The Wonders of Plywood, the Dummies Version

construction of plywood

Back in about 2011, Google changed their search algorithm to give lower search rank to content farms. As a result, many of those sites; like Associated Content, helium, BrightHub and Squidoo; withered and died. Although arguably the worst offender of all, eHow.com managed to stay afloat by tightening their "standards"; though any tightening was mainly in the area of format; not content quality¹. Much of their earliest content, rubbish vomited up by total incompetents, remains online; as is obvious from today's DotD entry, Andrew DeWitt and his amazing "Advantages of Plywood."²

Most people who've worked with plywood a time or two could probably cobble together something reasonable to address the topic. DeWitt (a double major in theater and creative writing), however, got a little carried away:

"Plywood has become an integral part of construction today. From its creation in the early 20th century, plywood has undergone a great deal of transformation and refinement over the years. It started as a curiosity that has since become a stable product in all forms of construction. There are many advantages that plywood has over more traditional lumber."

A "great deal of transformation and refinement"? "...traditional lumber"?Yeah, sure: we suppose all those superlatives and superfluous adjectives are an outgrowth of Andrew's creative writing classes. Be that as it may, DeWitt clearly needed some hand-on experience with the stuff -- or some observational skills if he'd ever actually used it -- based on his claims such as "Today, plywood is used in almost every construction job on the planet..." ...that might be a little hard to prove. Or statements like

"Each layer of plywood is laid with the grain turned in such a way that it reinforces the weak spots of the other layer. This creates a wood panel that is incredibly strong and durable."

The grain is "turned in such a way"? That's a weird -- and not particularly accurate -- way to describe the opposing grain directions of the sheets of veneer. Oh yes, and Andrew? "incredibly" is so... so weak an adjective that I'm surprised eHow let you use it. And then there's this bon mot:

"Because plywood doesn't rely on coming from a single piece of wood, the materials are much easier to gather. "

Which, again, is a rather strange way to say that making plywood from sheets of veneer peeled off logs is cheaper than trying to find trees eight feet thick. So why didn't DeWitt say that? Well, Andrew didn't say that because he didn't know, In other words, he's a dumbass. And since we've already established that he prefers flowery language (e.g., "One of the most touted benefits of plywood is in its incredible ease of use.") to facts, we're perfectly happy to award him a "robust" Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ Self-appointed web gurus apparently think "quality" refers to how easy something is to find, not how accurate it is. So much for those of us who find the whole Kardashian thing stupid...
¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/about_4671784_advantages-of-plywood.html

copyright © 2017-2022 scmrak

DD - LUMBER