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3,500 Year Old Florida Tree Dies of Natural Causes
hondo77 writes with an excerpt from The Daily "'Mother Nature claimed one of her oldest living specimens (Monday) in a freak fire that destroyed a 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree towering over central Florida. Known as "The Senator," or simply "The Big Tree," the hollowed-out majestic timber, standing at 118 feet tall, ignited before dawn. Firefighters watched helplessly as the oldest tree east of the Mississippi — and the fifth oldest in the world — blazed and then collapsed in a heap of flaming embers.' The fire likely started by 'either a weeks- old lightning strike that smoldered until combustion occured, or friction caused by buffeting winds that ignited a spark and erupted in flames.'"
This one would have had a TON of boring stories about animals walking by.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually, there's a good answer for that: One of the really fulfilling and profounding affirming activities for nerds to engage in on a tech / "news for nerds" site is to complain about articles that don't fit that profile. But the problem is that if there never were any irrelevant articles, nobody would have anything to complain about, and thus we would have a compromised experience. It's paradoxical, but everything seems to be going according to plan.
On one hand one of the oldest trees in the world is no more, but on the other hand a Senator died in a fire...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Agree. Better title would have been "oldest tree dies of smoking related causes.".
Damn you, Phillip Morris!!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If a person were to die in a naturally caused forest fire, it's generally not attributed to natural causes. It's attributed to burning in a fire.
Wow. I wonder if that ever happened before.
It's so improbable. Such a freak occurrence might only happen once every three and a half thousand years...
I think it was the light from Venus that was focused through a lens of marsh gas that started the fire.
You decided I wasn't an orc. I'll never forget you.
I'm guessing he means BoingBoing.
When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..
which is totally what she said
Yes. Trees need to keep the smoke inside. If you let the smoke out, they die.
When I hear "boing boing" I just think "TITS!", but apparently it's a new aggregator..
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In fact ....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Ok, I'm not normally one of the guy's who says this... but
Guy's what? Guy's sockpuppet? And which guy?
Slashdot isn't a tech site, it's a nerd site. The environmental and bioligical sciences are as interesting to us nerds as astronomy, physics, chemistry, any of the other sciences, OR technology.
What is there to discuss here?
If you hadn't tried so hard to make first post you would have been able to see for yourself.
Free Martian Whores!
Was it natural causes or was it... MURDER?! Certainly no one would SUSPECT the other trees in the area! But they all just STOOD there!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I live halfway up the US coast in North Carolina. I too could have thrown a rock at the tree.
Wouldn't have hit it, but....
8*)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba