25 things about to become extinct in america

[The Knize]

<Time magazine and 60 Minutes will always be around.>

Ghosts of their former selves, don't you think? Of course, TV is filled with expose time shows now, so 60 Minutes is not as alone as it was once.

And the cultural type things that Time magazine covered more than any other outlet are coverd everywhere it seems, to the detriment of hard news.

Anyway, it just seems to me that these two were "important" at one time, and now they are really not!

I would like it a lot if drive-ins managed to come back. But to tell you the truth I am surprised that any move theaters have survived.

 

[Parataxis]

Tell me if you think is correct. Have you gotten rid of some of these items already? Just curious.

Most of them I agree with - some I can't say for sure, as I'm not a USian (Canada Post isn't going anywhere, at least).

I strongly disagree with #9. The very reasons you cited for it disappearing are the very reasons it won't. In an age of electronic communication, txting, &c... the hand-written letter (and I'll add hand-typed as well) will become ever more powerful and meaningful.

Will everybody be sending them? No. But will they still be used? Oh yes.

 

[Parataxis]

Answering machine ... what else to hook up to my phone land line??

Nowadays, most landlines come with a message service, rather than a physical machine. Certainly every business uses them, as do most households (not my father though). That will continue. Messages will still be left, but machines will disappear, I imagine.

 

[Ru4scuba?]

#1 is so incredibly sad. It's an issue near and dear to my heart. It's almost unjust to distill it down to some statistics and relegate the extinction of family farms to the level of disappearing answering machines, because it's had serious negative consequences for our food supply, health, and economy.

+1. I spent my entire childhood on a good buddy's family farm. Can't believe those stats. To some extent, farms seem to be so part of the American charm.

 

[Kratos]

I would like it a lot if drive-ins managed to come back. But to tell you the truth I am surprised that any move theaters have survived.

Really? I don't see them going anywhere soon. Many still dig the whole going to the movies experience. Plus, no home theatre has a 50-ft screen, let alone something like an IMAX. Some movies I like to see on the big screen. As long as the people around you are civil, it's usually a good experience. Hopefully the prices level off at some point.

 

[SRock]

Excellent post Mark. I'd have to agree if these aren't already endangered they are certainly threatened.

 

[Phog Allen]

The family farm has been dying out for the last fifty years, farmers without huge land holdings didn't make any money fifty, sixty, seventy years ago and they still don't today. It's kind of a sign of progress though as well, large farms run like businesses are massively more efficient than having the same land owned by dozens of different people all working on their own.

My grandfather lived all his life on a 160 acre farm out in Saskatchewan and I can remember my dad telling me that once in the mid 70's he saw my grandfather's tax return and that year he had earned something like $3200. It was a very simple life where family and nature were the most important things.

We can learn stuff from that sort of existence that isn't bent on material success, but at the same time, I don't think it's necessarily something to romanticize as much as some do, all my relatives out in the country there are so much fun and the greatest hosts you can imagine, but I know for a fact a lot of them have had bigtime struggles trying to get by farming, raising cattle, etc. and most of them have had to do stuff on the side like go up North to work in the diamond mines or drive truck etc.

I have an aunt and uncle who have two huge pig barns and they are ruined pretty well, pork isn't worth anything today and from what I've heard they are probably going to have to default.

It's just so volatile, the prices of commodities like crops, livestock etc. the uncertainty of income from year to year is awful for farmers.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we all have to go live in 3 million person cities, however, in developed societies where the service sector utterly dominates the economy, jobs are inevitably going to concentrate in the same place the consumer is.

But like others here have said, I think there just might be a niche for the small farmer in specialty products. I lot of people like the idea of eating stuff produced locally, and the farmer's who sell their stuff at the farmer's market in some of the cities here move a lot of product. There's just something appealing to it, the jar of honey that has a handwritten label on it and you meet the person who made it vs. some tub of Billy Bee.

It's a change, and it's rediculous to fight against reality and just subsidize a business model that just doesn't work in the 21st century because it's traditional.

Very well said and excellent points. Things change. There never really was "money" involved in successful farmers. They were judged successful by how much land and livestock they amassed in their lives and handed down to their kids. Much of it by bartering. As modern farrming allowed yields unseen in history, it became a volume issue for row crops. The real niche in "family farming" were the little specialty farms that produced honey or other specilised things that people want locally. Like fresh farm eggs(one of my favourite things btw). Agreed that a romantic lore is not the best way to manage this. Nothing wrong with the small family dairy. I grew up with dozens of them around here. Yet they are all gone and we can still buy milk any day of the week. I can drive 15 minutes from my home and find a bison farm. It is really neat to see the big shaggies and my kids get a real kick out it. They sell the meat right there at the farm. It is one example of the evolving nature of the family farm.

Regards, Todd

 

[marvin100]

Did you make this list or get it from another source? Cite/link?

 

[rm71]

Wow that list could apply to Australia as well. Incandescent bulbs are already gone in Australia. Can't buy them anymore and in fact I think it may be illegal to even sell them.

 

[Barbarian]

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 has
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.

No such thing in the U.S. These are feral horses, invasive, and a cause of ecological degradation. Good riddance.

 

[The Knize]

Really? I don't see them going anywhere soon. Many still dig the whole going to the movies experience. Plus, no home theatre has a 50-ft screen, let alone something like an IMAX. Some movies I like to see on the big screen. As long as the people around you are civil, it's usually a good experience. Hopefully the prices level off at some point.

