Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 01/19/07
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE”
by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White
Even if you write no more than an occasional letter, you should get a copy of this 105-page paperback book that will fit in your hip pocket. It contains sections on Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misused, An Approach to Style, Afterword, and Glossary.
The Foreword by Roger Angell contains this portion: “Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time. Less frequent practitioners – the job applicant; the business executive with an annual report to get out; the high school senior with a Faulkner assignment; the graduate-school student with her thesis proposal; the writer of a letter of condolence – often get stuck in an awkward passage or find a muddle on their screens, and then blame themselves. What should be easy and flowing looks tangled or feeble or overblown – not what was meant at all. What’s wrong with me, each one thinks. Why can’t I get this right?
“It was this recurring question, put to himself, that must have inspired White to revive and add to a textbook by an English professor of his, Will Strunk, Jr., that he had first read in college, and to get it published. The result, this quiet book, has been in print for forty years, and has offered more than ten million writers a helping hand…You will find it both very interesting and very helpful.
I’ve owned the 3rd edition since 1985, and it helped me write books that met the demands of publishers. I bought a copy of the 4th edition today at a local shopping center for $10. If you thumb through the pages while you’re at the store, you see how valuable it is.
“DROP THE COMPUTER”
Portions of an article from The Economist of 01/11/07
“We’re going to make some history here today,” said Steve Jobs this week at the beginning of his annual speech at Macworld, his company’s cult-like trade show in San Francisco. He was as good as his word. First, he launched a product that promises at last to bring digital entertainment from people’s computers to their television screens without fuss. Then he unveiled an even more impressive device that transcends the description ‘mobile phone.’ Mr. Jobs, who was so excited that he had lain awake all night, made it clear that he considered this day a watershed in the three-decade history of Apple Computer, a point that he emphasized by announcing that his firm would henceforth drop ‘Computer’ from its name.
“Indeed, Apple’s laptop and desktop computers, which are selling briskly, were hardly mentioned. Nor were Apple’s iPods, which dominate the market for portable music players. Both of the new products are really computers, but people won’t think of them as such, since they will be in their pockets and living rooms. The mobile phone – provided Apple can settle a legal dispute over the name with Cisco, a network-equipment mobile phone – is called iPhone. It will go on sale in America in June starting at $499, in Europe in the autumn and in Asia next year. The television-set add-on is called AppleTV and will hit stores next month at $299. With these two products, Mr. Jobs intends to enter and transform new industries, and ultimately people’s lives – just as he did in 1984 when Apple transformed computing with the launch of the Macintosh, and again in 2001 when it introduced the iPod, which shook up the music industry…
“Unlike rival products – but in keeping with Apple’s approach – the iPhone’s front panel has only one mechanical button. The thin, small slab has a touch-screen which displays whatever buttons, keys or icons are relevant to the task at hand. When playing music, the iPhone shows album covers; when writing e-mail, a small keyboard; when a call comes in, the caller’s identity from the address book; and so on. And whereas any other company would have foisted a stylus on its victims, Mr. Jobs gloated, Apple lets them use fingers to scroll, drag, type and resize. Just as the MacIntosh was a breakthrough in 1984 for its mouse, and the iPod in 2001 for its click wheel, the iPhone’s stroke of genius is this new ‘multi-touch’ technology. ‘And boy have we patented it,’ said Mr. Jobs.
“Along with more than 200 other patents, this technology should put the iPhone ‘five years ahead’ of its rivals, reckons Mr. Jobs. This claim is hard to judge. The iPhone is not the only phone that can switch automatically between a short-range Wi-Fi connection and a mobile-phone network, depending on which one it sniffs. But it is the only phone with a web browser (Apple’s Safari) that displays web pages in their full splendour. It is also only phone that has ‘visual voicemail’ to save users from the hassle of listening to all their messages before getting to the important ones – a joint innovation with Apple’s partner, Cingular, America’s largest mobile operator. And it is by far the best handset for photographs, music and videos…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RVNTJGD
“THE PINPOINT SEARCH”
Portions of an article by Julian Sanchez in the REASON 01/07 print edition
“Anyone would consider it a stroke of bad luck to be pulled over for driving six miles per hour over the speed limit, but Roy Caballes had an additional reason to curse his ill fortune. On the November afternoon in 1998 when an Illinois state trooper stopped him, Caballes was carrying 282 pounds of marijuana in his trunk. At first it looked like he’d get off with just a warning. Then another officer pulled up and swept his car with one of the most advanced pieces of technology then available to law enforcement: a drug-sniffing dog named Krott. The pooch uncovered the dope.
