The tree was the oldest living thing on Earth, and they cut it down | Hacker News Reader

The tree was the oldest living thing on Earth, and they cut it down

latimes.com

11 pointsjoedevon9 comments

Can we please knock it off with the linkbait titles?

I copied the wording from the LA Times and it describes the story very well. At the time that tree was cut down it was the oldest known living tree.

Your title says "thing", not "tree". The original title fits under the 80 char limit.

Dan,

First of all, the LA Times changed the title from when I originally posted it. The first title they used was stupid quite frankly.

Second, under "sharelines", there are two headlines they suggest using when sharing the story. I picked one. I can't believe you guys are seriously having a problem with it. It describes the story well.

Third, from what I heard when first getting into this story, it WAS the oldest known living organism on Earth. Since then they have found older "things", and having found the Prometheus tree, they have found older tree(s) as well looking in the same area as well as areas that have the same general living conditions.

Fourth, I'm sharing a link, not writing a freaking thesis. I'm glad at least someone on this thread bothered to find out about this story because it's fascinating.

Fifth, for those who are more interested in the story than semantics about titles, there is a hero, Mike Drakulich, from the Parks Service who refused to cut down the tree. He even took his chainsaw with him because he didn't want them to cut it down. They found another Park Ranger to do it the next day. I met Mike's daughter at the memorial. It was quite touching. Here's another version of that story. (Not all accounts say the exact same thing btw): http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/816442-196/daily-twip---...

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

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

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

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.

Some people think it was done knowingly, to make a name for Curry, the grad student who made the request. Others say that because the Swiss guy who was trying to get a core sample which is non-destructive, was unable to do so before heading back to Switzerland, Curry genuinely wanted to do this for science. At some point I found a link where some students of his defended him and said it had a profound impact on Curry for the rest of his life.

The thing is, they wanted to study the rings because they thought it was really old.

The LATimes posted a follow up story here: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-... 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...

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