Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 05/12/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“MAMMOTH EXTINCTION CAUSED BY TREES, STUDY SUGGESTS
by Anne Minard”
Our title and quotes below are from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS:
“New findings suggest that an ongoing, epic whodunit may actually be a whatdunit. That is, climate change, not humans, may be what killed off Ice Age mammoths, horses, and other large animals in North America…
“Guthrie’s [Dale Guthrie, University of Alaska] data, show that increases in moisture and warmer temperatures 13,500 to 11,500 years ago allowed for edible plants to migrate north.
“This plant exodus provided more food sources for horses, mammoths, bison, and elks living in the far north, he suggests…But then the milder climate backfired on the big mammals. It paved the way for trees. Which eventually outshaded and outcompeted the low-lying plants the animals depended on, Guthrie says.
“The upstart forests transferred the landscape’s nutrients to the treetops, out of reach of the large mammals. Elks and bison, it seems, adapted better to the new landscape than mammoths and horses…”
To read the entire article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/ice-age.html
“THE WIKI PRINCIPLE
ARE MANY MINDS BETTER THAN A FEW?”
“Wikipedia is an international Web-based free-content encyclopedia. To access it, click on www.wikipedia.org. It exists as a wiki, a type of website that allows visitors to edit its content…Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a computer, web browser and Internet connection.
“…Wikipedia has more than 3,800,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,100,000 in the English-language version…
“By this measure, it is almost 12 times larger than the print version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Taking in the 200-odd languages in which it is published, Wikipedia has more than 3m articles. Over 100,000 people all over the world have contributed, with a total of almost 4m ‘edits’ between them. Wikipedia already has more ‘visitors’ than the online New York Times, CNN and other mainstream sites. It has become a vital research tool for huge numbers of people. And Wikipedia is only five years old…
“Wikipedia’s most notable style policy is that editors are required to uphold a ‘neutral point of view,’ under which notable perspectives are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth…”
It is described in the 4/22-28/06 issue of The Economist. To read the article, click on http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794228
“THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE”
by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White
If you hope to influence people by what you write (personal letters and otherwise), you should buy your own copy of the book in our title. Once you discover how many times you will use “the little book” to improve your prose, you will wonder how you previously got readers for your stuff.
I got my first copy in April 1985. My paperback contains 85 pages of text and 7 pages of index. Following its dicta enabled me to write HOW TO MAKE MONEY GROWING TREES that John Wiley published in 1989 and has been selling ever since.
“ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS PAYING A LOT MORE TAXES THAN YOU THINK
By SHIKHA DALMIA”
Our title and quotes are from an article posted on the REASON internet site on May 1.
“The fact that illegal immigrants pay taxes at all will come as news to many Americans. A stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes…
“In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.
“…another vital thing happened in 1996: the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don’t have Social Security numbers to file taxes.
“One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS’ scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million to the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers…
“…aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they’ll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers – that the Social Security Administration stashes in the ‘earnings suspense file’- added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.
“Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children…
“The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don’t want here in the first place. With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060501.shtml
“TRANSATLANTIC RIVALS”
Our title and quotes are from The Economist print edition of 5/4/06:
“…Americans spend far more on health care than the inhabitants of other rich countries, but their life expectancy is below the wealthy world’s average. Annual medical costs, measured by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development using purchasing-power parities, which take account of price differences, amount to $5,635 per person in America compared with $2,231 in Britain. Yet an American’s life expectancy at birth is 77.2 years compared with 78.5 for a Brit.
“Life expectancy, though, is a crude and indirect measure of health. For example, two factors contributing to America’s poor showing have nothing to do with the victim’s health. These are a high rate of road-accident mortality, and the highest homicide rate in the rich world…
“America’s greater ethnic diversity is not the reason, since the research excludes blacks and Latinos (in England, it excludes Asians and blacks, to make the populations comparable). Access to health care is an obvious suspect, because America, unlike other rich countries, does not have universal coverage. Official figures show that 16% of the population is uninsured. However, only 7% of the middle-aged Americans in the survey lacked health insurance, while within the top third by income, access was almost universal. Yet such people were generally sicker than the top third of the English group. Insurance gaps are thus not to blame for Americans’ poorer health.
“Nor are unhealthy lifestyles the main culprit, say the researchers. Smoking rates among this age group are slightly higher in England. Obesity is more common in America, but heavy drinking is more widespread in England. Altogether, these risk factors explain very little of the health disparity between the two countries. For example, they account for less than a fifth of the difference in diabetes.
“The study thus establishes that middle-aged Americans are much sicker than their English counterparts without being able to pinpoint why…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6877069
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
For tract in AR, send e-mail to scantland@n2net.net
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
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to aaron.langston@cssemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil
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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