

The most remote tree in the world - tshtf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbre_du_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9

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harisenbon
"the most isolated tree on Earth[3] — the only one within more than 200
kilometres"

"The tree was allegedly knocked down by a drunk Libyan truck driver in 1973. "

Hitting the only tree in over 200km? That's pretty damn drunk.

~~~
ellyagg
I'm pretty sure drunkenness contributed more to being an asshole than clumsy
driving in this case.

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Dalgar
I'm pretty pissed somebody knocked that tree down, and it is on the other side
of the world. I can't imagine how pissed the locals were.

Sure hope, for his sake, the guy sobered up soon enough and got out of there
before they found out who did it...

~~~
karl11
I have the same sentiments. I was going to say this is one of the saddest
things I've ever read.

~~~
camccann
_I was going to say this is one of the saddest things I've ever read._

Approximately 150,000 people died yesterday.

In fact, another dozen or so probably died while you were reading that
sentence. If you were in a room with all the people dying at any given moment,
you wouldn't even have time to meet their gaze to say "goodbye" fast enough to
keep up.

That's a dozen thinking, breathing people, each with their own hopes and
fears, memories and regrets. Many with friends and family who loved them
deeply; children who'll never again see their mother's smile, wives who'll
never again embrace their husband. Scores of people now grieving, and all
kinds of friendships ended as each life fades into the night.

But, yeah. Shame about that tree, eh?

I don't mean this as a criticism of you personally; I had the same reaction to
the destruction of the tree. It's just an interesting testament to the
irrationality of the human emotional response that we feel sad for an unusual
_tree_ , but feel little for the immense magnitude of human loss that occurs
constantly.

~~~
iamwil
Perhaps none as unique as that tree.

~~~
Eliezer
Congratulations. You attach the lowest value to human life that I've heard
assigned in all of 2010 so far.

Just to be clear, would you like to state a value in utilons for the tree and
a value for each of the 150,000 lives lost in a day? Also, how unique does a
human brain with 20 trillion synapses have to be before it is at least as
unique as an unusually isolated tree? Very unique, apparently, if not one out
of 150,000 people qualifies. That's more people than live in all of the city
of Santa Clara. But then if everyone in Santa Clara died tomorrow, why,
probably not a single one of them ever had a thought, a feeling, an unwritten
poem, that was as worth preserving as a tree.

I'm sorry if I sound a little sharp here, but I wouldn't trade 150,000 trees
for one human being. I am honestly horrified that at least nine other people
voted you up.

This is a dangerous planet. Human beings should stick together.

~~~
danparsonson
Well, not all of us elevate humanity above the other life on this planet;
indeed, some of the important problems we humans face today are a direct
result of the kind of attitude that one human being is worth at least 150,000
trees - that is, that we feel freely able to take as much other life as we
deem necessary for our survival.

This planet is indeed dangerous, but consider how much of that danger is
caused by us and threatens both humans and other species. One of the things we
could do to help change that would be to learn to see equivalent beauty and
value in other life beyond our own.

~~~
swombat
Having some ecological sensitivity doesn't imply valuing trees (even 150'000
of them) more than human beings. On the contrary: the only value of those
150'000 trees is to enable us to live better, happier lives in a more human-
friendly world.

Extreme statement: If there was a way to replace every single tree in the
world with a plastic equivalent that looked and felt the same, and performed
the same functions as a real tree (oxygen generation, soil processing,
biological niche, etc).. if there was a way to do this and save a _single_
human life, I would do it.

~~~
Luc
Whew, I wouldn't want to be THAT kid growing up. The one for whom all the
trees in the world were killed.

You seem to elevate human life above all else. Religious reasons?
Consciousness being inherently superior? I'd be interested to know the
premises that leads to your conclusion.

~~~
swombat
The reasoning is relatively simple, and my conclusions and actions are not all
that different from those of people who do respect and take care of the
environment.

I believe very strongly that we humans will not be happy, nor even, probably,
able to live, on a world without the eco-system we have around us. We need to
preserve it, for our survival, our esthetic enjoyment, etc. However, what I
believe equally strongly is that all of this comes down, ultimately, to us,
and our subjective experience of the world.

There is no intrinsic value to anything outside of the human mind. Man is the
measure of all things. As such, any action to preserve the environment must do
so while preserving, above all else, human life, freedom, the pursuit of
happiness, and other core human values.

I fear that ecologism will grow into a movement that declares nature worth
more than other core human values, including human life and freedom. I fear
that ecologists will become oppressors, turning society against itself in a
bid to "save the world", and thus entirely missing the point of saving the
world (which is, to allow us humans to continue enjoying the world).

Is that clearer?

~~~
Luc
I don't find myself agreeing with your views (we could argue, but what's the
point), but that's a pretty good explanation, thank you.

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ajam
In a random walk through wikipedia for 5 minutes, I stumbled on this other
piece of six sigma tree news:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsurugaoka_Hachiman-gū>

A thousand year old ginkgo was knocked down yesterday... I wonder how often
1000+ year old trees are felled?

~~~
akkartik
One of my favorite episodes of Nova is about the scientist who picked a tree
at random to cut and count rings. He was shattered when he found it was the
oldest tree of them all, almost 5000 years old.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_%28tree%29>

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah>

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Luyt
Well, at least they replaced it with a 'metal sculpture resembling the tree',
that'll learn the next drunken driver who drives over it on purpose!

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houseabsolute
So, just because the driver was drunk doesn't mean it was an accident. In
fact, the odds against it being accidental are enormous considering how remote
the area is.

~~~
cruise02
You'd have to be pretty drunk to accidentally hit the most remote tree in the
world. I can't decide if I'd have to be more or less drunk to do it on
purpose.

~~~
brisance
This is actually a pretty likely occurrence when navigating. The tree serves
as a landmark and if there are no objects in the field of view to serve as a
visual reference one can lose all sense of perspective and collide with it.

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duck
I've always liked this wallpaper and now I know the whole story:
<http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpaper/?teneretree>

