal still belongs the the Russians. Currently they possess over 8000 warheads in their inventory. This is however way down from their high of over 40,000 in 1986. The United States is second on the list with a total of just over 5000 warheads. Similarly this figure is way down from the U.S. high of over 31,000 which was reached in 1967. After the two "Super Powers" you have 6 other countries who are known to possess nuclear capabilities. They are in order: France, with over 300 warheads. China with about 240 warheads. Britain with 225. Israel which has about 80. India similarly has about 80 as well. Then Pakistan with about 70 warheads in total.

The Tragedy Of The U.S.S. Indianapolis

There are many great and famous stories about battles and courage that went on during World War Two. One of the lesser known tragedies occured on July 30th, 1945 in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The USS Indianapolis was a nearly 10,000 ton heavy battle cruiser that just weeks prior to her sinking had just come out of a naval shipyard having been re-fitted and repaired after suffering damage doing battle with the Japanese. She has just delivered the Atomic Bomb to a B-25 bomber base in the Pacific (The actual bomb in fact the The Enola Gay would drop on Hiroshima on August 6th) and had turned around and started steaming for the Phillippines. On the night of July 30th at just a little bit past midnight a Japanese submarine launched two torpedoes straight for the middle of her hull. Once they exploded they set off a chain reaction with some of the munitions that were on board and the ensuing secondary explosions and fire nearly severed the ship in half. She had a crew of 1200 and within the first minutes of the attack the fire and explosions had killed about 300 on board. The captain ordered the ship to be abandoned at this point and nearly 900 men all jumped overboard and began swimming away from the burning wreck. The ship had completely sunk undernearth the waves in a little over ten minutes leaving all the crew bobbing on the waves in the middle of the night in total darkness. The distress flares that the crew had sent out just after the beginning of the attack were ignored by the U.S. Navy. They were thinking that it was perhaps some kind of Japanese trick to lure them in for an ambush as sea. As daylight rose the next morning an even more tragic turn for the worse takes place. The waters they were sunk in were shark infested and the first of the swarm of sharks that would soon appear was spotted by some of the crew for the first time. Because of the ignored distress flares nobody was coming to rescue them yet so they were stuck in the water for days. Finally on August 2nd, 1945 an overhead recon flight spotted the men in the ocean and a massive rescue operation was launched. In the four days between the sinking of the ship and the rescue launch out of the 900 men that jumped into the water after the Indianapolis was sunk less than 300 made it out of the water alive after the sharks were done with them.

More College Kids On Meds Than Ever Before

According to a recent study conducted by the American Psychological Association there are now more college kids in the U.S. on Psychological medications than ever before in history. That might explain some of the weird behavior in college kids these days. There is a marked increase in depression and anxiety among the college crowd and they are taking more psychological medications to cope than ever. According to the study depression has increased by 40% over the last ten years. The study involved more than 3200 college kids who were followed between 1997 and 2009 and it discovered that 24% of them were on some kind of prescribed drug for Anxiety. Usually the students who were suffering the most were those who were labled in the study as "Socially Isolated."

Huge Piece Of Iceburg In Greenland Breaks Away

If you are thinking that perhaps this summer has been a little bit hotter than the usual summer there is certainly tons of meteorological evidence to prove that you are right. This past July was the hottest ever recorded in New York City. Some people are pointing to global warming. Another rather large piece of evidence that this may be the case came out of Greenland this week. Researchers at the Canadian Ice Service were surprised to discover that a huge piece of ice over 4 times the size of Manhattan had broken off of The Petermann Glacier, which is one of the largest in Greenland. It is so big in fact that they are referring to it as an "Ice Island." There are two big concerns about the future of this seriously big piece of ice. The first is that if it drifts into the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic it may have a negative effect on commerce and may cause something of a further downturn in the economy. The second big concern has to do with what will happen if this "Ice Island" begins to melt and how much of an effect will that have on raising sea levels in the area and what kind of an effect will that have on residents who live near the shorelines in that region.