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Breaking news - Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on fire


Armybrat

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2 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

NIce pun, brah!

Actually there's been some kind of spire there from the earliest days, but they kept getting messed up/breaking off (much like the guy in Holy Grail who built 6 castles on top of each previous sinking castle).  Before the spire was reconstructed and re-positioned in the mid-19th Century, it had blown off in a bad windstorm sometime in the 18th Century and nothing was sitting up there except for patches in the roof where it sat.  So it's fair to consider this latest spire pretty much Victorian.

I think they ought to put like a rotating laser on it that shoots holy imagery on nearby buildings, but that's just me.

Bet they can buy some Planet Hollywood globes for cheap......

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13 hours ago, BlueGreySky said:

The tower is close to 4 miles away from Notre Dame.   That seems shopped.

those 3 boxes in the foreground are the air conditioner units on top of the greenish roofed building behind the opera bastille, which is a mile away.  that's just a really long lens and perspective compression.  the tower is 2.6 miles away from notre dame.  if you're on top of the tower at the chateau de vincennes (3.9 miles away) with enough reach (lens + pixels to crop with), it'll look like that.

Edited by elfenix
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10 minutes ago, DoobieWah said:

TP

 

But wanted to add:

I doubt it will be rebuilt as a religious structure. Ultimately it will be rebuilt as a museum. There are  just not enough practicing Catholics left in Paris to bother with the expense of rebuilding as a sanctuary.

 

My $0.02, but I would love to be wrong.

 

And I'm not even Christian, much less Catholic.

That's not how this is going to work.  If you think the Catholic Church would allow that you haven't been paying attention.

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14 minutes ago, DoobieWah said:

TP

 

But wanted to add:

I doubt it will be rebuilt as a religious structure. Ultimately it will be rebuilt as a museum. There are  just not enough practicing Catholics left in Paris to bother with the expense of rebuilding as a sanctuary.

 

My $0.02, but I would love to be wrong.

 

And I'm not even Christian, much less Catholic.

It is still very much a church - well attended masses pretty much every morning, and jammed on Sundays. You need to be there 3 or so hours early to get in for the Easter service. 

I have been in there as a "tourist" when they gave you the choice of leaving or attending service.

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9 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Romans built roads still in use after 2,000 years.   

TxDOT can’t build a stretch of 35 between Austin and Dallas that’s good for more than 2 years.  

Yep, & COTA spent a shit-ton of money on a racing surface that's falling apart after just 7 years.

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1 minute ago, wood said:

Yep, & COTA spent a shit-ton of money on a racing surface that's falling apart after just 7 years.

Well to be fair sandal traffic and donkey carts on 6" thick granite cobbles aren't the same thing as  2,000 HP traffic on a maybe 4" asphalt road way affected by temperature.

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1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

And yeah fiberglass at present can't replace long span steel I believe, but I can see a day when fiberglass shaped sub structures will be used to greater effect.

Yeah, an S-glass composite would probably be lucky to achieve a tensile modulus similar to aluminum (1/3 that of steel).  Carbon graphic composites, on the other hand.  (I have no idea what the long life concerns would be for either the fiber or the epoxy when buried in concrete, but it should certainly be possible to get a similar stiffness (that's what your Mom said)).

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3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yeah, an S-glass composite would probably be lucky to achieve a tensile modulus similar to aluminum (1/3 that of steel).  Carbon graphic composites, on the other hand.  (I have no idea what the long life concerns would be for either the fiber or the epoxy when buried in concrete, but it should certainly be possible to get a similar stiffness (that's what your Mom said)).

Yeah, I think There's way to go before it takes over for rebar, but I think the future will see a carbon fiber/fiberglass matrix of some kind replace it.  Seems like Seismic zones would really benefit from that type of design leap.

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TP
 
But wanted to add:
I doubt it will be rebuilt as a religious structure. Ultimately it will be rebuilt as a museum. There are  just not enough practicing Catholics left in Paris to bother with the expense of rebuilding as a sanctuary.
 
My $0.02, but I would love to be wrong.
 
And I'm not even Christian, much less Catholic.

