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“The writer of a field guide to North American birds and three academic colleagues have challenged the videotape evidence offered as proof of the existence of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas’ Big Woods region. Long believed to be extinct, the bird made headlines around the world last April when scientists announced that they had spotted it several times and caught it on film.

“But David Sibley and his team argue that the low-quality video shows the more common pileated woodpecker, not the ivory-bill, preparing to take flight from a tupelo tree and then flapping into the distance. The flying bird in the video lacks as many white feathers as one would expect to see on an ivory-bill, they assert. They also dispute that a ‘vague pale blur’ on the bird’s back could be the ivory bill’s distinctive white stripes, instead ascribing the feature to either the head markings of a pileated woodpecker, sunlight reflected on the bird’s back or a flaw in the video itself…”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.sciam.com and then on our title to the right of the mosquito.

“WHAT IS A GEYSER?
By Karen Harp, assistant professor of geology at Colgate University”

Our title and quotes are from a posting on SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.com:

Geysers occur “where magma lies just below the earth’s surface, …in volcanic regions such as Iceland or New Zealand, and places that have been volcanically active in the past, including Yellowstone in Wyoming. Water from rain or melted snow percolates into the ground through cracks and fractures and interacts with the hot underlying rocks. The water reaches temperatures far above where it would boil on the earth’s surface (about 100 degrees Celsius), but because there is so much rock above the water (sometimes up to several miles), the water does not boil. It becomes superheated and pressurized. Once enough pressure builds up, the superheated water will overcome the weight of the overlying rocks and burst out of the ground in an explosive steam eruption – a geyser. It basically works like a teapot with a closed lid; only when enough pressure builds up from accumulating hot water and steam is there enough force for the steam to burst out through the top and activate the whistle.

One of the most fascinating aspects of geysers is that once they form, they become self-perpetuating…Some geysers go through the pressure-building cycle quickly, producing fountains every few minutes. Old Faithful in Yellowstone – one of the most famous geysers in the world – puts on its show approximately every 80 minutes and can reach up to nearly 200 feet in height…”

To see a photo of Old Faithful and read the entire article, click on http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000E4E91-92D4-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF

“NEW INSIGHTS ON WHAT SADDAM HUSSEIN THOUGHT HE WAS DOING”

Our title and quotes are from The Economist print edition of 3/16/06:

“…right up to the last moment the dictator did not expect America to attack, because of the faith he had in pressure from Russia and France in the UN Security Council. [Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister] told his interrogators that the two countries had received millions of dollars of trade and service contracts with Iraq, ‘with the implied understanding that their political posture…would be pro-Iraqi.’ Even after the invasion started, Saddam did not expect the Americans to fight all the way to Baghdad – a delusion that prevented him from torching his oilfields or opening the dams to flood southern Iraq. Fixated at first on internal threats, instead of the advancing American army, Saddam later came to believe that Iraq was winning, and continued to think so until American tanks reached Baghdad. His own generals were far too scared of him to risk breaking the bad news…”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5637191

“THE WORLD IN A BOX”

Our title and text are from a book review in The Economist of 3/18-24/06:

“The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. By Marc Levinson. Princeton University Press; 392 pages; $24.95. To be published in Britain by Princeton in April

“When the MSC Pamela sailed into Felixstowe, Britain’s biggest container terminal, on her maiden voyage last year, Hutchison Whampoa, the port’s Hong Kong owners, took a deep breath and renewed their efforts to build more deep-water berths. They were looking to the future. At 1,053 feet (321 metres), and able to carry the equivalent of more than 9,000 containers, Pamela is the world’s largest container ship. But not for long: leviathans with twice that capacity are on their way.

“A far greater stir had been caused some 50 years earlier when the Ideal-X, an oil tanker left over from the second world war, berthed at Newark, New Jersey. Cranes loaded 58 large metal boxes which, five days later, were unloaded in Houston, Texas, onto lorries which hauled them to their destinations. It was this event, argues Marc Levinson, that marked the birth of the shipping container…

“Consider the economics. Loading loose cargo, a back-breaking, laborious business, onto a medium-sized ship cost $5.83 a ton in 1956. McLean calculated that loading the Ideal-X cost less than $0.16 a ton…

“The Box” is mostly about the formative years of the industry, perhaps providing a little more information than most people actually want. The interminable travails over efforts to set standard container sizes, for instance, is important but mind-numbing. As to the future, the author looks to ships that will approach the “Malacca-Max”, the maximum size of a vessel passing through the Strait of Malacca, the shipping lane between Malaysia and Indonesia. Some container ships are already too big to get through the locks in the Panama Canal. The future giants will be a quarter of a mile long, 190-feet wide with their bottoms 65-feet below the waterline. They will be able to carry enough containers to fill a line of trucks 68 miles long…”

And some of the individual boxes in these containers may be made from trees on your land.

“THE CUTTING EDGE”

Our title and quotes are from the 3/16/06 edition of THE ECONOMIST:

“It took a leisurely 70 years after King Gillette invented the safety razor for someone to come up with the idea that twin blades might be – or, at least sell – better. Since then, the pace of change has accelerated, as blade after blade has been added to razors in an attempt to tech-up the ‘shaving experience.’

“For the most cynical shavers, this evolution is mere marketing. Twin blades seem plausible. Three were a bit unlikely. Four, ridiculous. And five seems beyond the pale. Few people, though, seem willing to bet that Gillette’s five-bladed Fusion is the end of the road for razor-blade escalation. More blades may seem impossible for the moment – though strictly speaking the Fusion has six, because it has a single blade on its flip-side for tricky areas – but anyone of a gambling persuasion might want to examine the relationship between how many blades a razor has, and the date each new design was introduced…”

To read the complete article and see the diagram of blade numbers, click on http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624861

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.

SELL LAND

For tract in AL, send e-mail to landsale@larsonmcgowin.com

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
For tracts in AL, send e-mail to jbeale@sterlingmanagement.com
For tracts in TN, send e-mail to robmccarthy@redstoneproperties.com
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to south607@acun.com
For tracts in AR, send e-mail to biglikebuda@yahoo.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
For tracts in MT, send e-mail to crawlings@mtcdc.org

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