The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden near Kolkata, India, is home to the Great Banyan Tree. You may know that banyan trees spread by growing branches down to the ground that tunnel into the earth and become roots, which in turn support more branches. This spreading habit makes the banyan look like a forest when it is one single tree. The Great Banyan covers an area of over 14,400 square meters -and it is still growing!
It's taken it over 250 years to reach this staggering stretch, and not without a few natural disasters that almost did in the whole giant arboreal wonder. In the 19th century, two cyclones hit the tree, breaking it open and exposing its main trunk which led to a damaging fungal attack. By 1925, the main trunk, which once measured over 50 feet wide, had to be removed. Yet as the sign at the tree states: "interestingly enough, the tree now lives in perfect vigor without its main trunk."
Read more about the Great Banyan and see more pictures at Atlas Obscura. Link
(Image credit: Biswarup Ganguly)
Comments (2)
How is this different from the way the American economic system works in general? Well, you can remove the word "smart" a lot of the time and substitute something along the lines of "grandpa did the actual work several generations ago, and the dumb kids are living off the inheritance and the family name." That much is true. But OTOH, there are still certain similarities. Only those privileged enough to have received the best educations of an incredibly specific type and-- even more importantly-- to be taken into the secret, exclusive, private groups and clubs are eligible. Everyone else need not apply. People are not going it alone-- if you read the article carefully, you can see that this is all about private, exclusive little groups that few will ever have the opportunity to join no matter how smart they are.
Personally, I don't see why they don't increase the dollar amounts of the smaller prizes, and have more winners. That would seem to generate interest in the game and fuel more sales.
If it is: every single "risk" you take would be a "tax on the stupid".
You take risks all the time. Life is basically one big succession of one risk after another.
Of course there are bad risks and good risks to take. Buying a lottery ticket for the price of one million dollars hoping to win one and a half would be a bad risk (keeping the same odds in mind of regular lotteries). Paying ten buck to have a chance of winning several millions is worth the risk. Maybe not for everybody, but it's definitely not a stupid bet to take considering the possible winnings.