Goddamn what a week.
Congratulations dear readers, for surviving through Hell Week (sort of), arguably one of the worst weeks of the term.
And if you’re like myself and didn’t have an official hell week, props for surviving what is essentially still Hell Week, but there’s still class, labs, assignments and reports. And the midterms don’t end when Hell Week ends. There’s pros and cons for both sides (see this issue’s PCP), but I personally would have preferred having a Hell Week. Much less stressful just focusing on exams, rather than having all this other crap to deal with at the same time.
Hope you didn’t bomb your exams like I did. If you did, hope you make it up at finals. You got this. We got this.
Rankings came out Friday. Hope you all had some luck with Jobmine, otherwise, hope you fare well in the continuous round! For those of you who wrote Work Term Reports, hope you passed (or will pass if you haven’t gotten it back yet). If you got a Resubmit, godspeed on your editing. If my class’s first work term report was anything to go off of, it’s super common and usually not a big deal at all. Currently awaiting mine. Fingers crossed. Don’t want to deal with that right now. At all.
Goddamn what a week.
Midterms hit everyone hard. It’s the time where extra-curricular activities, out social lives, and the rest of life in general gets put on hold in order to focus on exams. This issue was a lot harder to put together than previous issues, due to a much higher number of late articles (I ain’t effing around. I’m talking 89% here). Thank you so much to those who got their articles in on Friday.
To the rest of you…dishonour on you! Dishonour on your cow! You get a bit less dishonour if you gave me updates and heads-up e-mails though. Thank you for those, I really appreciate them.
It’s very understandable though. There’s so much that we as students have to do. On a term like this, I doubt even I would be getting my articles on time (if at all) if it weren’t for the fact that I’m EIC. So don’t worry. No actual dishnouring.
Thanks so much to Nancy Hui and Alex Lee who came and helped me with copy editing and last-minute content producing. I would be so screwed without you. Thanks also to Hank Shin for your moral support. Needed it more this week than before.
This issue includes quite a few things. A review of a whole bunch of E3 game announcements can be found inside, as well as some pieces about 3D printing and the recent increase of fees for the University’s 3D printer.
Most of our usual columns are back, so be sure to check them out!
Alex Toth’s Album of the Week looks at Prince’s Purple Rain, while Nancy Hui’s Take Five takes on ‘Buddy Cop’ films. Elizabeth Salsberg’s The Benchwarmer makes some FIFA World Cup predictions, and Brian Chan’s EngLife Improvement shows us the importance of eating breakfast.
For this editorial, I’m tipping my hat to my old column that I’ve abandoned for this term (ain’t nobody got time for that). Since I doubt the readership was very wide for that column, it was Leafy Thoughts, where I investigated environmental news or made stupid lists of eco-friendly things. There was one idea I’d played around with for a while, but I didn’t think it would be suitable for an engineering newspaper…which is why I’m doing it here, in the depths of my editorial, where I can write anything I want, and nobody will dull my sparkle.
So here it is. I present to you: Notable Trees!
There are scores of famous and notable trees around the world, both living and historical. I could fill entire issues of newspapers with them all. I just picked an arbitrary number of them, with no specific reason for their choice. Trees are some of the most majestic, meaningful, and important plants.
The first tree I want to talk about is the Boab Prison Tree. It’s located just south of Derby, a town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. A boab tree with an especially bulbous trunk, it is hollow and therefore perfect for housing humans….which is exactly what it was used for. In the 1890s, Australian law enforcement would temporarily lock up prisoners in the tree, as they awaited sentencing in Derby. While I’m not sure exactly how things were staying in that tree, the idea of living in one sounds fun to me. Like camping out. As often happens with decommissioned prisons, it is now a tourist attraction. Actually, all the trees in this article are tourist attractions. Comes with the fame.
Another interesting tree is L’Arbre du Ténéré in northeast Niger, Africa. Unfortunately, this tree is no longer living, thanks to one dumbass 40 years ago. It was a lonely acacia that has stood for decades in the Sahara desert. It was especially remarkable because it was considered, at one point, to be the most isolated tree in the world. There was no other tree in a 400-kilometre radius. The tree was used as a landmark by travellers in the desert, and for that reason was one of the only trees to show up on maps. A drunk Libyan driver knocked it down one fateful day in 1973. The ONLY TREE for hundreds of kilometres and he crashed into it. So unfortunate. May s/he rest in peace. A simple metal tree-like structure has since been erected as a replacement and memorial. The original tree has been moved to a museum.
Next, this article is going to take a bit of a darker turn, as this upcoming tree has a fairly morbid history. It is located in one of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, sites where millions of people were executed and buried, either for having committed crimes, or in genocidal murders for ethnic cleansing. The Chankiri Tree, also known as the Killing Tree, was a tree that was used to kill the infants or children of parents who were accused of crimes. These children were beaten and smashed against the tree, for fear that they would eventually avenge their parents if left alive. To make things worse, executioners and soldiers often laughed whilst executing these children. While some might have laughed out of actual twisted pleasure, the majority only did so in order to avoid punishment or a similar fate, in case their silence was taken as sympathy.
The next tree is famous for being the oldest individual clonal tree in the world. Clonal trees are trees that reproduce with vegetative cloning, which involves spreading and sprouting new individuals that are typically connected to the old ones by their underground root system. Clonal colonies are groups of such organisms that are genetically identical and interconnected. Entire forests might technically be one giant organism. This tree, called Old Tjkko, is about 9,550 years old, as determined by the carbon dating of its root system (as opposed to counting its rings). It is located on Fulufjället Mountain in Sweden.
The next tree is famous from literature as the shelter and main hangout for Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It is an actual tree in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, England. Named Major Oak, it is one of the most visited and celebrated trees in Britain. It’s approximately 800-1000 years old, and has a girth (circumference) of about 10 metres. I wouldn’t have minded living under that tree, or sleeping under it at after a day of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
I find trees wildly fascinating, perhaps because they’re some of the more obvious natural beings we get exposed to in the city. I don’t know about other people, but when I think “nature” I picture a forest. Maybe with birds and stuff, sometimes a river. And rocks and soil of course. Either way, trees are pretty cool in general and I hope whoever read all this hogwash learned a little something about these particularly well-known specimens.
One of these days, I might try to write something insightful and meaningful for this thing, but probably not. It’s summer term, there are slightly less readers, I have very little restriction for what I write, and I fully intend to abuse that power.
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