Unless the meteorologists are much mistaken, many Arkansans awoke this morning to a world abounding with icy precipitation.
The forecast for my neck of the wintry woods was a panic-inspiring potential repeat of the devastating ice storm of 2009, which left thousands without power for weeks.
Grocery stores were overrun as early as Wednesday evening by people’s memories and fears, leaving shelves empty of staples such as bread and bottled water.
Whether freezing rain, sleet or snow, inclement winter weather’s paralyzing effect can create an involuntary hiatus from business-as-usual life and routine.
So if you find yourself snowbound, icebound or merely feeling kinship with those who are, accept it as an idyll and contemplate a couple of interesting thoughts that the normal holiday bustle might have crowded out.
Mobile Monday
The Cyber Monday online sale-athon is younger than most third-graders.
Conceived in 2005, the Internet shopping day is already starting to rival Black Friday, and now with a technology twist-one in three of the 130 million online shoppers used a mobile device, rather than a computer, to buy their Christmas gifts.
For some retailers, the mobile usage was even higher. Walmart.com reported that over half of its Cyber Monday sales came from smartphones and tablets. The online boom reverberated throughout retaildom, continuing a series of trends whose charted growth resembles the steep face of Mount Everest’s profile.
In 2012, Cyber Monday shattered records set in 2011 in both total sales and mobile usage. This year those records were left in the cyber dust, with online sales growing by nearly 20 percent and mobile traffic soaring by more than 60 percent.
PayPal and eBay both reported off the-charts increases-91 percent and 130 percent, respectively-in mobile usage.
The mind-blowing statistics involving mobile devices aren’t surprising when you stop to think of the other ways people use the powerful smartphone in the palm of their hands.
Why turn on the TV to check the weather when there are apps galore on your phone providing real-time temperatures, radar images and more?
Why wait till you get to your desktop to Google search something, read your emails or play solitaire (or a million other games)?
Why look for a clock to get the time?
Why pick up a calculator?
Why play a CD?
Why use a map?
Why even have a landline phone? (Only seven in 10 households do now.)
So, it logically follows, why go to a store, or even use a computer, to browse and shop anymore?
A college professor friend of mine is concerned about the social and psychological implications of what he calls the “texting generation,” and it’s a well-founded worry.
Look around in almost any gathering including young people, and take inventory of people whose heads are tilted down toward their phone.
It’s impossible for anyone older than 35 to imagine being raised from birth in a smartphone-saturated environment. The iPhone generation is just now starting first grade.
How the mobile revolution that surged onto the Cyber Monday scene will influence-for better or for worse-their adolescence, their education, their careers and their civic perspectives and attitudes is anybody’s guess at this point.
Gas pains
With gasoline pump prices fluctuating almost daily any more-fairly consistently north of the $3 mark-it’s rather startling to remember that just one president ago (as of Jan. 20, 2009), a gallon of gas could be bought for only $1.84.
That’s a rumination worth mulling over with another cup of hot tea or coffee.
One dollar and eighty-four cents.
And now…well, an ice- or snowstorm is as good an excuse as any to likely add a dime or quarter to the price from earlier in the week, which was about $3.04.
For some time now it’s been about twice or more what it was on New Year’s Day 2009: an average of $1.62 per gallon.
Twice.
There’s easy math for your personal budget. But doubling what we spend when we fill up is only the tip of the appropriately metaphorical iceberg when gauging the overall economic impact for families.
Consider every aspect of life and work that is affected by increased petroleum costs: Public transportation and mass transit. Trucking. Airlines. Tractors.
Start doubling the fuel cost on everything shipped by rail, road or air anywhere, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
All of which is passed on to consumers, regardless of ability to pay. For millions of Americans on fixed or low incomes, doubling gas costs means halving something else somewhere to make ends meet.
It’d be nice and convenient if we could blame government’s greedy tax and-spend types for high gas prices, but federal gasoline tax rates haven’t budged in 20 years. (What other tax can make that claim?)
Ironically, because it’s a figure (18.4 cents) rather than a percentage, the federal tax rate on gas is actually much lower than it was when gas was cheaper. Of all the schemes to improve the economy, I’m not sure any single action would do as much good for the average person as figuring out how to get gas prices back to about $1.50 a gallon.
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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 12/06/2013