Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 01/20/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“We are living, I believe, in a frontier time, one of the great hinge periods in human history, in which great changes are coming about at great speed. On the plus side, the end of the Cold War, the revolution in communications technology, great scientific achievements such as the completion of the Human Genome Project; in the minus column, a new kind of war against new kinds of enemies fighting with terrible new weapons. We will all be judged by how we handle ourselves in this time. What will be the spirit of this frontier? Will we give the enemy the satisfaction of changing ourselves into something like his hate-filled, illiberal mirror-image, or will we, as the guardians of the modern world, as the custodians of freedom and the occupants of the privileged lands of plenty, go on trying to increase freedom and decrease injustice? Will we become the suits of armor our fear makes us put on, or will we continue to be ourselves? The frontier both shapes our character and tests our mettle. I hope we pass the test.”
Our quotation above is the very last paragraph of the book STEP ACROSS THIS LINE by Salman Rushdie.
“PROTECTING NEW ORLEANS
by Mark Fischetti”
An outstanding eight-page article with this title appears in the 02/06 print issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. There are many aerial photos and maps and descriptions of how such systems are used in Italy, The Netherlands, and London. Here is an excerpt:
“The Mississippi River delta is not alone in being endangered. Deltas worldwide are in trouble because human development is causing the land to sink. The soft delta earth compacts naturally, but annual river floods top-coat the slumping ground with new sediment. Yet man-made levees built to prevent floods in many of these regions also cut off the sediment supply. At the same time, underground extraction of oil, natural gas and freshwater deflates the land’s support structure. As the surface subsides, saltwater from the ocean streams in, poisoning the usually thick expanses of wetland mangroves, trees and grasses. Without these lush buffers, even moderate storms can push sea surges far inland.
“The earth’s oceans are also rising, compounding the problem. At current rates, sea level will be three feet higher in 100 years. Low-lying cities from New York to Shanghai may have to armor themselves with walls and pumps and add revetments (waterproof masonry) to the bottom few feet of every building in town, measures already under way in Venice…”
“WHY DOES EYESIGHT DETERIORATE WITH AGE?
By David Zacks, University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center”
Our title and quotes are from an article posted in the ASK THE EXPERTS section of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.com on 01/13/06:
“Many of us think that as we grow old our eyesight is destined to deteriorate…The truth is that, with today’s treatment options, there is no intrinsic reason for our vision to worsen with time. In theory, we should be able to retain undiminished our capability to accept, process and experience visual sensory input…
“A good understanding of vision loss requires a brief foray into the basic structure of the eye. Although it might be considered a cliché, it is still useful to compare the eye to a video camera. Thus, as light enters the eye – or the camera – it travels through four main structures…
“The entry point for light is the cornea, the transparent tissue in the very front of the eye that functions as the window through which all light has to pass on its way to forming a visual perception. Next, the light signal encounters the lens, which focuses it finely on the third structure of the eye: the retina. The retina is analogous to the film in the back of the camera. It is on the retina that the light is converted into a neural signal that is ultimately interpreted by the brain as an image. Finally, the optic nerve, which carries these signals to the brain, functions like a cable that connects the video camera to the television screen…”
To read the article, click on http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_directory.cfm and then on the question in our title.
“LIFERS
by James Surowiecki”
Our title and quotes are from an article in 01/16/06 THE NEW YORKER:
“Job instability has become a consistent source of anxiety of American workers: one recent poll found that forty-six per cent of respondents worried that a member of their household would be out of work in the near future…
“Yet the surprising reality is that long-term employment hasn’t disappeared at all…A recent study by Ann Huff Stevens, a labor economist at the University of California at Davis, compares the careers of older men in 1969 to those of older men in 2002, looking at how many years members of each group spent working at the job they held the longest. In 1969, the average was 21.9 years; in 2002, it was 21.4 years. In 1969, slightly more than half of the men had held one job for at least twenty years, and the proportion was almost identical in 2002. In the same vein, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that median job tenure among all workers over the age of twenty-five has fallen only slightly since the early eighties. And a 1999 study of fifty-one major corporations found that the percentage of employees with more than ten years of service increased in the nineties….
