Ponderosa Pines

I had to save this article...it reminded me of when I took a Field Botany class at BYU...We learned about the Scotch Pine (Pinus Sylvestrus) and it smelled a lot like vanilla..or butterscoth, too. Another favorite tree of mine is the Pinon...which produces pine nuts. When we lived in Roosevelt, Utah, we would explore stands of pinon.

Here is the article and its source...thanks to yahoo for publishing it today...

Photo 1 Photographer Tom Bean visits the largest unbroken stand of Ponderosa pine trees in the world.
Photo 2 U.S. Forest Service guide Steve Hirst sniffs a Ponderosa pine during a July hike in an area near Hot Shot Ranch in Coconino National Forest.
Photo 3 With San Francisco Mountain as their background, hikers move alongside a strand of Ponderosa pines.

Ponderosa Pines: Rugged Trees With A Sweet Smell
by Daniel Kraker
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111803772
August 17, 2009 from APR

If you're driving through the high desert of the Southwest — or sitting at home, watching an old episode of Bonanza — you can't miss the Ponderosa pine. It's the signature tree of the mountain West.
President Obama and his family surely saw plenty of Ponderosas during Sunday's visit to the Grand Canyon. If they had driven about an hour south, they could have seen the largest unbroken swath of the trees in the world. It extends 300 miles — from northern Arizona to southwestern New Mexico.

Black Jacks And Yellowbellies

In Arizona's Coconino National Forest, tourists take hiking tours through the trees. You don't have to look hard for them — they're everywhere.
As prolific as Ponderosas are, there's still a lot that scientists don't know about them. For example, they change color as they get older. And they begin to smell a bit strange, too.
"Early lumbermen who came out here thought they were two different species," says Steve Hirst of the U.S. Forest Service, who leads tours through the area. The trees with black bark were called black jack pine; those with yellow bark were called yellow pine.

But they're the same tree — the yellow ones are just older. When the tree reaches 110 to 120 years old (a mere teenager for a Ponderosa pine), it begins to shed its black bark and reveal an inner bark of yellow. That's why locals call them "Yellowbellies." Scientists still don't know why this happens. But just look at a stump of an old Ponderosa and you'll see a massive swath of yellow.

The Smell Of Baking Cookies

There's something else that begins to happen to the tree in the yellowbelly phase. Stick your nose into a crevice of the bark and take a big sniff. It may smell like butterscotch or vanilla. The next person who smells it may insist it's more like cinnamon, or even coconut.

Scientists don't know why a closely sniffed Ponderosa smells like baking cookies. The aroma may arise from a chemical in the sap being warmed by the sun. (The Jeffrey pine, a close relative of the Ponderosa, is also known to turn yellow and give off a similar smell.)

A Bark Of Armor

When you stick your nose deep into a Ponderosa, you're also getting intimate with the tree's armor against fires: bark that is thick, flaky and sometimes compared to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The tree needs that protective layer. The hot, dry Southwest gets hit by a lot of forest fires, most of them touched off by lightning. This part of northern Arizona has one of the highest incidences of lightning strikes in the country.
But, Hirst says, lightning isn't enough to finish off a Ponderosa. When lightning hits one, "it flash-boils the sap, and it just blows the bark off. It doesn't burn the tree," he says.
When the pieces of bark fly off, they carry away the fire's heat. So a major fire can leave "the Ponderosas in charge" of a forest, Hirst says. They remain standing while the competition burns.

Protecting An Iconic Tree

At least that's what's supposed to happen under natural conditions. But for almost a century, conditions in this area weren't natural. Forest fires were contained to preserve the Ponderosas, so they could be cut down for valuable lumber.
Left unchecked, the forest undergrowth became dense fuel — feeding fires that could easily grow out of control.

And an intense fire can "ladder up" to the crowns of the Ponderosas, Hirst says. "When the crowns burn, and you destroy an entire stand, they may never come back."

That's why the U.S. Forest Service, working with environmental groups and timber companies, is thinning out trees and setting prescribed fires, so the Ponderosas can continue to reign over this stretch of the Southwest.
At the end of a recent day-long hike, Hirst gathers his tour in a spot that he calls the grandest in all the forest, an open clearing amid hundred-foot high pines. The trees are dwarfed by the purple crags of the San Francisco Mountain, which at 12,633 feet includes the highest peak in Arizona.

But there's not much time to enjoy the view. The forest gives a gentle nudge: Thunder. Then there's an even bigger nudge, as the thunder gets a bit louder. And these visitors don't need to be told that their hike is over.
The images for this story come to NPR from photographer Tom Bean

A Great College-West Point

I just really liked this article....this is what acollege should be like...holding to the highest standards...and turning out wel disciplined people who can hold positions of leadership.

