Re:The Notre Dame fire and the future of history
by basch on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @05:03PM
(#19677300)
Also CNC to cut stone, vs cut by hand.
Re:The Notre Dame fire and the future of history
by hinkley on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @02:55PM
(#19685379)
I figured that would be under the petroleum and electricity column but sure, that's definitely true. They also use some mighty damned big trucks and explosives in quarries. I wonder how much of the 80 years of building a cathedral is just sourcing and paying for the stone.
I also love the solution Christopher Wren came up with after the Great Fire. Everyone wanted him to design their church. He made a compromise: I'll build you your church but you don't get a bell tower until after everyone else gets a church. So he went around building churches and then swung back through to add bell towers onto them.
But we still have public works projects that span eras. Some of our big infrastructure projects, and things like national parks are constantly evolving. If I were president I could make a national park today but it's just lines on a map. Generations of work may have to be done to turn it into a functioning forest, especially now when we are questioning what the definition of 'functioning forest' is and how humans fit into it. Whatever we build today, we know it's gonna be wrong and a great deal of it will have to be redone.