VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

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Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company

FRIDAY REPORT OF 09/16/05

The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy

REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS

If you are not a TIME subscriber, get the 09/10/05 issue somewhere. The article, “Mopping New Orleans” by John Cloud, contains fascinating diagrams of the enormous system of pumps and pumping stations that get the water up to sea level and into the Gulf. As it explains, “Rain and floodwater flow through underground culverts and canals to low points in the city, where pumping stations push them onward. Larger pumping stations then lift the water into open canals. At some points in the city, water flows to final pumping stations at the edge of Lake Pontchartain, where pumps lift it over the levee into the lake…”

“How long will it be before New Orleans is itself again? You hear estimates: three more weeks before it’s dry, at least two months for electricity, but a plausible answer is never. Vast tracts of the city – not just shanties but mansions, not just the morgue but the Southern Yacht Club – aren’t salvageable. They all sit in what is called ‘floodwater’ but is really a solution of oil, feces, battery acid, human and animal rot, burst containers of bug spray and paint thinner and nail polish and antifreeze. The primary sensory experience of New Orleans now is the smell, a gagging foulness of the charnel, of hundreds of bloated fish pooled in the 17th Street Canal and a million other nasty things floating everywhere…”

We have seen nothing nearly as helpful and as interesting in other media.

WALKING ACROSS MISSISSIPPI RIVER WITHOUT GETTING WET FEET

Vardaman’s “Mississippi: The River That Gave Birth to America” tells how to do it: “There were more colorful explorers who claimed this or that lake as the true source, but it was left to a mineralogist, Indian agent, and anthropologist to bring the explorations to a successful conclusion. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft led a major expedition up the river in 1832, and – with the significant help of two Chippewa men – the group arrived at a small y-shaped pond which he named ‘Lake Itasca’ – name concocted from what he understood to be the Latin words for ‘truth’ and ‘head’: Veritas Caput. Others were to challenge Schoolcraft’s discovery and claim the honor of finding the source for themselves, but today the honor is his.

“The several meter-wide string of steppingstones where the mighty river spills out of the lake is a favorite spot for tourists to stand and have their pictures taken, supporting their claim that they have walked across the Mississippi River without getting their feet wet. The stream that trickles from the lake is only a hand-width deep and rather quickly disappears into thick willows, grasses, and bushes on its meandering way 2,552 miles and a vertical 1,475 feet down to the sea…”

“WHY LEAVE TIPS FOR MEAL SERVICE IN RESTAURANTS?”

James Surowiecki gives this answer in the 2005/09/05 THE NEW YORKER:

“So why tip? When people are asked, they usually say that they tip to reward good service. Yet how much people tip is determined mainly by how much their meal cost, and the cost of a meal at a given restaurant is usually only tenuously connected to the work required to serve it. (It’s just as easy to open a hundred-dollar bottle of wine as it is to open a thirty-dollar bottle.) In an extensive survey of tipping studies, Michael Lynn, a professor at Cornell, found only a weak correlation between the quality of service that people report receiving and the tips they give. On average, exceptional service raised tips by about 1.5 per cent, which, Lynn argues, is too small for waiters to notice. And countries where there’s no tipping – like Australia and Japan – don’t have worse service than the United States.

“It’s instructive to consider the sort of things that tippers actually respond to. In one study, a waitress received fifty per cent more in tips when she introduced herself by name than when she didn’t. In another, waiters sharply increased the tips by giving each member of a dining party a piece of candy and then, seemingly spontaneously, offering each person a second piece, too. Squatting by the table instead of standing, writing ‘Thank you’ on the back of checks, touching customers on their shoulders all measurably improved tips. And waitresses at an upscale restaurant who simply put flowers in their hair boosted tips by seventeen per cent…”

“STORM WARNINGS
by Elizabeth Kolbert”

The title and quotes below are from THE NEW YORKER of 2005/09/19:

