
The tree was the oldest living thing on Earth, and they cut it down - joedevon
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/great-reads/la-et-cam-c1-prometheus-jeff-weiss-20150227-story.html
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jdludlow
Can we please knock it off with the linkbait titles?

~~~
PhantomGremlin
It's not just a linkbait title, it's a linkbait article. It's called "burying
the lede"[1]

Here's what a well written lead paragraph should have:

    
    
       Most standard news ledes include brief answers
       to the questions of who, what, why, when, where,
       and how the key event in the story took place.
    

Instead, here's what we got as the first paragraph of this article:

    
    
       Somewhere in the high desert of eastern Nevada,
       a few turns off Route 50 — "the loneliest road
       in America" — a station wagon sat parked by the
       side of the highway. Before it lounged a young
       couple on red lawn chairs. A crudely painted
       wooden sign on the vehicle's roof advertised:
       "Snow Globes $20."
    

I skimmed the story to find out _exactly_ _why_ the tree was cut down, but
that information was elusive. It might be somewhere in the article, but I have
no desire to read the LA Times edition of War and Peace.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph)

~~~
joedevon
There's a limited amount of space in the yCombinator title thingie. The LA
times provided a convenient title. Did I really do something improper here?

This is a fabulous story. And I happen to know about it because I took the
trip to that memorial and was very excited to see it make the front page of
the LA Times. I can't believe I'm talking with you guys about linkbait rather
than this ancient tree that was cut down by an NSF funded expedition.

Here's the wikipedia about Prometheus:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29)

There's a lot more to the story but that should get you started.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I went back and read both the LA Times article and the Wiki entry and, you're
right, it is a fabulous story. The two articles are complementary, LA Times
has the human interest story, Wiki has the dry facts.

Anyone who is interested in this topic shouldn't be deterred by this squabble
over titles.

BTW to answer the title, the tree was cut down 50 years ago because a grad
student who was "studying the climate dynamics of the Little Ice Age" asked to
have it cut down. Because in retrospect this act became very controversial,
the exact reason(s) might have been retconned. One general reason was to study
the core rings.

~~~
joedevon
The LATimes posted a follow up story here:
[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-
cam-...](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-video-
prometheus-bristlecone-pine-20150227-column.html) and the audio of the
ceremony I attended is here (though Chrome has trouble with it, you need
Quicktime or somesuch...works w/ Safari):
[http://www.weisslink.com/index.php?/prometheus-
project/remem...](http://www.weisslink.com/index.php?/prometheus-
project/remembrance/)

