Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 01/05/07
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“LESS BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
Safer, smarter laptop batteries”
Portions of an article from The Economist of 12/29/06
“It’s remarkable what a handful for exploding laptop-computer batteries, out of the hundreds of millions in use around the world, can do for lithium-ion technology. Since the hazard was first reported four months ago, computer makers have recalled close to 10m battery packs, for fear they might burst into flames. Sony, the battery-maker mainly involved, has offered free replacements at a cost of $430m and counting…
“The lithium-ion battery is the reigning champ of portable power. It is considerably lighter, stores far more energy, has a far longer lifetime, and is quicker to recharge than either of its past rivals, nickel-cadmium (‘nicad’) and nickel-metal hydride batteries. Another attraction of lithium-ion is that it retains no ‘memory’ of how much juice was used during previous discharges – a weakness that reduced performance in earlier rechargeable batteries…
“The new Matsushita-designed lithium-ion battery is smarter and safer. It uses a heat-resistant layer of aluminium oxide to insulate the battery’s electrodes, instead of the usual layer of polyolefin plastic. The plastic insulator has been the Achilles heel of the modern lithium-ion cell: it melts at a little over 100 degrees C.
“A ceramic, such as aluminium oxide, resists heat of well over 1,000 degrees C. That makes the new Masushita cell far less likely to suffer a meltdown, and allows the makers to up the ante in terms of the chemical reactivity of the cathode. Matsushita uses a nickel-based cathode, instead of the usual cobalt- or manganese-based one, boosting power by a handy 15%…
“…A standard lithium-ion battery-pack of six cells delivers around 55 watt-hours of energy, enough to power a typical laptop for about four hours. Intel, a big maker of computer chips, has called on the industry to double that performance. By 2008 a laptop could be giving eight hours of use from a single charge.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=8470435
“MIDDLE AMERICA’S SOUL”
quotations from this article in The Economist of 12/23/07:
“No modern American politician would dare be so sniffy about country music. On the contrary, many embrace it. Mark Warner campaigned for governorship of Virginia in 2001 with a lively bluegrass song: ‘Get ready to shout from the coal mines to the stills/ Here comes Mark Warner, the hero of the hills.’ He won – quite an achievement for a Democrat in a conservative state, especially when you consider that he was ‘a Connecticut Yankee who had moved to northern Virginia and made a zillion in the telecommunications industry,’ as conceded by his campaign manager, Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders.
“Mr. Saunders reckons that ‘if you want to get a message down into the soul of a God-fearing, native-to-the-earth, rural-thinking person, one of the surest ways is through traditional country music.’ He may be right. And there are an awful lot of God-fearing, rural-thinking folk in America. Some 45m Americans tune in to country-music radio stations each week. In the heartland, no other genre comes close…
“Once they pass a certain age, most Americans stop worrying about being cool. This is often when they start (or go back to) listening to country music. ‘It’s not about sexual innuendo or bling, but the problems and experiences of ordinary people: love, loss, family life, having a good time and a sense of humour,’ says Joe Galante, head of Sony’s BMG’s country-music division.
“Anthropologists studying obscure tribes in Peru or Papua New Guinea often mine their folk songs for clues as to how they think and what they believe. In the same way anyone who wants to understand the world’s most politically influential tribe – the people of middle America, who pick most American presidents – should pay attention to country music.
“After the attacks of September 11th 2001, country singers expressed their fury more bluntly than most other celebrities. In ‘Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue’, for example, Toby Keith sang: ‘Justice will be served/ And the battle will rage/ This dog will fight/ When you rattle his cage/ And you’ll be sorry that you messed with/ The U.S. of A./ ‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass/ It’s the American way…”
“…a lot of country fans have friends or relatives in the armed forces. The same is true of the stars. Chely Wright, for example, has a brother in the marines, a father who served in the navy during the Vietnam war and a grandfather who won a Purple Heart on the Normandy beaches. She mentions all this in ‘Bumper of My SUV’, song about a lady in a rich neighborhood who saw the US Marines sticker on Ms Wright’s car, made an obscene gesture and shouted abuse at her: ‘Your f______ war is wrong!’
“Ms Wright suggests that the Marines help keep this lady safe as she drives her kids home from their private school. Such sentiments go down well with the troops when she performs for them…
“Mr Nichols also wrote a hit last year called ‘Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.’ This delightful song, narrated by a man, is about a lady who likes to go out and drink Margaritas with her girlfriends. This is embarrassing for him, because although she can handle ‘any champagne brunch” or ‘Bacardi punch’, not to mention ‘Jello shooters full of Smirnoff,’ ‘Tequila makes her clothes fall off.’
“Booze also dulls the pain of heartbreak, an essential theme of country music. In Brad Paisley’s haunting ‘Whiskey Lullaby”, a man’s lover ‘put him out like the burnin’ end of a midnight cigarette/ She broke his heart; he spent his whole life tryin’ to forget/ We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time/ But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind/ Until the night/ He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger/ And finally drank away her memory.’
“Some say country music itself is a better balm for broken hearts. Whereas anguished Manhattanites pay hundreds of dollars an hour to lie on a couch and talk about themselves, country fans put on a Wynonna Jodd CD and hear someone sing about problems that sound awfully like theirs. Say you have endured a family break-up or think you might be addicted to food: Wynonna has been there, feels your pain and articulates it far more tunefully than you ever could. As another country singer, Dierks Bentley, once put it: ‘Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy’…
“Gretchen Wilson, a country star raised by a single mother in a trailer park in Pocahontas, Illinois, has a great song called ‘Redneck Woman’.
“Some people look down on me/ But I don’t give a rip/ I’ll stand barefooted in my own front yard with a baby on my hip,’ she declares. Being a redneck means: ‘I keep my Christmas lights on, on my front porch all year long/ And I know all the words to every Charlie Daniels song.’ She grew up short of cash, but didn’t care that she couldn’t afford fancy underwear: ‘Victoria’s Secret/ Well their stuff’s real nice/ Oh but I can buy the same damn thing on a Wal-Mart shelf half-price.’…
“Todd Snider’s songs, for example, blame ‘Conservative Christian, right-wing Republican, straight white American males’ for many of the world’s ills, particularly ‘soul-savin’, flag-wavin’, Rush-lovin’, land-pavin’ personal friends to the Quayles.’ Another alt country singer, Robbie Fulks, fulminates about how, as he sees it, George Bush is a north-eastern preppie posing as a southerner. ‘If you went to Andover, what’s the banjo fer?/ You wasn’t raised in a shack so you better not act so/ Countrier than thou.’
“…And, going back a few years, Ray Stevens, a comedy country singer, encapsulated the concerns of God-loving, tax-hating conservatives with ‘If 10% is Good Enough for Jesus, It Oughta be Enough for Uncle Sam.’
“But angry political songs are not really what country is about. Most of all, it is about realism, says John Rumble, a historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. And reality, for Middle America, is mostly quite pleasant. Consider Craig Morgan’s song ‘That’s what I love about Sunday’: “Sing along as the choir sways;/ Every verse of Amazin’ Grace,/ An’ then we shake the preacher’s hand/ Go home, into your blue jeans/ Have some chicken an’ some baked beans/ Pick a back yard football team/ Nothin’ much of anything/ That’s what I love about Sunday.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/world/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=8345548
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