Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 11/11/05
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“DISCOVER APPALACHIA
Interactive Map: Events & Attractions, Cultural, Natural, Historical, Festival”
Interactivity of this unusually-attractive map enables you to explore in detail the many interesting features of Appalachia in 13 states from NY to AL. You’ll find many surprising features. To access it, click on http://www.nationalgeographic.com/appalachia/map.html
“A LIBRARY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS”
Our title and quotes below are from The Economist GlobalAgenda 11/04/05:
“…a recent flurry of activity by big technology companies – including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo! – suggests that the dream of bringing books online is still very much alive.
“…On Thursday November 3rd, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, posted a first instalment of books on Google Print, an initiative first mooted a year ago. This collaborative effort between Google and several of the world’s leading research libraries aims to make many thousands of books available to be searched and read online free of charge. Although the books included so far are not covered by copyright, the plan has attracted the ire of publishers…
“…Ironically, many publishers are collaborating with Google on a separate venture, Google Print Publisher, which aims to give readers an online taste of books that are commercially available. The searchable collection of extracts and book information is intended to tempt readers to buy the complete books online or in print form.
“Not to be outdone, Amazon…has unveiled plans for its own foray into the mass e-book market…Amazon Pages will allow customers to search for key terms in selected books and then buy and read online whatever part they wish, from individual pages to chapters or complete works. Customers are likely to have to pay around five cents a page, with the bulk going to the publisher.
“Microsoft, too, has joined the online-book bandwagon…It will do so in collaboration with the Open Content Alliance, a consortium of libraries and universities. (Yahoo! has pledged to make 18,000 books available online in conjunction with the same organization.)…
“The business of parting consumers from their cash for online books may not prove the money-spinner that Amazon and Google hope for. But this round of the battle between the tech giants will have the happy outcome of allowing the study and enjoyment of a vast pool of written material, much of which would otherwise prove hard to access or difficult to find. Though it may not much change our reading habits, its existence will prove a boon.”
To read the complete two-page article, click on http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5130451
“PROTECTING AGAINST THE NEXT KATRINA
by Mark Fischetti”
Our title and quotes are from a 10/24/05 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article:
“…Researchers have known for at least five decades that wetlands help to stop storm surges from crashing inland. But for a century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers leveed the Mississippi River to its mouth to stop annual floods. That spared New Orleans but starved the wetlands south and east of the city of the sediment, nutrients and freshwater they need to thrive. The levees also cut off sediment flow that builds barrier islands ringing the delta.
“In 1998 scientists and engineers proposed a $14-billion master plan, which Congress never funded. Called Coast 2050, it detailed strategies to revive the delta and control flooding [see ‘Drowning New Orleans,’ by Mark Fischetti; Scientific American, October 2001]. Seven years and a bad hurricane later, the wetlands and barrier islands are so much more tattered that traditional restoration techniques may no longer suffice…
“Coast 2050-style measures carry some significant complications. For one, massive superlevees…would be needed and would overrun city streets and private land. The alternative would be to connect the barrier islands and outer marshes with large levees, dams and floodgates, creating a continuous rim around the delta. After a 1953 North Seastorm sent a surge into the Netherlands that killed 2,000 people, the Dutch government agreed to that very kind of network, which today safeguards 400 miles of coast…The Dutch engineers…erected a long series of sluices whose huge doors remain open year-round, allowing the sea in. The doors close only when storms approach…”
To read full article and see its photos, click on http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=5&articleID=000E6686-677C-134D-A77C83414B7F0000.
“WITH A PFFFFFFFFT OR A FIZZLE”
Our title and the quotes below are from the “Buttonwood” column in the 11/08/05 “Global Agenda” section of The Economist:
“The air is coming out of America’s property-price bubble. Will it pop or go quietly?
“On Chestnut Street in a leafy, middle-class suburb of Baltimore, signs declaring that ‘War is NOT the Answer’ outnumber the For Sale notices. But local property agents are in no doubt that prices are leveling off or rolling back…
“This isn’t the stuff of which dramatic crashes are made. But Buttonwood, on a visit to her esteemed pa in this neck of the woods, it struck by how precarious America’s housing market is beginning to feel. It has been powering along mightily for the past four years on super-low interest rates and ever-higher house prices. Homeowners have borrowed against their paper wealth and spent it, fuelling economic. But none of that now looks likely to continue at remotely the same pace…
“Mortgage applications were down by about 5% in October compared with September, and were lower than the same month a year earlier. The stock of unsold new houses is rising…
“What could give this scenario an uglier twist is the sharp increase in funny loans to funny borrowers over the past few years. ‘Subprime lending’ to people who would not normally be able to make the grade is running at about $500 billion a year. Much of it takes the form of variable-rate, interest-only and negative-amortisation loans. Both debtors and creditors are now more exposed to interest-rate changes…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5132938
OUR BLOG AND YOURS
Do you keep a blog? We hope so, for you read the things we write about and are therefore interested in the subjects that interest us. We are flattered, and we’d also very much like to read what you write about.
We don’t register on big globes of blogs for it may take us all day to examine all of them, and we might not understand much of it. Therefore, we hope you will send us the address of what you’ve written even remotely connected with the forest economy of the eastern United States. We’d also like to have permission to quote you, and we promise not to argue with you, in print or otherwise.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY GROWING TREES
Timberland in eastern United States can be a superb investment, but you must understand its many facets and complications. This requires diligent study, especially if you inherited a tract or a fractional interest in one. Frequent reference to Jim Vardaman’s book. HOW TO MAKE MONEY GROWING TREES, is a big help. To order it from the publisher, click on http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471609196.html It may also be available from Amazon.
“DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS”
Our title and quotes below are from are from The Economist of 10/27/05:
“Anyone who has ever owned a hamster will know that the animal spends an inordinate amount of time sleeping. Depending on your point of view, that might be a good or bad thing. Hamsters are small and, broadly speaking, the smaller the animal, the more sleep it needs. While elephants need as little as three or four hours of sleep per day, tiny opossums will snooze for 18 to 24 hours. Flipper, however, doesn’t seem to sleep at all – at least not in any way that humans know it. In the bottlenose dolphin, each side of the brain appears to take it in turns to do something that is equivalent to sleep but with only one eye closed.
“Such animal curiosities give scientists clues to the function of sleep and thus what it is, and what it is for, in humans. It is clear that sleep is more than the absence of wakefulness – it is the reorganization of the brain’s neuronal activity. During sleep, the brain is very active and two different states, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep occur. These are as different from each other as they are from wakefulness, which means that humans have three very different states of being, rather than two. In each, most parts of the brain are active but in different ways.
“When humans are deprived of sleep – something they spend about a third of their lives doing – they accumulate a sleep ‘debt.’ In other words, they must ultimately make up for some of the missed sleep if they are to continue to function. Clearly, something important is happening. But when only REM sleep is suppressed, either through brain lesions or some anti-depressant drugs, there are no obvious cognitive or physiological symptoms. So these two sleep states are likely to have different purposes.
“There are many theories about the function of NREM sleep, with its reduction in brain metabolic activity. One is that it may conserve energy at some time of day in the same way hibernation does during particular seasons. Another role for NREM sleep is also suggested by recent work showing that sleep may have a role in allowing, or facilitating, the growth of new neurons in adults…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5080881
BOOK SALES
We offer for sale all books listed at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php.
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, click on http://www.Buythisfsbo.com/pineplantation/
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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