Here’s Diane Bish, the first lady of the pipe organ, playing the 8,000-pipe Notre Dame organ that was somehow spared yesterday.
While stubbornly ignoring the fact that the ability of a centuries-old building undergoing a massive fire to withstand dumping of significant masses of water from planes is very uncertain, and that that was the reason that such water dumping was not in fact attempted in the Notre Dame fire, according to many people with significant firefighting expertise who know far more about this matter than you do.
Somebody who thinks that figuring out the very complicated physical vulnerability of such a building in such a situation is merely a matter of “calculating mass times velocity” has no idea what he’s talking about.
what complicated physical vulnerability is involved in a heavy downpour of rain? What don’t you understand about the relationship of altitude and dispersion rates?
…while flying over a heavily-populated city, with all of the weird wind effects and updrafts that the various skyscrapers cause, against the advice of experienced fire fighters…
Nonsense! The world is a theme park. Everything is potentially a money-making attraction. Get with the game. This thing must be restored, only this time with sprinklers, safety rails, concessions, and actors playing at priests and hunchbacks.
BTW may I say the Paris Sapeurs-Pompiers, besides doing some truly boss firefighting, really rock the style with those helmets.
And everyone else who has looked at the notion dispassionately has reached different conclusions. I was not the first nor the last to question whether you were merely protecting Herr Donald.
Really? You want me to see that as its “true” function? You can have a function like that anywhere. I mean good for you if that’s what speaks to you, but if you eliminate architecture, history, art, social science, archaeology, science and technology, design, aesthetics, etc., as reasons I should care, well, I’m going to care a lot less.
:rolleyes: Make up your mind. First you suggest that the firefighters should have dumped a huge mass of water in a precision strike on the cathedral, as per the video you showed us of a low-flying plane extinguishing a burning truck.
Then when it’s pointed out to you that a massive dump of water could have collapsed the cathedral walls (and would also have required a plane to fly high enough to avoid the spire, while it still stood, and other obstacles), you retreat to claiming that they should just have “dispersed” the water like “a heavy downpour of rain”.
As though a momentary shower of water resembling “a heavy downpour of rain” for the length of time it takes a plane to pass overhead would have actually accomplished something in controlling the fire. Hey, why not rally all the local residents to spit in the direction of the conflagration while you’re at it? Every little bit helps, after all.
Once again, Magiver, the problem here is not me failing to understand basic physics; it’s you failing to understand that your simplistic appeals to basic physics ideas aren’t adequate to describe a situation as physically and logistically complicated as a burning medieval cathedral in the heart of a city.
The more you keep doubling down on your clueless assertions, the more clueless you sound. Spiderman already explained this to you:
Here’s another video from the inside, showing the aftermath. Forgive me if it was posted already.
It’s facebook, but you don’t need an account to view.
The candles didn’t even melt.
As horrible as the damage is, it seems it could have been way worse. The interior walls look OK, and the wooden pews are intact. And it looks like a lot of the stained glass survived. All that suggests to me (to be fair, I don’t know what I’m talking about) that the fire stayed mainly on the roof. Kudos to the firefighters!
I’m an atheist, ex-Catholic, and I hope the cathedral can be fully restored.
My point was that you should not expect ‘authenticity’.
Did you notice the very prominent and highly visible modern art on the front of the altar at the crossing?
Some of the wooden pews are intact - the ones under the holes in the vault are gone between the falling stone and the burning beams piled over the mess. It would not surprise me if the floor beneath was damaged. That is repairable, of course. I also wonder about possible water damage to the tile floor, but, again, that is repairable.
The nature of a building like that is a certain level of on-going maintenance and change. It’s not a museum, it’s a working building. You’re going to have a mix of old and new, that’s what authentic means in this case.
Yes, exactly. That’s my point, it’s not frozen in time. There are layers of changes being added all the time, even in the normal course of events.
In fact, that modern-art altar is very tasteful and fits in well with the building. At a distance, it looks like four abstract figures, probably meant to be the four evangelists. Close up, it’s seems to be only ‘damaged’ shapes.
On another topic, my guess is that the holes in the vault were caused by the spire collapsing. The spire weighed 75 tons, and the force of that falling from a height onto the vault must have caused local collapses. But the rest of the vault did its job and protected the body of the cathedral.
Moderating:
If anyone wants to discuss dropping water by planes or anything around that topic they can open another thread. Any further discussion about that in this thread will be considered a hijack and will be moderated.
I hope this is not out of bounds- what about that Crown of Thorns? How do we know that is indeed a true relic and not something that someone in the Crusades got swindled into buying? Has it ever been carbon-dated? Has the blood on said crown ever been analyzed and found to be human? If it’s a true relic, hooray that it was saved. But I’m a little skeptical.
[quote=“nearwildheaven, post:201, topic:832584”]
Here’s Diane Bish, the first lady of the pipe organ, playing the 8,000-pipe Notre Dame organ that was somehow spared yesterday.
[/QUOTE]The YouTube caption says that’s at the Notre Dame in Belgium.
Some striking visual images of Notre Dame in Paris, post-fire: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/17/world/gallery/notre-dame-aerials-intl/index.html
I for one doubt very much that it’s authentic, in the sense of really being part of the crown of thorns that Jesus wore. But that is almost beside the point. It’s part of the cathedral of Notre Dame, like the art work. I am glad it was saved because it is a relic of the Middle Ages. IYSWIM.
Maybe there are still pieces of the True Cross or the Holy Grail still around after two thousand years. Maybe the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is really built on the site of the crucifixion. But the record of provenance is not very good.
Regards,
Shodan
Interesting – reports this morning that there were no construction workers on site at the time the fire started. There goes my first assumption of what happened.
That’s interesting. I wonder if there were any live electrical lines unattended, maybe rags with flammable solvents or something, a carelessly thrown cigarette perhaps. I’m not a fire marshal but would they be able to determine a cause?