Wetlands Protect Coastal Communities

The impact of the hurricane would have been reduced if Louisiana had not lost so many of its coastal wetlands. A map summarizing wetland loss in Louisiana from 1932-2000 is posted on the web site of the National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC) (http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/). Note the particularly heavy loss south, southwest, and southeast of New Orleans.

The ocean is strong, but natural coastal systems are good at cushioning the impact of massive amounts of rushing water.

Marshes and dunes are not preferred for permanent human habitation, however, so we destroy them and build walls to prevent flooding. It works well, by and large, but Mother Nature can do wonders.

Arguing that New Orleans would have been spared if the Corps of Engineers got the money to bolster dikes misses the point: Living in flood zones is risky. Choosing to take that risk means accepting the consequences. Low-probability events are not no-probability events.

(Earthquakes, tsunamis, unprecedented cold snaps and dry spells, tornados, et cetera... You could say Living is risky.)

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The Elusive Subja Seed

Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria, ...

1AQD / NU1AQD / W1AQD QSL Collection

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Realistic HTX-100

The 30th Annual Conference of the Central States VHF Society was held July 26-28, 1996 at the Thunderbird Hotel & Convention Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. Among the papers presented was Make Your HTX-100 a Flexible IF Transceiver by Rus Healy, NJ2L (now K2UA).

follow that qar!

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