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I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail a
by lubujackson 1y ago
I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like:
The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the staff begin to look at major renovations to the building's architecture.
Until the Oxford groundskeeper heard about the problem. "We have a replacement beam," he said.
The groundskeeper took the curious admins to the edge of the grounds. There stood two old growth trees, over 150 feet tall.
"But these must be over 200 years old! When were they planted?" the admins asked.
"The day they replaced the previous beam."
- piker 1y agoFantastic!
- mathattack 1y agoI have no idea if this story is true, but it should be.
- kwhitefoot 1y agoWe should all strive to make it so.
- wazoox 1y agoAs said in Italian "si non è vero, è ben trovato".
- burkaman 1y agoSource: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-ox...
- urquhartfe 1y agoWhat is a "growth tree"?
- MagnumOpus 1y ago((Old growth) tree), not (old (growth tree)). Old growth trees are trees or forests that are centuries old and not recently cultures.
- Timwi 1y agoThat should have been hyphenated then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y agoTangential, how do you hyphenate (((very old) growth) tree)?
- saltcured 1y agoIn English, we're making a compound adjective so it would be very-old-growth tree. It's one step short of the German compound noun, and we make it easier to find the fragments...
- ronjakoi 1y agoEnglish is the only language I know of that allows spaces in compound words at all. It's a very peculiar feature of English orthography.
- Timwi 1y agoMandarin written in pinyin comes to mind as another example. Do you discount that because pinyin is not the primary writing system used for that language?
- Avicebron 1y ago"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit" - Paraphrased from Elton Trueblood
- travisgriggs 1y agoWhich defines why American society seems to be F'ed of late. Decades of short term rewards combined with a baby boomer population looking at their last hoorah and declining relevance. Most of the old people I interact seem to be in a state of denial about soon not being here.
- neumann 1y agoOr just compare the billionaires actions now - they are building tunnels in hawaii to prepare for survival just as they are knowingly destroying the future instead of spending their obscene wealth to protect it.
- simianparrot 1y agoElon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars in the low chance Earth becomes uninhabitable, and he'll never live to see the Mars dream become a reality even if everything goes as planned. But I guess that doesn't fit the common narratives about a man that isn't a cartoon but a flawed human with strengths and weaknesses. This is why we don't hear of great men anymore: We only hear about them when they're long dead and their transgressions forgiven and their strengths raised to a pedestal unattainable by real live human beings.
- sussmannbaka 1y agoHe is not doing that.
- simianparrot 1y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_colonization_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_colonization_pro...
- ljlolel 1y agoLiterally what they do for Norte dame?
- tim333 1y ago>Rebuilding Notre-Dame’s “forest” also meant selecting 1,300 oak trees from across France that were “as close as possible to those of the 13th century”, that is, “very straight and very slender”, according to Desmonts, with “no defects”. Jean-Louis Bidet, the technical director of Ateliers Perrault, remembers the rush to harvest the trees in autumn so the carpenters could begin squaring the green wood from “dozens of truckloads” before the end of 2022.
- veqq 1y agoThis is an urban legend. The college archivist covered it: http://web.archive.org/web/20020816065622/http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/NC/Trivia/Oaks/ http://web.archive.org/web/20020816065622/http://www.new.ox.... > In 1859, the JCR told the SCR that the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true. > In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on `progress', i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire (forests which the College had owned since 1441), he had the largest oaks cut down and used to make new beams for the ceiling. > It is not the case that these oaks were kept for the express purpose of replacing the Hall ceiling. It is standard woodland management to grow stands of mixed broadleaf trees e.g., oaks, interplanted with hazel and ash. The hazel and ash are coppiced approximately every 20-25 years to yield poles. The oaks, however, are left to grow on and eventally, after 150 years or more, they yield large pieces for major construction work such as beams, knees etc.
- stavros 1y agoBut this urban legend must be over 150 years old! When was it created?
- saltcured 1y agoRight after they consumed the previous rural legend.
- lamuswawir 1y agoThank you.
- eru 1y agoRemember it's "Town and Gown". Oxford is a city, even officially recognised so by the Crown.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rfrey 1y ago
- yegle 1y agoThis reminds me of the US Navy's Oak forest for ship building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Live_Oaks_Reservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Live_Oaks_Reservation
- K-Wall 1y agoCan't wait to see this story used on some growth hacker / seeking new opportunities LinkedIn post talking about planning for success.
- neumann 1y agoThe funny thing is that 99% of the linkedin shills will miss the second crux of the allegory: To maintain the institutional knowledge for this to happen, you need to have a culture that nurtures employees, keeps them on long term and listens to them. And gives them time to write good documentation for future-proofing.
- hackitup7 1y agoIt's wild that they managed to retain this knowledge without a Confluence by Atlassian subscription (tm).
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoThere's a better version of this sort of story that I first heard also set at Oxford. The stone steps in front of one of the college buildings have been worn down by centuries of people walking up them. The college decides to replace it, but it turns out that the stone used comes from a specific quarry in Wales that in the hundreds of year that have elapsed has been finished when it comes to this sort of rock. Nobody is sure what to do. They want matching stone but the only other source is in South Africa and it would cost a fortune to ship the stone from there. A young architect suddenly has a brilliant idea. "We could just extract the stone, turn it over and get a brand new edge". Everyone is very excited, and contractors and tools arrive to carry out the simultaneously tricky yet simple procedure. It was at that point they discovered this had already been done.
- mathattack 1y agoAlthough this story was debunked, many Universities own Timberland in their portfolios. They’re a good inflation hedge for schools with long time horizon. (Real estate and paper investments were historically very correlated to university costs) https://blog.realestate.cornell.edu/2018/04/20/harvards-natural-resources-empire-7-min/ https://blog.realestate.cornell.edu/2018/04/20/harvards-natu...
- reginald78 1y agoThere's a youtube channel shadiversity that I haven't watched in awhile. It is mostly about fantasy media and swords but also spends a lot of time on medieval building techniques and clothing. One of the more interesting videos I watched talked about how before and even after saw mills could process and produce different sized boards people would 'grow' them instead by trimming trees to produce long straight narrow branches. There was even a still living example in some English village that some trimmed 100 years ago before the process was completely stopped. This also reminds me of those Japanese temples where in order to preserve the institutional knowledge of how to rebuild the temple in case of disaster the monks tear it down and rebuild it from scratch every 30-40 years assuring the next generation has experience.
- jakobnissen 1y agoFunnily, my country has a similar story but with the opposite moral. Scattered around my country you will see plantations of huge oak trees, all the same age. What gives? Well, in 1801 and 1807, my countrys navy suffered terrible defeats by the Brits as part of the Napoleonic wars. The fleet was eventually rebuilt, but that took cutting down many old oaks. Fearing that oaks are a rare resource that must be replenished, the king ordered the plantning of new ones, so that future generations could still build powerful battleships. Those oaks matured in the 1960s. The moral of the story is that you can't actually plan 150 years into the future.