Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 09/30/05
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“HIGH WATER
How Presidents and citizens react to disaster”
By David Remnick
These excerpts from an 18-page article in The New Yorker of 051003 may bring tears to your eyes and help you understand the effects of floods that accompany hurricanes:
“A friendly man in his late thirties named Walter Hays sat down to talk. Hays is African-American, a Navy veteran who had been working as a fitter at Northrop Grumman…
“He was in New Iberia with a group of twenty-eight close family and friends, including three infants and several small children. The adults had vowed to bring everyone out together. He talked of the beautiful weather the day after the storm, and then, the next day, he said, ‘the water started coming out of the ground,’ rolling down the streets, streaming through the floorboards. In three hours, the water was at chest level. Hays filled an ice chest with papers and the group started out, halting for two days and nights, along with two thousand other souls, on the sweltering Claiborne Avenue overpass, near the Superdome.
“‘We had with us three-month-old twins, a two-month-old, no water,’ he said. ‘People were pulling guns. What we saw on that overpass was beyond imagining: there were suicides, people jumping off the bridge, older people who couldn’t take it, there were dead bodies floating underneath, the whole overpass reeked of feces and urine. Fights broke out all the time. People tried to jump on whatever military vehicles went by. But of course they wouldn’t let anyone on. There were choppers over our heads. We could see the touch-and-gos of the helicopters – it went on all night, and no one got any sleep. It was so hot and humid. And the one thing I’ll never forget is that the sky was so clear and full of stars. So clear because there weren’t any lights from the city. And all night long the kids were crying…’
“New Orleans was sixty-seven per cent African-American at the time of Katrina. It always had a substantial black population – it was one of the leading slave markets – and decades of migration starting at the time of Reconstruction made it even larger… There is hardly any industrial base, no major corporate headquarters, no home-grown businesses on the scale of FedEx in Memphis, Coca-Cola in Atlanta, the Hospital Corporation of America in Nashville…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051003fa_fact
“WHY ARE MALE BIRDS MORE COLORFUL THAN FEMALE BIRDS?”
Robert Heinsohn, professor of evolutionary biology at the Australian National University, explains on SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.com
“Darwin concluded that color differences between sexes in birds (also known as sexual dichromatism) result largely from female preference for bright colors in males. This general rule has received much support since Darwin’s time, but other influences have also been noted. For example, females of species that are exposed to predators while incubating tend to have dull colors, although both sexes may be brightly colored in species that nest in tree hollows because the females are less visible to predators. Color can also aid individuals in recognizing members of their own species. And in species that are not good to eat, colors can provide a warning to potential predators.
“…Conspicuous colors can help show that an area is already occupied and that the occupant is in good condition and prepared to fight. The red shoulder patch on red-winged blackbirds provides an excellent example. The patch is coverable and is shown to males and females of the same species but never to predators. Males who had their patch experimentally covered tended to lose their territories more often than did uncovered birds…
“Researchers realized only quite recently that birds see a much wider range of color than people do. They even have colors in their plumage that are invisible to the human eye. Birds have four color cones in their eyes (compared to three in humans), which allow them to see the ultraviolet part of the color spectrum. Scientists using spectroradiometers to measure the extent of ultraviolet coloration have found that males in many apparently monochromatic species (those with similarly colored sexes, such as European starlings) in fact sport bright ultraviolet colors that females use extensively in their choice of mate…”
To read the entire article, click on http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000EE373-9149-1320-914983414B7F0000
DEFINITION OF NEWS
By Salman Rushdie in STEP ACROSS THIS LINE
“The news has become a matter of opinion. And this puts a newspaper editor in a position not at all dissimilar from that of a novelist. It is for the novelist to create, communicate, and sustain over time a personal and coherent vision of the world that entertains, interests, stimulates, provokes, and nourishes his readers. It is for the newspaper editor to do very much the same thing with the pages at his disposal. In that specialized sense – and let me emphasize that I mean this as a compliment! – we are all in the fiction business now.”
“EXERCISE AND THE ELDERLY”
Our title and quotes below come from the print edition of The Economist of 09/22/05:
“Exercise boosts mental powers, even after a mis-spent youth and middle age. It is never too late for the lazy and the old to get off their haunches and exercise. This week, a study found that physical activity beginning in old age, even after a whole life lost to sloth, can help rescue the brain from mental decline – at least in mice.
“The link between taking exercise and remaining mentally astute into the golden years is well known but not well understood. Exercise seems to stimulate the growth of new neurons in certain parts of the brain. Physically active animals (including humans) perform better on tests of cognition than their inactive counterparts…
“Although this work was carried out using mice, it has been shown that humans, like many other animals, can grow new neurons even as adults…The implications for people, therefore, may prove to be rather straightforward: exercise may fight the ravages of age not just on your jowls and thighs and gut, but in your mind as well.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4423653
“PENGUINS STAY SNUG AND SECURE IN MINEFIELDS”
Our title and quotes below are from a Reuters report from Kidney Cove, Falkland Islands:
“There’s a mating ritual going on in the minefield. Fortunately, the would-be lovers are penguins, too light to detonate the deadly mines laid more than two decades ago during a war on the far-flung Falkland Islands. Thousands of penguins and other feathered and amphibious friends choose to nest and rest in no-go zones. The British estimate that some 25,000 land mines, mostly sown by Argentine forces in the 1982 war with Britain, remain…
“One of the mined areas is at Kidney Cove, a stunningly idyllic stretch of beach across from Stanley where four species of penguins – gentoo, king, rockhopper and Magellanic – show up every year.
“At the end of winter, the first 500 of 1,500 gentoo pairs begin their mating ritual at Kidney Cover after feeding in the cold waters. They waddle up from the mined beach to nesting areas among the tussock and diddle dee vegetation.
One of their favorite spots is on the mined side of fences with “Danger Mines” and skull and crossbones signs. Tourists are kept on the safe side of the fence, allowing the nervous, partner-seeking penguins to forget about encroaching humans…
“Gypsy Cove visitors can still see Magellanic penguins, rock cormorants, black-crowned night herons, and dolphins from the walkway at the top of the cliff. The nutritious tussock grass, which sheep reduced to 20 percent of its original cover, is making a comeback at Gypsy Cove…
“Argentina, which puts the number of remaining mines closer to 15,000, is offering to help clear more fields to adhere to an international treaty on land mines. Falkland Islanders, however, are not pressing on the issue, and most believe it is better not to fiddle with the fields. ‘There is a risk that only 95 percent would be removed,’ said Falkland Islands Gov. Howard Pearce. ‘You would bring a sense of complacency to the community and increase rather than reduce the chance of injury.’”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/09/27/falklands.penguins.reut/index.html
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
*For tracts in SC, send e-mail to loblolly@surfbvi.com
For tracts in MD, send e-mail to meyerstm@comcast.net
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 FL, send e-mail to hot63vdub@hotmail.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
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