“Caballes thought the cops didn’t have a legitimate reason to bring in Krott, and he fought search. In 2003 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the officers had indeed violated the Fourth Amendment by transforming the traffic stop into a drug investigation without probable cause, or even the weaker ‘reasonable suspicion.’ But in the 2005 decision Illinois v. Caballes, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the dog sniff could not have rendered an otherwise lawful traffic stop unconstitutional unless the dog sniff itself violated Caballes’ ‘constitutionally protected interest in privacy.’ The Court concluded it did not, citing a 1983 decision in which it ruled that, because a dog sniff reveals only the presence of contraband in which there is no ‘reasonable expectation of privacy,’ it isn’t a ‘search’ at all. The Supremes sent the case back to Illinois, and Caballes ended up with a 12-year prison sentence…
“The original pinpoint search, the drug dog’s sniff, has built-in limits. A German shepherd is a cumbersome piece of biotechnology, making suspicionless sweeps during routine traffic stops the exception rather than the rule. But chemists and engineers are developing a variety of electronic sniffers that are competing to make Fido’s schnoz obsolete.
“DrugWipes, for example, are small, swab-tipped devices. Wipe the tip along a surface, or a sample of sweat or saliva, and in two or three minutes a simple indicator window reveals whether a drug residue is present. Manufactured by the German firm Securetec, DrugWipes have been used by more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. since the late 1990s, and they’re increasingly popular among schools and private employers as well.
“DrugWipes have limitations: They’re single-use devices , and while the basic model is inexpensive (less than $10 per unit), each picks up only one specific type of drug residue. Even with a relatively low per-unit price, the cost of sweeping a school or a parking lot can mount quickly. For more versatility, cops can turn to General Electric’s VaporTracer. A seven-pound handheld particle sniffer that can test for a wide range of drugs and explosives in only a few seconds…
“Police can use new devices to hunt not just for tiny traces of contraband but for larger objects. Millimeter wave (MMW) radiation is all around us. You’re emitting it even as you read this article. More important, you’re emitting it through your clothes, making it an ideal way to scan for hidden objects that distort or block those waves, whether they’re made of metal, ceramic, plastic, or some other composite material – and without any of the health concerns associated with X-rays.
“The Federal Aviation Administration began funding MMW research back in 1989. The technology has since been licensed to several commercial firms. Intellifit, for example, has set up MMW kiosks in several malls and clothing stores; they help people find clothing that’s a good fir for their frame.
“But the primary licensees have been in the security business. In the summer of 2005, a company called SafeView debuted a three-dimensional body scanner, SafeScout, for use in airports and at other security checkpoints…
“In its most intrusive form, an MMW scanner can reveal a rough nude image of its subjects. The models being deployed for most security purposes get around that problem by projecting any objects the scanner detects on a generic virtual mannequin.
“Less intrusive is the BIS-WDS Prime, a security camera created by a Florida-based firm Brijot Imaging Systems. Unveiled last spring, the camera pinpoints weapons and suspicious objects at a range of up to 45 feet by comparing hidden objects picked up by its millimeterwave sensor to a database of weapon shapes. The detection process, Brijot claims, takes less than half a second, and the higher-end models will display up to 20 threats simultaneously…
“If a search technology based on shape matching still seems a bit low-tech, consider Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis, which can reveal the molecular composition of a load of cargo without opening its vehicle. In the summer of 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began testing a $10 million, car wash-sized prototype facility at the Ysleta border crossing near El Paso, Texas. It bombards vehicles with high-energy neutrons, which excite the nuclei of atoms, causing the contents to emit gamma rays. Since different elements emit gamma rays at different energy levels, the scanner can infer the chemical structure of the cargo’s contents, distinguishing plastic explosives from Play-Doh and table sugar from Colombian White…
To read the complete eight-page article, click on http://www.reason.com/news/show/117074.html
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