“Though hurricanes are, in their details, extremely complicated, basically they all draw their energy from the same source: the warm surface waters of the ocean. This is why they form only in the tropics, and during the season when sea surface temperatures are highest. It follows that if sea surface temperatures increase – as they have been doing – then the amount of energy available to hurricanes will grow. In general, climate scientists predict that climbing CO2 levels will lead to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes, though not in hurricane frequency…Meanwhile, as sea levels rise – water expands as it warms – storm surges, like the one that breached the levees in New Orleans, will inevitably become more dangerous. In a paper published in NATURE just a few weeks before Katrina struck, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that wind-speed measurements made by planes flying through tropical storms showed that the ‘potential destructiveness’ of such storms had ‘increased markedly’ since the nineteen-seventies, right in line with rising sea surface temperatures.

“The fact that climbing CO2 levels are expected to produce more storms like Katrina doesn’t mean that Katrina itself was caused by global warming. No single storm no matter how extreme, can be accounted for in this way; weather events are a function both of factors that can be identified, like the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth and the greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and of factors that are stochastic, or purely random. In response to the many confused claims that were being made about the hurricane, a group of prominent climatologists posted an essay on the Website RealClimate that asked, ‘Could New Orleans be the first major U.S. city ravaged by human-caused climate change?’ The correct answer, they pointed out, is that this is the wrong question. The science of global warming has nothing to say about any particular hurricane (or drought or heat wave or flood), only about the larger statistical pattern…”

Click on http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/050919ta_talk_kolbert to access the complete article. For explanation of storm surge, click on http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/storm_surge.shtml

“KATRINA AFTERMATH: IN A POST-KATRINA WORLD, GETTING CALLS THROUGH”
by Stephanie N. Mehta in FORTUNE – Technology

Our title and quotes are from an article in the 09/02/05 issue of FORTUNE:

“…It seems at the very times many Americans have most desperately needed to communicate, the nation’s phone networks have failed.

“Why does this happen? In the case of Hurricane Katrina, some of the massive computers used to route and connect calls were wiped out by flooding; in other instances the actual phone lines were cut or damaged by the storm. And wired and wireless networks alike sputtered when the backup generators running their switching systems – remember, much of the region had no electrical power – ran out of fuel or were themselves damaged by the floods. In other crises, networks simply were overloaded or critical equipment broke down.

“…How can we build a better phone network – one that withstands the rigors of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the attacks of September 11?…Here’s a look at a handful of advancements that are making communications more disaster-resistant – or at least more disaster resilient.

“VOIP: With many voice-over-Internet Protocol systems, users simply need access to a broadband network in order to make and receive calls using their assigned home numbers – even if they’re no longer at home. With VOIP, calls are transmitted in the language of the Internet, or ‘packets,’ so they don’t have to travel over a traditional copper telephone wire…

“Wi-Fi: One technology that may help get broadband systems back up and running is Wi-Fi, the same wireless standard you may use to get Internet access for your laptop at coffee shops and airports…One big limitation: you need a special Wi-Fi modem in order to connect to a Wi-Fi network. While most new laptops are equipped, few desktops are, and Wi-Fi phones – cordless phones that can talk to Wi-Fi networks – are just starting to hit the market.

“Softswitches: As more phone companies move voice traffic onto Internet networks, many are starting to replace their traditional switches – massive computers that take up entire rooms and guzzle power – with smaller, software-driven machines that use less power. So if generators or batteries kick in, these ‘softswitches’ can stay operational longer…”

Click on http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/ to access the entire article.

CHANGES IN BOOK SALES

This week we sold several books and deleted them from the offering at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php. We deleted all empty spaces and added new books beginning at #406.

NEW SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER

For the 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 after 05/12/05 and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.25 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.25 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. The new fee schedule does not apply to tracts marked with asterisks::

SELL LAND OR TIMBER

For 107-A. tract in GA, send e-mail to slaseter@comcast.net

BUY LAND

BUY TIMBER

*For tracts in AR, send e-mail to dyork@digitalpassage.com
*For tracts in IL, send e-mail to psftimber@hotmail.com