Disinfotainment

Trees rarely inspire hatred, but on the campus of the University of Iowa, everyone hates ginko trees. In the center of the Pentacrest, right in front of the entrance of the Registrar’s office, some idiot planted a female ginko tree. Every winter, all winter long, the tree drops its seed pods all over the sidewalk. The seeds produce an incredibly foul, persistent stench, which is very difficult to get off your shoes. Everyone that trods upon the seeds tracks the stench everywhere they go. Students and faculty have campaigned for years to get rid of the trees, and today in the Des Moines Register, this story appeared:






When I was a student, I had to walk past these trees every day, and I often fantasized about pouring a gallon of herbicide on their roots, which goes completely against my nature. I used to do landscaping every summer, I’ve planted thousands of trees, so I’m very protective of trees in general, but these ginkos are a special case. Every landscaper and nurseryman knows that you just don’t plant female ginkos. Most nurseries will kill off the females before they ever grow to maturity, there’s just no market for female ginkos. And you have to kill them before they mature, when the trees are sold in the spring, there’s no way to tell if they’re female, the sex of the trees can only be determined in autumn.

There’s a preposterous legend about how these trees came to be planted on the Pentacrest. I heard a story about a group of itinerant buddhist monks came and secretly planted little ginko twigs, sat around the twigs in a circle, chanting their sutras, and in 24 hours the trees grew to full size. What a load of rubbish. There just isn’t any group of Johnny Ginkoseed monks, and besides, these trees were planted right in front of the entrance of one of the main buildings on campus, you couldn’t have planted anything there without drawing attention, and a circle of orange-robed monks would have drawn quite a bit of attention back in the 1950s.

Another annoying piece of idiocy about ginkos is that nobody can agree on how to spell the name. Properly it is “ginko” since the tree is from asia and the name is written with kanji that are transliterated as “gin” and “ko.” So it’s most properly “ginko” and not “gingko” or “ginkgo.”

There is so much to loathe about ginko trees, I can hardly contain my joy at the announcement of their removal.

Guitar players usually have a specific preference, they like one brand of guitar above all others. I’m a Gibson man, they just feel right to me, and if you hand me a Fender I just can’t play it right. My favorite guitar is a 1961 Gibson L-2 three-quarter size guitar, it was a hand-me-down from my sister, my parents bought it for her to take guitar lessons when she was about 8 or 9 years old. I especially like it because I have an unnaturally short pinky, and the 3/4 size fretboard makes it easy for me to hit the notes. I’ve looked around for many years for another suitable 3/4 size guitar, but nobody makes a decent model because 3/4 size guitars are designed for little kids, and nobody spends serious money on guitars for kids.

But today I was astonished to learn that Gibson reissued the L-2 3/4. It’s a serious guitar, it retails for $2995 but sells for around $1600. Ouch! Here’s a picture of the reissue, it’s only made with an ugly finish they call “vintage sunburst” but is more commonly known as “tobacco.” Mine is a real sunburst, which is a reddish color, and much more attractive.





The story behind the reissue is rather interesting. The L-2 3/4 is part of a set called “The Father and Son Guitars” after Woody and Arlo Guthrie. Gibson reissued a copy of Woody Guthrie’s favorite Gibson Southern Jumbo guitar and also Arlo’s first guitar, an L-2 3/4 given to him by his father. There’s a rather heart-wrenching tale about how Arlo acquired the guitar, and how he lamented to Gibson about how the guitar had deteriorated over the years, so they made a new one and gave it to him, and repaired his original. I had no idea my little beat up guitar was a Guitar Of Legend.

There are a few problems with 3/4 size guitars. A full-size guitar fretboard is designed with “tempered tuning,” every fret is mistuned a tiny bit, but overall it has good tuning. Unfortunately, at 3/4 size, the tempering is off, so it’s really hard to get the strings in tune, the intonation is a bit off. The body of the guitar isn’t very large, so it doesn’t produce a big sound. But that could be an advantage if you just use it for practice and don’t want to annoy the neighbors. For me the big advantage is that the frets are 1/4 easier to reach with my short finger, and the strings don’t have as much tension so they’re easier to press down than a full size guitar.

I’d sure like to own a new L-2 3/4, but since I already have a vintage model, that doesn’t make much sense. So I decided to get my old axe repaired and put back into shape, it needs a little adjustment, and it wouldn’t hurt to have the dent in the side fixed. But there’s a limit to how much money I should sink into this guitar. To estimate its value, I searched around the web and found a 1950 L-2 3/4 for sale in a guitar shop in Tokyo, selling for almost $2500US. Mine’s in better shape but not as collectible since it’s not as old, so I guarantee it’s not going to be worth anything like $2500, I’d be surprised if it was worth more than $250. The last time I took it into a shop for repairs, they laughed at me for liking such a junky old guitar and told me to be glad it’s even playable at all.

The temperature here is -9°F and still dropping, so I thought it might be an appropriate time to post a picture of this odd little circular slide rule.






This slide rule belonged to my grandfather, who was a meat inspector for the US Department of Agriculture. The slide rule was used to calculate how much dry ice was needed to fill a railroad car to keep a load of beef frozen until it reached its destination. The back side bears the date 1954.

How can you tell if a geologist is a crackpot? If he makes a specific prediction like this:

Keilis-Borok’s team now predicts an earthquake of at least magnitude 6.4 by Sept. 5, 2004, in a region that includes the southeastern portion of the Mojave Desert, and an area south of it.