I think it’s already functionally both. Unlike most churches which are owned by the Vatican, Notre Dame is owned by the French government for use by the Catholic Church. I imagine it gets more tourists than worshipers or its probably close. Even as a “museum” of sorts it’s more impressive for it to be a functioning church. I’m sure many non-Catholics attend service just for the interest factor.
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8 minutes ago, NowThis said:

do these places have insurance? How do government buildings get private insurance or is that all covered after the fact by tax dollars?

In France I am sure it's different since I believe the government technically owns ND.  In America most parishes/diocese are self-insured.  We had an arson light a shelf of hymnals on fire in the back of our church 6 years ago.  The fire was small and contained and only damaged the shelf and the wall between the interior of the church and the lobby... but between cleaning up the smoke damage, replacing carpets with tile, etc etc it took us 2 years to recover from a relatively sequestered fire that only burned for less than 10 mins before the FD arrived.  I can only imagine the road ahead for ND and the rebuild. 

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3 minutes ago, BlueGreySky said:

In France I am sure it's different since I believe the government technically owns ND.  In America most parishes/diocese are self-insured.  We had an arson light a shelf of hymnals on fire in the back of our church 6 years ago.  The fire was small and contained and only damaged the shelf and the wall between the interior of the church and the lobby... but between cleaning up the smoke damage, replacing carpets with tile, etc etc it took us 2 years to recover from a relatively sequestered fire that only burned for less than 10 mins before the FD arrived.  I can only imagine the road ahead for ND and the rebuild. 

why not get commercial insurance? 

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1 minute ago, NowThis said:

why not get commercial insurance? 

Rather than try to put it in my words, I copied this from the Diocese of Scranton website that does a good job explaining it...

Such a program (self-insurance) demands an increased awareness and responsibility for safety conditions, and the correction of improper, hazardous or unsafe situations.  The benefits of such awareness will be a reduction in total claims, and continued savings in the cost of insurance to all parishes and agencies.  We maintain very high levels of Self-Insurance Retention. Above these levels, we have purchased various levels of Excess Insurance to cover against large catastrophes. Our program must, therefore, be managed in accordance with the recognized principles and practices of underwriting and claims adjustment that is required under the terms of our excess policies.

ADVANTAGES TO EACH PARISH
⦁ All Risk Coverage
⦁ No co-insurance requirement
⦁ All Properties fully protected
⦁ Newly acquired properties automatically insured
⦁ Liability exposures fully protected
⦁ All parishes organizations and activities protected
⦁ Automatic coverage for Parish and Diocesan events
⦁ Favorable costs

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30 minutes ago, BlueGreySky said:

Rather than try to put it in my words, I copied this from the Diocese of Scranton website that does a good job explaining it...

Such a program (self-insurance) demands an increased awareness and responsibility for safety conditions, and the correction of improper, hazardous or unsafe situations.  The benefits of such awareness will be a reduction in total claims, and continued savings in the cost of insurance to all parishes and agencies.  We maintain very high levels of Self-Insurance Retention. Above these levels, we have purchased various levels of Excess Insurance to cover against large catastrophes. Our program must, therefore, be managed in accordance with the recognized principles and practices of underwriting and claims adjustment that is required under the terms of our excess policies.

ADVANTAGES TO EACH PARISH
⦁ All Risk Coverage
⦁ No co-insurance requirement
⦁ All Properties fully protected
⦁ Newly acquired properties automatically insured
⦁ Liability exposures fully protected
⦁ All parishes organizations and activities protected
⦁ Automatic coverage for Parish and Diocesan events
⦁ Favorable costs

Self insurance talk not going away.

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I am just thankful to have known so many people that felt it necessary to bombard me with their tales today of catholic pilgrimages to this important French cathedral.   My father was A German Lutheran.  My mother is a Spanish Jew.  And I’ve Never once asked about your trip to Paris...so what about that makes you think I’ll give Fuck one today?   

It is a beautiful building but I don’t care about it or your vacation or your faith.  

That said, I got $20 says it’s done before La Sagrada Familia.  

Edited by Lobo
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2 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yeah, an S-glass composite would probably be lucky to achieve a tensile modulus similar to aluminum (1/3 that of steel).  Carbon graphic composites, on the other hand.  (I have no idea what the long life concerns would be for either the fiber or the epoxy when buried in concrete, but it should certainly be possible to get a similar stiffness (that's what your Mom said)).