America's Best College
by Hana R. Alberts, Forbes.com

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/americas-best-college-497708/
How West Point beats the Ivy League.

College senior Raymond Vetter gets up at dawn to fit in a run or a workout. Then, hair shorn neatly and pants pressed, he marches into breakfast, where he sits in an assigned seat. After six hours of instruction in such subjects as Japanese literature and systems engineering, two hours of intramural sports and another family-style meal with underclassmen, Vetter rushes to return to his room by the 11:30 p.m. curfew.

Most college students, we think, do not march to meals. A goodly number of them drink into the wee hours, duck morning classes and fail to hit the gym with any regularity. But Vetter, 21, is a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where college life is a bit different.

According to students, alumni, faculty and higher education experts, the undergraduate experience at West Point and the other service academies is defined by an intense work ethic and a drive to succeed on all fronts. "We face challenges and obstacles that not every college student has to face, but we are able to be competitive in all the different areas, from sports to academics," Vetter says.

No alcohol is allowed in the dorms and freshmen are given only one weekend leave per semester. That rigor, combined with the virtue of a free education, has made West Point tops in FORBES' list of the best colleges in the country, up from sixth place last year. The rankings are compiled in conjunction with Ohio University economist Richard Vedder and his Center for College Affordability & Productivity.

West Point excels in most measures. It graduates 80% of its students in four years. It is fourth in winners of Rhodes scholarships since 1923 (ahead of Stanford), sixth in Marshalls since 1982 (ahead of Columbia and Cornell) and fourth in Trumans since 1992 (ahead of Princeton and Duke). This year 4 out of 37 Gates scholars, who earn a full ride to study at the University of Cambridge in England, graduated from the service academies. The Gates roster includes four Yale grads, one from Harvard and none from Princeton.

"I think I got a lot out of it," says Joseph M. DePinto, USMA class of '86 and chief executive of 7-Eleven. "Just the discipline, the approach I take to leadership, the understanding of the importance of teamwork. All of that stuff I learned at West Point, and I think that's what helped me be successful."

Classes are small, with no more than 18 students. Cadets work their way through a core curriculum in which an English major has to take calculus and a chemist has to take a philosophy course. Since there are no graduate programs, faculty and administrators can focus on the undergraduates.

"If you really look at Brown University or Boston College or Stanford, their number one mission is likely not to teach. It's to bring research dollars to the campus … to write the next book that will get them on CNN," says James Forest, an associate professor at West Point who is the director of terrorism studies. "Pressure to be that kind of new academic star isn't there [at West Point]."

A big factor in its top rank is that grads leave without a penny of tuition loans to repay. The Army picks up all costs and pays the cadets a stipend of $895 a month. On graduation, they start as second lieutenants, earning $69,000 a year. They have to serve in the armed forces for five years plus three more years of inactive reserve duty. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have pulled 15% of reservists into active duty.

West Point has plenty of critics. In April Thomas E. Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered the military, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post ( WPO - news - people ), calling on the government to shut the military academies. West Point doesn't produce officers of any higher caliber, he argues, than a graduate from another elite school who has participated in an ROTC program. "It's not better than Harvard," he says, citing the fact that the majority of West Point professors don't have Ph.D.s and the school's traditionally weak treatment of crucial subjects like anthropology, history and foreign languages.

It also produces young people more prone to groupthink than to groundbreaking ideas. W. Patrick Lang, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a professor of Arabic at West Point in the 1970s, says the service academies "haven't been very good at producing people who were very good at humanistic, open-ended problems."

Bruce Fleming, who has been teaching English for 22 years at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., faults the service academies for their rigidity. "I really love my students. I just do. It's an institution that grinds students down," he says.
But the cadets know the drill: job security. Leadership training. Lifelong friendships. "A West Point diploma is at least as impressive as a Harvard diploma for a lot of things," says Robert Farley, an assistant professor of national security at the University of Kentucky. "Were I an employer, I'd have utter faith in a graduate of the service academies."

"We are giving up what may be the quintessential college experience. But we're getting a job where we're immediately in a leadership position, not a back-room job where who knows what your chances of promotion are," says Elizabeth Betterbed, 20, of Fox Island, Wash., one of the 699 female cadets at West Point. "Like any other school you incur a debt, and for us it only takes five years to pay off. It's really nothing."

