Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 05/19/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“WHY DOES FAT DEPOSIT ON THE HIPS AND THIGHS OF WOMEN AND AROUND THE
STOMACHS OF MEN?”
Our title and quotes are from an article posted on www.sciam.com:
“Patrick J. Bird, dean of the College of Health and Human Performance at the
University of Florida, explains.
“…As most women know, it is more difficult to shed fat from the pelvis,
buttocks and thighs than it is to trim down other areas of the body. During
lactation, however, sex-specific fat cells are not so stubborn. They
increase their fat-releasing activity and decrease their storage capacity,
while at the same time fat storage increases in the mammary adipose tissue.
This suggests that there is a physiological advantage to sex-specific fat.
The fat stored around the pelvis, buttocks and thighs of women appears to
act as reserve storage for the energy demand of lactation…
“Men tend to store excess fat in the visceral, or abdominal, region. This
deposit has no apparent physiological advantage. On the contrary, it is
downright dangerous. A large potbelly, where waist girth begins to exceed
hip girth, is strongly associated with an increased risk of coronary artery
disease, diabetes, elevated triglycerides, hypertension, cancer and general
overall mortality…
“Body fat is, of course, necessary for life. Besides being a source of
energy, it is a storage site for some vitamins, a major ingredient in brain
tissue, and a structural component of all cell membranes. Moreover, it
provides a padding to protect internal organs and tissues against the cold…”
To read the entire article, click on http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_directory.cfm and then on our title.
“REVOLTIONARY WEALTH”
by Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler
In last week’s Sunday Book Review of The New York Times, Nick Gillespie
reviewed the new book by the Tofflers in the following words:
“Their new book, ‘Revolutionary Wealth,’ builds on the framework of their
previous writings, so there’s a lot of talk about clashes among First Wave
(agrarian), Second Wave (industrialized) and Third Wave (postindustrial, or
‘knowledge-based’) societies. They argue convincingly that we are on the
verge of a post-scarcity world that will slash poverty and ‘unlock countless
opportunities and new life trajectories,’ at least if we avoid the rapidly
escalating risks to such progress…
“Terrorism, global warming and potential pandemics have done little to
dampen their old optimism. ‘The long-term reality is that we, as a species,
have been getting better’ at producing wealth, they say. ‘If we hadn’t, the
planet would not now be able to support nearly 6.5 billion of us. We wouldn
’t live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we wouldn’t have more
overweight people than undernourished on earth – as we do. Life expectancy
at birth in the world, they note, including the ‘poor world,’ they note,
increased 42 percent over the past 50 years.
“The titular wealth they speak of comes from substituting ‘ever-more-refined
knowledge for the traditional factors of industrial production – land, labor
and capital.’ The United States is producing more stuff than ever with
fewer workers. The Tofflers write that only 20 percent of the work force is
now in the manufacturing sector, while some 56 percent (and growing) is
engaged in that they call ‘knowledge work’ – managerial, financial,
sales-related, clerical and professional tasks. Even activities like
agriculture have gone high-tech, through biotechnology and increasingly
sophisticated use of global-positioning satellites to customize irrigation
and fertilization down to the individual acre…”
“THE FINANCIAL PAGE
by James Surowiecki”
Our title and quotes are from THE NEW YORKER of 05/22/06:
“In the past five years, hedge funds have become a new power on Wall Street;
the number of funds has doubled, and the assets they control have tripled,
to more than a trillion dollars. In the process, they’ve also become a
favorite scapegoat for bad financial news, blamed for everything from
inflating the housing bubble and demolishing stock prices to jacking up the
price of oil…
“Yet hedge funds have been far more of a boon to financial markets than a
bane. Markets work best when investors are drawing on diverse sources of
information and relying on many different kinds of tools to figure out what's going to happen next. The sheer variety of investing strategies that
hedge funds use – in contrast to mutual funds, whose managers mostly just
buy stocks and bonds – enhances the diversity of markets. In the U.S. stock
market, hedge fund willingness to sell stocks short also makes the market
smarter and more efficient.
Paradoxically, some of the characteristics of hedge funds that make them
seem frightening also make them valuable. Secrecy, for instance, makes it
harder for hedge-fund managers to imitate what their peers are doing, a
common flaw among mutual-fund managers. And, because investors in hedge
funds typically have to give notice of a month or more before withdrawing
their money, managers are freer to pursue contrarian trading strategies that
may work only over the long term…”
To read the complete article, click on
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?060522ta_talk_surowiecki
“FUZZY MATHS”
The best description of Google that we have found appeared in the 05/11/06
print edition of The Economist. Our quotes below are from it:
“..The mathematics comes from the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The
breakthrough that made their search engine so popular was the realization
that the chaos of the internet had an implicit mathematical order. By
counting, weighting and calculating the link structures between the web
pages, Messrs Page and Brin were able to return search results more relevant
than those of any other search engine.
“So far, they have maintained this superiority. Danny Sullivan, the editor
of Search Engine Watch, an online industry newsletter, ranks Google as the
best search engine, Yahoo! as second-best, Ask (the re-named Ask Jeeves)
third, and Microsoft’s MSN last among the four. Google’s share of searches
has gone up almost every month of the past year. Including those on AOL, an
internet portal that uses Google’s search technology, Google had half of all
searches in March…
“Google is primarily an advertising agency. It does not sell the usual sort
of advertising, in which an advertiser places a display on a page and pays
per thousand visitor ‘impressions’ (views): it has perfected the more
efficient genre of ‘pay-per-click’ advertising. It places little text
advertisements (‘sponsored links’) on a page in an order determined by
auction among the advertisers. But these advertisers pay only once an
internet user actually clicks on their links (thereby expressing an interest
in buying)…”
To read the complete article, click on
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6911096
“YOGA…SOY…MCDONALD’S?
by MARC GUNTHER, FORTUNE SENIOR WRITER”
Our title and quotes are from a 06/05/17 posting on http://money.cnn.com.
“Imagine Ronald McDonald munching on soybeans or teaching yoga.
“It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The latest addition to McDonald’s
menu is an Asian salad made of orange-glazed chicken, snow peas, red
peppers, mandarin oranges, almonds and green soybeans known as edamame.
People who buy the salad as a part of a ‘Go Active! Happy Meal’ for adults
are given one of four 15-minute exercise DVDS, including one that teaches
yoga…
“Whatever the back story, McDonald’s new attention to health appears to be
paying off, for the company’s bottom line if not Americans’ waistlines.
Same-store sales in the U.S. have grown for an impressive 36 months. The
company’s share price is up by more than 30 percent in the past two years,
outpacing the S&P500…”
To read the complete article, click on http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/17/news/companies/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm
“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.
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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