“American workers do, though, have plenty of reasons for feeling anxious. Although the way companies fire and hire has not changed much, there have been dramatic changes in the kinds of risks that individual workers have to bear. Corporations have scaled back on benefits, most notably health coverage and pensions. The percentage of companies that offer health benefits to their employees has dropped thirteen per cent in the past five years, and even employees who are covered now generally pay more of their own costs. With pensions, the shift has been fundamental: defined-benefits plans, in which companies guarantee a set payout to employees, have been gradually replaced with defined-contribution plans, like 401(k)s…With a defined-benefit plan, the company assumes the risk of investing assets, absorbing the impact of market downturns, but with a 401(k) it is entirely up to the employee to prosper or plummet…
“Meanwhile, the risk exposure of anyone unfortunate enough to lose a job has soared. People who are unemployed stay unemployed, on average, about fifty per cent longer now than they did in the seventies, and only about half as many receive unemployment insurance as did so in 1947. Furthermore, the explosion in health-care costs means that the consequences of forfeiting company health insurance are graver than ever…
“The underlying problem is that workers are not being compensated with higher wages for taking on all this new risk. Real wages for the eighty per cent of Americans whom the government labels ‘production and nonsupervisory workers’ have actually fallen since 2001, and, even after a burst of growth in the late nineties, the average household income is only slightly above where it was in 1973. This, and not rates of lifetime employment, is the true difference between employment today and in the sixties. Back then, real wages grew steadily year after year, rising roughly in tandem with productivity. Today, real wages are stagnant, and most of the economy’s gains in productivity are going to shareholders or to people at the top of the corporate pyramid. More risk, less reward: now, that’s something to worry about.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?060116ta_talk_surowiecki
“PEDESTRIANS INHALE LESS POLLUTION THAN PASSENGERS”
Our title and quotes are from an article posted on SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.com on 01/11/06:
“…new research from London reveals that taxi rides take a toll on your lungs as well as on your wallet. In fact, taxi cabins expose drivers and riders to more pollution than any other form of transportation, according to the results of a survey by Surbit Kaur and her colleagues at Imperial College London. Armed with particle detectors, volunteers measured their pollution exposure as they took a total of 584 trips either by taxi, car, bus, bicycle or just plain walking on Marylebone Road in central London and in surrounding areas over the course of three weeks in April and May 2003.
“Surprisingly, taxis topped the list of air pollution danger, according to research published in the current issue of Atmospheric Environment. London’s Black Cabs exposed passengers to an average of more than 108,000 ultrafine particles – microscopic soot 10,000 times smaller than a centimeter that is particularly dangerous because of its ability to penetrate deep into the lungs – for every cubic centimeter traveled. Public buses came in second with around 95,000 particles per cubic centimeter, followed by cycling at 84,000 particles/cubic centimeter and walking at around 46,000 particles/cubic centimeter.
“‘It was a surprise the extent to which exposures in a taxi were so high,’ Kaur says. ‘I would say that it’s got a lot to do with the fact that taxis are out there everyday. They’re stuck in traffic every day with exhaust in front and behind that accumulates to create a higher concentration in the vehicle cabin.’”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.sciam.com and then on the title of this article opposite the picture.
USED BOOK SALES
We offer for sale all used books listed at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php.
OUR SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER
For details, click on http://www.vardaman.com and then on the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” You can offer to buy or sell timber or land. You must post the general area of your interest; be sure to include the state. You must also post your E-MAIL ADDRESS and the URL of your Internet site. Our tracking report will not report the number of visitors UNLESS you enter your URL. If you are selling, you should post the name of the tract. When you have entered all details, click on “Submit,” and what you just entered will appear on our Internet site at the bottom of the page under the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” Be sure to check for and correct errors.
For each tract posted and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.50 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.50 for each visit his ad received during the week just ended. You can pay us by e-mailing the money to “Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company” at PayPal or mailing it to P.O. Box 12293, Jackson, MS 39236. We will delete your ad when your payments cease.
BUY LAND
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to loblolly@surfbvi.com
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to rich@CHRISTOPHERRADKO.COM
For tracts in MA, send e-mail to leonelmtz65@hotmail.com
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to 7200moore@charter.net
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to ptodd@orclinic.com
For tracts in FL, send e-mail to hot63vdub@hotmail.com
For tracts in TX, send e-mail to reedkimbley@hotmail.com
For tracts in TX, send e-mail to gilmerboy2@yahoo.com
For tracts in GA, send e-mail to RNP1003@aol.com
BUY TIMBER
*For tracts in AR, send e-mail to dyork@digitalpassage.com
*For tracts in IL, send e-mail to psftimber@hotmail.com
Visit our partner Wiley.com to save 15% on How
to Make Money Growing Trees and their entire selection of Forestry and Agricultural titles. Your discount will be applied automatically
upon checkout. If you do you not see the discount being applied, please enter
code aff15 in the Promotion Code field and click the Apply Discount button.
|