 

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5 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

He's gonna bring in Equadoran and Guatemalan workers ?  Those Frenchies work 4 days a week tops....

Labor already there. Does not need to import anyone. Algerians, Moroccans and Sudanese. Maybe one or two Ghanaians as supervisors. A marvelous plan 

 

And it is Ecuadoran. 

Edited by InkaUtexas
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Here's a fantastic write-up on Notre Dame de Paris from the Quartz Obsession.

 

Quote

“In wanting to give her a second youth, we have perhaps destroyed her,” a technician who worked on Notre Dame’s current restoration told the New Yorker. This is one of the tragedies: The hard-won rehab of the 856-year-old building led to the fire.

But the rehab was deeply necessary. A Time magazine piece from two years ago detailed the reasons: Simple decay had done its damage, but so had modernity. “Pollution is the biggest culprit,” France’s chief historical-monument architect said. Bernard Fonquernie, the architect who led a 1992 restoration, told the New York Times the same thing: “It shows that in our harsh civilization, stone has become very ephemeral.” The famous restoration prompted by Victor Hugo’s work was also a problem, with its use of cement and low-grade stone in place of unattainable materials.

France had been spending €2 million ($2.3 million) on it annually, but that paled in comparison to the €164 million ($185 million) estimated for necessary repairs, which the Archdiocese of Paris has been raising privately. (The good news is that the fire immediately opened billionaires’ pockets.)

If there’s another silver lining, it’s that Notre Dame is, even with its grandeur, kind of a mutt, built and restored by countless architects over the centuries. Its restoration will have to respect its imperfections. “It looks so balanced, so symmetric… much of the building is crooked,” Fonquernie told the Times. “Horizontal and vertical lines were not necessarily respected. The wall faces are not straight. We can see the designers were masters, but the execution was sometimes primitive.” Perhaps that is its grandeur, with the imperfections speaking to its age, the many hands that have touched it, and its hard life as an urban church.

...

Hugo wasn’t the only literary great to draw inspiration from the cathedral. Marcel Proust, who is most famous for the six early-20th-century texts that comprise In Search of Lost Time, was also deeply impressed. “Notre Dame de Paris was spellbinding for Proust. He was even known to have thrown a fur-lined overcoat on over his nightshirt and to have stood in front of it for two hours in order to receive fresh inspiration from the portal of Saint Anne,” writes Mary Bergman in On Looking Back One Learns to See.

Bergman notes that Sigmund Freud, the German psychiatrist and influential writer, was also awed by Notre Dame. The first time he saw it in 1885, Freud said he had “a sensation I never had before.” Thereafter, he returned “every free afternoon” to be in its majestic presence. “I have never seen anything so movingly serious and somber,” Freud said.

...

Many details of the building’s original construction were lost to time until art historian Andrew Tallon applied a modern technology to the ancient structure in 2015. The Vassar College professor, who died in 2018 at the age of 49, used laser scanners to collect more than a billion pinpoint-accurate measurements of the cathedral, then wove the scans together into a 3D panoramic rendering. His work revealed the flaws in the original structure—Tallon told National Geographicthat the cathedral’s western end was a “train wreck,” with columns and aisles misaligned from shoddy craftsmanship. In some places, builders simply incorporated existing structures instead of removing them.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I think a lot of people will donate.  I know I will.  I am currently looking at the various ways to donate and trying to pick which one.

Just go the "I'll buy 2 or 3 new LV purses/luggage sets" route.  High impact

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5 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I think a lot of people will donate.  I know I will.  I am currently looking at the various ways to donate and trying to pick which one.

Good for everyone who donates, but I think $800 milion could go to a better cause.

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5 minutes ago, mycox said:

Good for everyone who donates, but I think $800 milion could go to a better cause.

you mean its not a good idea to donate money towards a church that belongs to one of the wealthiest organizations in the world, that also pays no taxes?

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6 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

you mean its not a good idea to donate money towards a church that belongs to one of the wealthiest organizations in the world, that also pays no taxes?

Church belongs to France. Catholic Church pays to use it.

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