Behind the Numbers

Our college rankings are based on five criteria: graduation rate (how good a college is at helping its students finish on time); the number of national and global awards won by students and faculty; students' satisfaction with their instructors; average debt upon graduation; and postgraduate vocational success as measured by a recent graduate's average salary and alumni achievement. We prize the undergraduate experience and how well prepared students are for the real world rather than focusing on inputs such as acceptance rates and test scores. Our data are from publicly available sources rather than surveys filled out by the schools themselves. Special thanks to Richard Vedder and his research team at Ohio University.
Top 5 Colleges
1. United States Military Academy
2. Princeton University
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Williams College
5. Harvard University

A Galaxy Far Far Away

Speeding Stars Confirm Bizarre Nature of Faraway Galaxies
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090805/sc_space/speedingstarsconfirmbizarrenatureoffarawaygalaxies/print
Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
SPACE.com clara Moskowitz
staff Writer
space.com Wed Aug 5, 1:16 pm ET
Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers have revealed.
These hyperactive stars move at about twice the speed of our sun through the Milky Way, because their host galaxy is very massive, yet strangely compact. The scene, which has theorists baffled, is 11 billion light-years away. It is the first time motions of individual stars have been measured in a galaxy so distant.
While the stars' swiftness is notable, stars in other galaxies have been observed to travel at similarly high speeds. In those situations, it was usually because they were interlopers from outside, or circling close to a black hole.
But in this case, the stars' high velocities help astronomers confirm that the galaxy they belong to really is as massive as earlier data suggested.
Bizarre, indeed
The compact nature of this and similar galaxies in the faraway early universe is puzzling to scientists, who don't yet understand why some young, massive galaxies are about five times smaller than their counterparts today.
"A lot of people were thinking we had overestimated these masses in the past," said Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, leader of the new study. "But this confirms they are extremely massive for their size. These galaxies are indeed as bizarre as we thought they were."
Scientists used the new velocity measurements, conducted with the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, to test the mass of a galaxy identified as 1255-0. The same way that the sun's gravity determines the orbiting speed of the Earth, the galaxy's gravity, and thus its mass, determines the velocities of the stars inside it.
The researchers found that indeed, the galaxy is exceptionally dense.
Given its distance of 11 billion light-years, galaxy 1255-0 is seen as it existed 11 billion years ago, less than 3 billion years after the theoretical Big Bang. Among other galaxies we can observe from this time period, about 30 to 40 percent are compact like this one. But in the modern, nearby universe, astronomers don't find anything similar.
Something wrong?
Somehow, high-mass galaxies from the young universe grow in size but not in mass – they spread out but maintain their overall heft – to become the high-mass galaxies we see today.
"It's a bit of a puzzle," van Dokkum told SPACE.com. "We think these galaxies must grow through collisions with other galaxies. The weird thing is that these mergers must lead to galaxies that are larger in size but not much more massive. We need a mechanism that grows them in size but not in mass."
So far, such a mechanism is elusive, but astronomers have some ideas. Perhaps these galaxies expand their girth by merging with many small, low-mass galaxies. Or maybe these galaxies eventually become the dense central regions of even larger galaxies.
"It could also still be that we are doing something wrong," van Dokkum said. "But I think at the moment you could say that the ball is somewhat in the court of the theorists. Hopefully they can come up with some kind of explanation that we can test further."

Julie and Julie, the movie

Note: I am looking forward to this movie because I have always loved Julia Chil (I have a set of 4 VHS videos of her cooking, teaching. I copied this review, and the site is given.

Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia: 10 Things I Liked About the Movie and 3 Things I Didn't
by James Oliver Cury
on 07/30/09 at 06:11 AM
http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2009/07/nora-ephrons-julie-julia-10-things-i-liked-about-the-movie-and-3-things-i-didnt-.html#?mbid=synd_shine1_juliejuliapremiere

Unless you've been sleeping under a colander, you've seen the previews, read the pre- and post-screening blog posts (Michael Park nailed it back in late 2007), and perhaps even looked forward to this year's mega food movie, Julie and Julia (in theaters August 7). It's a big deal in culinary cinema: Meryl Streep plays (channels, really) Julia Child, Stanley Tucci is her husband Paul, and Amy Adams holds her own as blogger Julie Powell (the one who attempted to make all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 2002).

Writer-director Nora Ephron seamlessly and wittily juxtaposes the two women's lives (based on the narratives in Powell's Julie & Julia and My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme).
What did I think? Below, a list of 10 things I liked about the movie and 3 things I didn't.