Don't get me wrong. I like all of that, too. But one would usually go broke looking to me as a model of the market.

I am just surprised that given the expense and the hassle, including the uncivility of people talking and such in the theaters, and the ease of the alternatives--and the fact that the technology would alllow first run movie delivery to homes--we still so many freestanding movie theaters and that Hollywood does so well. The load factor must be horrible. Most of the business must be on the weekends, yet you have a lot of square feet in say a shopping center to pay for.

I guess people need somewhere to go out to. Also improvements have been made in seating and sound systems. Hollywood's marketing is good. Folks want to see the latest movie.

 

[airplanedoc]

The load factor must be horrible. Most of the business must be on the weekends, yet you have a lot of square feet in say a shopping center to pay for.

I think for movie theaters or drive-ins to really survive and thrive there needs to be a alternate use for the theater. A few weeks ago on my day off, a buddy of mine called and asked if I wanted to go see a movie. It as raining so the day was pretty much shot anyway so I went. We went to a 3pm Wednesday showing. There was more staff at the theater, than there was viewers, and best I could tell was all 16 movies were showing even if there was no one watching them. I couldn't thelp but think How could this space be better used, to generate profit during the day, while still showing movies on nights and weekends.

I don't have any answers or I would be in the movie theater business.

 

[chickpea]

S
5. Mumps & Measles - Every 20 years a disease is wiped out. This has been gone quite a while. Vaccines have multiplied and worsened diseases in our children.

Umm, reality seems to disagree with you there.

4. Honey Bees - PURE BS. Look at all the honeybee farmers.

You have heard of CCD correct? There won't be many honeybee farmers when all the honeybees die.

 

[mark the shoeshine boy]

Did you make this list or get it from another source? Cite/link?

just an email from a friend....i found it to be interesting and thought it would be fun to discuss and see if there any others to chat about....

 

[Swampfox]

We're...All...Going...To...Die!!!!!!

 

[chickpea]

I guarantee it.

 

[The Knize]

Sorry to post so often. I meant to say that my parents used to say something to the effect that they were both very grateful for the demise of their respective family farms. Not that they were foreclosed on or anything--the children of their generation simply grew up and left the farm at the first opportunity. He said, basically, that anyone that could get the heck out and had any sense, got out as fast as they could. My Dad was very against the romanticized vision of the rural life of growing up on a small family farm, at least in the early 1900s. He felt that farming was very hard and dangerous work at very high risk of financial failure in the best of circumstances. I think my Mother grew up much closer to any poverty line and in much more isolated circumstances. Yet she probably grew up in a more idealic place than my Dad--surrounded by extended family and the like. Mutually supportive community. I do not think she missed farm life much though.

Of course there are family farms and there are family farms. I do not think that anyone really envisions farms like my parents grew up on being a way to make a reasonable living. Really subsistance farming. And I think there was a lot of that if one goes back far enough in American History. The world modernized and there was not the need for most folks to grow their own food to keep from starving.

But there have also been many family run farms that were good-sized operations, specialized, well-managed, with economies of scale and everything else going for them. I suppose the question there is why can't a well-managed small entity of any kind function profitably in the modern era? Lots of things used to owned by families from stores (or chains thereof), to gasoline stations, funeral homes, propane dsitributors, whatever. The family farm is not the only small to medium sized business that is getting wiped out, I would think, but it does seem to be more thoroughly wiped out. What is is about farming that demand such large economies of scale?

 

[Phog Allen]

Cstrother. Those things you ask about in your last paragraph CAN be done in the modern age. They just consume your life. And they are hard work. When you own a small business, you really don't own it. IT OWNS YOU. And a family farm is a small, usually unprofitable business. There are three things that should always be looked at as vocation rather than profession; preaching, teaching, and farming. These are labours of love and no way to make big money or even a comfortable amount of money. I think your dad and mom may have been saying that. He was right. Farming is hard, hot, dangerous work that rarely pays off in the coin of the realm. I grew up with kids who lived on real working farms. Everyone of their parents had factory jobs that really payed for everything. Almost to a man their dads had hung up their farming boots by the time those kids graduated high school. Much the same with owning a small business. Hard, grueling work, sometimes for years with little or no payoff. It is just easier to try to find a decent maintenance or factory job. And they went home after eight hours and didn't deal with it till the next day. No such chances when you own it.

Regards, Todd

 

[infotech]

15 The Swimming Hole

​

We are going to lose swimming holes more than the reasons listed. Here on the Gulf Coast of Texas we have weekly warnings of fecal bacteria levels in the Gulf of Mexico. They only warn when the levels of bacteria are elevated which means if you swim in Galveston, or any other beach around these parts you're swimming in a giant, unflushed toilet. I'm sure there are worse contaminants in the water as well. It doesn't really phase many people. You can go to the beach any weekend and see people swimming and having a good ole' time in the water. They are only risking diarrhea, upset stomach, vomiting, and other sickness...

 

[Mycon]

#4 I'm doing what I can to keep them buzzing along!

My mother has been talking to a lot of local beekeepers, and they say that CCS is really only a problem with the large commercial operations that consistently move their swarms. The small, family operations are largely untouched.
Do you find that to be the case?