online.gif Drives Like A Car.  Mercury Villager.
info-l.gif info-r.gif
view



Joe Blanton, director of our Research Correspondence staff, oversees the answering of 50,000 queries and comments addressed to the National Geographic Society annually. Each week he posts answers to three of the most interesting inquiries received online at Glad You Asked. Unfortunately, individual e-mail replies are impossible.

Dropping in ...

I was wondering if you have ever done an article on skydiving, also known as sport parachuting. Or maybe if you haven’t, you could! It’s a rapidly growing sport around the globe.

Although we’ve produced television programs on skydiving, we haven’t published a magazine article on the sport. But we’ve covered other aspects of parachuting. If your NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC collection goes back far enough, you might enjoy looking over the June 1952 article “Graduation by Parachute.” In the December 1960 issue, Joe Kittinger described his jump from 102,800 feet (31,090 meters) in “The Long, Lonely Leap.” And the August 1964 issue included a report titled “By Parachute Into Peru’s Lost World.”

Thanks for the suggestion that we cover skydiving in the magazine. I’ll be sure to pass it along.

I will be retiring from the military and civil service in December of 1996. How would I go about applying for a position or helping National Geographic in some of its research work? I am a qualified mechanic, with diesel, gasoline, and other engines to include power production equipment. I have been to several countries and understand the importance of the different cultures.

I wish I could just say, “Pack up your tools and come on down!” But the fact is, as much as we appreciate the interest of the many people who want to offer their services to National Geographic research efforts, we can’t be encouraging about such participation. Here’s how it all works: Scientists in various fields apply for and receive grants from our Committee for Research and Exploration. These grant recipients then find crews for their projects. Many times the team members they select are graduate students and others already familiar with their work. The Society does not get involved with the staffing.

There are a number of organizations that use volunteer workers. You may want to check out the following:

Earthwatch Expeditions
680 Mount Auburn Street, Box 403
Watertown, MA 02272
U.S.A
+1 617 926 8200
+1 800 776 0188
http://www.earthwatch.org
info@earthwatch.org
University Research
  Expeditions
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
U.S.A
+1 510 642 6586
urep@uslink.berkeley.edu
You should be aware that these organizations require volunteers to pay a fee, usually room, board, and a contribution to the cost of the expedition.

Which continent is New Zealand a part of? How about Tahiti and all those islands in the Pacific Ocean?

New Zealand is not really part of any continent. It is what is known as a continental island, one which rises on a continental shelf and is closely linked with one of the main landmasses of the earth. New Zealand’s continental rock has become separated by geological activity over the eons from that of nearby Australia, but they were once linked. Other examples of continental islands would be the British Isles, which rest on the same continental landmass as the rest of Europe

The islands of the South Pacific are not attached to any continent either. They rise from the deep water of the main ocean basin and are called oceanic islands. They are chiefly volcanic and have never been linked by continuous land to any of the continents. Many of them are coral atolls, outcroppings of coral which fringe or cap volcanic ocean islands.