10 Things I Liked About the Movie Julie & Julia:
1) Eye-melting food porn. Close-ups of boeuf bourguignon, chocolate cake, lobster, and bruschetta will have you salivating even if you scarfed down a jumbo popcorn before the movie began. And yes, the dishes on screen are all real, prepared by chef Colin Flynn and stylist Susan Spungen. Cast and crew had to eat the same dish time after time for multiple takes. Hard life.

2) Humor, great lines. When blogger Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) is having trouble putting the lobster to sleep, she is serenaded by her husband to the tune of Psycho Killer  by Talking Heads. With one lyric change: "Lobster Killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?" Very funny scene. Runner-up: Julie Powell uttering, "I could write a blog! I have thoughts!"

3) Good pacing. The movie starts with Julia Child eating a life-changing dish. Eventually it cuts to blogger Julie Powell. For the next 124 minutes, the film flits back and forth between the two. Not an easy transition to sustain time and again. And yet, neither of these stories could sustain a 90-minute movie. Kudos to Nora and the editors.

4) Gorgeous shots of Paris in the '50s and modern-day New York. The restaurants, the street scenes, the food markets, the apartments, the old cars, the retro kitchens. Just enough filth and squalor to ring true.

5) Sensitive men. They're not perfect, but the husbands (played by Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina) are generally supportive and kind, not the usual self-serving sleazeballs we see on the big screen. Healthy relationships? What a concept.

6) Core message of persistence, vision, inner strength. Stick-to-it-ness. Julia spends ten years writing and selling her book. Julie Powell spends a year futzing in her lame kitchen. But they endure the hardships. And who doesn't like uplifting endings?


7) The music. Mostly oldies. But smart sophisticated choices like Mes Emmerdes by Charles Aznavour, Time After Time by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, A Bushel And A Peck by Doris Day. And Psycho Killer by Talking Heads.

8) The honest representation of book publishing. Not a lovefest. Not a simple "hey, I have an idea" and voila it's a bestselling cookbook. The movie shows how hard Julia (and co-authors) worked. And how they had to pitch, revise, re-pitch, and wait, patiently, for very little money, to see their book become a reality.

9) Julia's cluelessness. As if it wasn't hard enough for Meryl Streep to play Julia Child without resorting to caricature, Ms. Streep also manages to portray Julia's naïveté (she did not know how to cook until she studied at Le Cordon Bleu) and clumsiness (her initial attempt to slice an onion is endearingly pathetic) without hamming it up too much.

10) Epicurious is mentioned! When Julie Powell is listening to voice mail on her answering machine, one of the messages comes from an editor at Epi. We are honored.

3 Things I Didn't Like About the Movie Julie & Julia:
[SPOILER ALERT, SORT OF...DON'T READ IF YOU'RE AFRAID OF HEARING HOW THE MOVIE ENDS]
1) Sex scenes. Yes, there are a few. Look, I appreciate that Julia was a real person with real intimacy. But I still have trouble believing the frisson between the dapper, calm, and collected Stanley Tucci and the hulking and honking ball of energy that was Julia. Maybe it's her voice.

2) Omitted truths. I don't think I'm ruining the movie by telling you that Julie Powell does not live happily ever after with her husband. I'm not 100% sure what happened, but it is common knowledge that Julie had some sort of marital strife, separation or divorce, albeit not during a time represented in the movie. (This info was updated after receiving reader comments.)

3) Abrupt ending. The movie ends with the publication of Julia's early biography. It does not follow her career as she appears on television and becomes a cultural icon. This is not a flaw; it was intentional. The script sticks to the action in My Life in France, compiled by her and Alex Prud'homme, her husband's grandnephew. But there's a sense of: OK, what happens next?
Note: They are NOT divorced...see next article...

Julie Powell, author

Julie Powell and her husband didn’t eat everything she made from Julia Child’s cookbook. “We always took a bite of everything but didn’t always clean our plates. We gave away a lot of food to friends, and what I didn’t like I took to work,” Powell said.

How Julia Child helped Julie Powell master the art of life
By KATE LAWSON
The Detroit News

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1349418.html
’’“’’”

If the expression “you are what you eat” still applies, then Julie Powell would be devouring boxes of Cracker Jack.
Nutty, salty, sweet and highly addictive, the secretary-turned-blogger-turned-book-author — and now the subject of the film “Julie & Julia,” opening Aug. 7 — is all that and more.

Dressed in a pretty royal blue silk blouse and dark denim skirt, she looks like a schoolgirl and talks like a sailor as she reflects on the last seven years and the project that helped change her life — cooking all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 365 days.
Q. You were 29 when the project began. Obviously in undertaking such a daunting thing, you had to have already been an accomplished cook.

