Posts Tagged: ‘logging’

This is both a fascinating and depressing video. At the beginning of the 20th century there were millions of acres of Redwood forests containing massive trees reaching nearly 400 feet tall at the high end. They could be 20 feet or more in diameter at the base. Native American Indians did not cut them, and there were limits on what settlers could do with them until steam technology and railroads made it technologically possible to cut and move the huge logs. But once the technology was available, it only took a few decades to cut almost all of them down. Here’s how they did it…

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Coolest Stuff blogger and adventure editor Amanda Arnold wrote about the Nazca lines recently – a collection of drawings at the ground that you can only see from the air. These geoglyphs (some are geometric shapes, while others are figures such as a monkey or an astronaut) are a mystery to this day. Why were they created? What were they for?

While we still don’t have an answer to that, we do have a clue as to what happened to the Nazca people themselves.

The Nazca civilization produced art, pyramids and beautiful textiles, along with the Nazca lines. Cahuachi, the capital for a time, may have been the biggest mud city in the world. But the Nazca had disappeared by the time the Incan Empire rose to prominence, and our answer to why they vanished may rest on a tree, the huarango tree.

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Since it’s Friday and storming outside, I treated myself to a cartoon indulgence this afternoon: Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax.” For those of you who haven’t read the 1971 book or seen the TV special, the environmental fable recounts the greedy Once-ler; his insatiable drive to chop down silky, puff-topped Truffula trees; and the small Lorax’s strenuous opposition.

Lately, much has been made of the prescient relevance of book’s grim scenes — forests cut down, animals displaced, sherbet-colored scenery mucked up by plops of brown ooze. Because of that, Hollywood thinks it’s time for a fresh audience: “The Lorax” will be hitting the big screen in 2012, complete with CG animation and three dimensions, according to Variety.

To be honest, I’m glad this movie will be CG. The live-action versions of other Seuss tales — 2000′s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and 2003′s “The Cat in the Hat” — were more creepy than anything else.

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