The "crooked forest" of Gryfino (Poland) - updated

The link for the embedded photo was sent to me by Jennifer Fox, with a request for an explanation, since her web search had not proved satisfactory.

Several possibilities come to mind.  It's obvious that the trees were bent when very young, then recovered.  Those who live near large lakes with prominent ice heaves will have seen trees affected in this manner, and a similiar effect could occur after a blowdown by straightline winds.

I get the sense that this forest is a tree farm, because of the uniformity of age of the trees, and I suspect this is a man-made curvature, because of the similarity of all the trees involved.  If that's true, then my best explanation would be that these trees were trained as "compass timbers" for shipbuilding or as material for other woodworking.  See this post from last fall on that subject.

This blog gets about 500 visits a month from readers in Poland; perhaps someone can offer a definitive answer.

Photo credit: tapenade.

Addendum January 2012.  One of the curious aspects of blogging is that you never know which posts will be popular or produce sustained interest.  I posted the above about a year ago, and it has continued to accumulate hits (40,000 so far!) and comments, so I thought a repost with an update was warranted.

One of the early comments included a link to Discovery News, with a map showing the location of this forest:

The bent trees are in a small suburban area, surrounded by normal trees (evident in some of the photos in the gallery at this link).

Re the etiology, my original postulate was that they were bent by humans for shipbuilding timbers or other woodworking.  Others chimed in with suggestions of "gravity anomalies," crop circles, the Tunguska Event (!!), "evil," and tank maneuvers.

I favor the later suggestion that the trees were intended to be used for furniture making in the "German Jugendstil style (1900/30), which is noted for its numerous curvilinear features."  Another reader offered a link to this photo of a sledge with curved wooden runners:

Government limousine numbers soaring

The number of limousines owned by the federal government has risen by 73% during the first two years of the Obama administration, as reported at the Center for Public Integrity's IWatch website:

Most of the increase was recorded in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Obama administration officials said most of the increase reflects an enhanced effort to protect diplomats and other government officials in a dangerous world. But a watchdog group says the abundance of limos sends the wrong message in the midst of a budget crisis...

According to General Services Administration data, the number of limousines in the federal fleet increased from 238 in fiscal 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 412 in 2010. Much of the 73 percent increase—111 of the 174 additional limos—took place in fiscal 2009, more than eight months of which corresponded with Obama’s first year in office. However, some of those purchases could reflect requests made by the Bush administration during an appropriations process that would have begun in the spring of 2008...

“The categories in the Fleet Report are overly broad, and the term 'limousine' is not defined,” adding that “vehicles represented as limousines can range from protective duty vehicles to sedans.”..

The department said it defines a limo as a vehicle that carries a VIP or “other protectee,” rather than by the type of car, but said most of its limos are Cadillac DTSs, which cost the taxpayer more than $60,000 for a 2011 base model...

If the data is [sic] correct, some federal employees who once rode in style now face more proletarian transportation options. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, ran a fleet of 21 limousines in 2008 under George W. Bush, according to the fleet report. It now makes do with only one.  The Government Printing Office also lost all of its six limos between 2009 and 2010. The VA and the Government Printing Office did not respond to calls for comment.

More at the link.  Photo credit AP.

This is a "shinplaster"

Found at the Hennepin County Library's tumblr, the above is -

- a type of emergency currency issued in the Northwest following the start of the Civil War. Issued at Minneapolis October 10th, 1862. Name of issuer is R.J.Mendenhall. Denomination is 5 cents.

Wikipedia has more on shinplasters, including a suggestion re the etymology - 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name comes from the quality of the paper, which was so cheap that with a bit of starch it could be used to make paper-mâché-like plasters to go under socks and warm shins.

- and a description of similar local currencies in Canada and Australia (where they were also called "calabashes)."

In some places they formed the core of a company shop economy (Truck system), circulating as private currencies. They were often of such low quality that they could not be hoarded, and shopkeepers off the property would not take them, as they would deteriorate into illegibility before they could be redeemed.

There are tales of unscrupulous shopkeepers and others baking or otherwise artificially aging their calabashes given as change to travelers so that they crumbled to uselessness before they could be redeemed.

"Truck system" - twice in one week.

Your blog may someday be your résumé

From a story in the Wall Street Journal:

Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their "Web presence," such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog...

Companies are increasingly relying on social networks such as LinkedIn, video profiles and online quizzes to gauge candidates' suitability for a job. While most still request a résumé as part of the application package, some are bypassing the staid requirement altogether...

The world's largest carved emerald

The emerald, discovered at Carnaiba, in the emerald-producing province of Bahia, Brazil, in August, 1974, made its way to Palo Alto via a local gem trader with whom we had worked and partnered for many years. He took it to Hong Kong for carving, where a team of four carvers was commissioned to sculpt the design of Tao Heaven...

The original weight of the emerald was 62 pounds, or over 140,000 carats. Its dimensions then were approximately 16 1/2" high, 14" wide, and 7" deep... the final weight after carving is 86,000 carats, or 38 pounds. The excess material ended up as dust on the studio floor...

From the owner's website, via the newsletter of the Madison Gem and Mineral Club.

The vegetation is changing in Siberia

As reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

The pair of images above shows a site on the Siberian tundra near Russia’s Yenisey River in the summers of 1966 (top) and 2009 (lower). In the 43 years that passed between the first image and the second, shrubs colonized virtually all of the previously open tundra surrounding a cluster of lakes...

At the site Frost studies, the tundra is often patterned with bald spots—circles of bare ground where seasonal frost heave can uproot plant seedlings. These frost circles, sometimes called “frost boils,” give the tundra in the top center of the images its speckled look. The bare spots create an open canvas for shrubs to colonize, presuming they can withstand the seasonal frost heave. At this site, the colonizing shrubs are usually alders...

The conversion of tundra to dense, tall shrubland triggers a cascade of changes in how the ecosystem functions. Observations from Europe, Alaska, and Siberia in recent decades have shown plant communities became less diverse as mosses, lichens, and other shorter-growing plants disappeared under the shade created by shrubs. The loss of lichens, in particular, could pose a problem for caribou and reindeer, which forage on them extensively.

The change from tundra to shrubland can also affect the thawing of permafrost...

More at the link.  Via NASA's Earth Observatory.

The double tragedy of Sarah Burke

While training on that halfpipe slope, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke suffered a torn vertebral artery in her neck that caused bleeding in her brain, an injury that she would die from...

That's the first tragedy.  The Center for Public Integrity explains the second:

...her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada — and pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine days.

The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada... her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage...

It is clear the family needs help. Not only are they grieving, they are facing financial ruin, simply because Sarah Burke’s accident was in the United States of America. 

And, in case you are wondering about who pays for Gabrielle Giffords' rehab, that is discussed at ScienceBlogs' Pump Handle public health blog -

"Congresswoman Giffords was injured while she was on the job and her rehabilitation is covered by workers' compensation under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act."...

The type of acute rehabilitation she receives - involving speech, occupational and physical rehab - costs about $8,000 a day, according to the Brain Injury Association of America. Post-acute rehabilitation can range in cost from $600 to $2,500 daily. The expenses leave the treatment options well out of reach for most patients whose insurers won't pay for the services. 

Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images.