A. I wouldn’t say “accomplished”; I knew how to cook — not step-by-step from the “Joy of Cooking” or anything. Actually, my favorite cookbook was from Paul Prudhomme (the famed New Orleans chef). I had moved to New York from Texas, and I was really missing my mother’s cooking. She made a gorgeous seafood gumbo, and I really wanted to re-create it. It was the roux that was my undoing. I borrowed a spoon from a friend and kept stirring and stirring the flour and butter over high heat to thicken and darken it. I didn’t realize the spoon was plastic, and when I pulled it out of the pot, the end had melted off. I had no clue. Still, I loved to entertain and was wildly ambitious; I was always fixing dinner for my friends.
What was the motivation behind the project then?

I was lost. I was a temp secretary in an awful job in New York after the 9/11 attacks, and it was sucking the life out of me. But it was beyond the cooking. I had a revelation that I needed to do something. I needed structure, I needed progress, and I needed to do something besides coming home every night watching TV and getting drunk.

It was your husband Eric’s idea about blogging, which was a relatively new concept then. Were you a writer before you started blogging?
I always had half-finished novels lying about, poems I’d written, but it’s hard when you get started for you to believe in yourself as a writer. The blog helped me stay focused.

Did Amy Adams, who plays your character in the movie, contact you before her role?
No, actually it was in the contract that I had to stay away from the set, which was really difficult actually because Nora (Ephron, the director) filmed most of the exteriors in my neighborhood. Amy was everywhere, at my subway stop, where I shop, outside the building where I used to work. One day I could even look out my window and see them filming. It was surreal. I felt like I was being stalked.
Any advice you can offer to anyone attempting this same project?

A complete novice should start at the beginning, and you can see that Julia has written the book for the home cook. Every ingredient is available in a supermarket. Of course, it would help if you had a good butcher, though, especially when you need to extract bone marrow, you should have them do that for you. The first recipe is a delightful Potage Parmentier, which is a simple potato soup. And while it would never make the cover of Gourmet, it is a wonderful soup and the perfect place to start.

I understand that when Julia Child read your blog she thought you were “glib and unserious.” How did that make you feel?

I’m sorry I never got to meet her. I really think Julia affected so many people so profoundly. We all have our own ways of remembering her, and everyone has their own Julia. I think my Julia would be just fine with me.

How is your husband doing with all the publicity? I know that in your next book, “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession,” you not only write about learning to become a butcher but an extramarital affair you had with a friend.
Eric was remarkable. He’s never not been there, and I don’t know another man who would do that. Except maybe Paul Child; he was with Julia all the way. And yes, we are together and happy.

Is there anything you miss from your old life? Are you different now?
Well, I’ve calmed down but not entirely. And I sure don’t miss my job.

Plastic in our Ocean

I read about this before...those teeny tiny bits of plastic...Here is an article from Aug. 4, 2009 yahho news....and accompanying picture.

Scientists study huge plastic patch in Pacific
By Steve Gorman Steve Gorman Tue Aug 4, 8:42 am ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
A research vessel carrying a team of about 30 researchers, technicians and crew members embarked on Sunday on a three-week voyage from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based at the University of California at San Diego.
The expedition will study how much debris -- mostly tiny plastic fragments -- is collecting in an expanse of sea known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, how that material is distributed and how it affects marine life.
The debris ends up concentrated by circular, clockwise ocean currents within an oblong-shaped "convergence zone" hundreds of miles (km) across from end to end near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States.
The focus of the study will be on plankton, other microorganisms, small fish and birds.
"The concern is what kind of impact those plastic bits are having on the small critters on the low end of the ocean food chain," Bob Knox, deputy director of research at Scripps, said on Monday after the ship had spent its first full day at sea.
The 170-foot vessel New Horizon is equipped with a laboratory for on-board research, but scientists also will bring back samples for further study.
Little is known about the exact size and scope of the vast debris field discovered some years ago by fishermen and others in the North Pacific that is widely referred to as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
Large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.
The debris zone shifts by as much as a thousand miles north and south on a seasonal basis, and drifts even farther south during periods of warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures known as El Nino, according to information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Besides the potential harm to sea life caused by ingesting bits of plastic, the expedition team will look at whether the particles could carry other pollutants, such as pesticides, far out to sea, and whether tiny organisms attached to the debris could be transported to distant regions and thus become invasive species.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Will Dunham
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090804/us_nm/us_ocean_plastics/print