Notre Dame

Notre Dame Cathedral's bees, kept in hives on the historic church's roof, survived the fire earlier this week, the beekeeper says.

"I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn. I thought they had gone with the cathedral," Nicolas Geant told the Associated Press on Friday.

The 180,000 bees live in three hives on Notre Dame's roof as part of an effort since 2013 to help prevent bee die-off

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/still-alive-notre-dames-180000-bees-survive-cathedral-fire/ar-BBW6wTf?ocid=ientp

Wow, thank you for that update Judith.  I actually had no idea about the bees!  (My wife was surprised that I didn't know this and she did!)

I think the best hope of finding oaks large and straight enough, would be to access stands that were created as Fleet Forest meant to be used when European navies needed to replace ships. Many tracts of forest were planted for this purpose in the 17 and 1800's. Then steel became the primary ship building material. These trees may have belonged to the crown in various countries, but crowns don't hold the power they used to. I'm not sure where the ownership lies, but it's likely that some are parkland now. I know that a Viking ship was built from Fleet Oak a few years ago. I don't know which country, but obviously it's going to be Norway Sweden or Denmark. If suitable trees do lie on public lands in countries other than France, I'm sure it will take some convincing to have the public in those countries agree that cutting them for this purpose is a good idea.

Laminated materials are also a possibility. This allows different sizes of trees to be used to build whatever size material is needed. Portugal is overrun with eucalyptus, which is available for the price of wood pulp for the paper industry. So there is no shortage of wood in the world. It's just a shortage of oak of a particular size and quality.

I just read this in Maclean's Magazine: "In a weird quirk of fate, Notre Dame’s reconstruction may benefit from similar work. In recent years, the late Andrew Tallon, an art historian fascinated by how Notre Dame was constructed, set out to make the most accurate digital scans of the building. Using a laser scanner similar to the ones used by the U.S. government, he created a fantastically accurate map of Notre Dame’s structure, including a billion individual pieces of data." The reference to the US government is because the article also said that they have done the same to many buildings etc of cultural significance. I'm glad that technology is being used in this positive way.

Being a devout, practicing Catholic, I have to find the humor or I'll scream.

Chris Watson wrote:Being a devout, practicing Catholic, I have to find the humor or I'll scream.

That's funny! (lol)
While everyone has hunches, there are only two possibilities. It can only be either accidental or intentional.

Greg Mamishian wrote:

Chris Watson wrote:Being a devout, practicing Catholic, I have to find the humor or I'll scream.

That's funny! (lol)
While everyone has hunches, there are only two possibilities. It can only be either accidental or intentional.

I think in Quasimodo's case it might have been genetic . . .

Phil Gardener wrote:

Greg Mamishian wrote:

Chris Watson wrote:Being a devout, practicing Catholic, I have to find the humor or I'll scream.

That's funny! (lol)
While everyone has hunches, there are only two possibilities. It can only be either accidental or intentional.

I think in Quasimodo's case it might have been genetic . . .

Aside from your humorous joke... genetics is never an excuse for doing wrong.

I think this is how it all happened...