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Leaning Tower of Pisa Secure For 300 More Years
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The tower of Pisa began to lean five years after its construction began, in 1178, and by 1990 it had tilted more than four meters off its true vertical. Conservationists estimated that the entire 14,500-ton structure would collapse 'some time between 2030 and 2040.' Now the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilized and declared safe for at least another three centuries. The stabilization, which cost $30M, was accomplished by anchoring it to cables and lead counterweights, while 70 tons of soil were removed from the side away from the lean, and cement was injected into the ground to relieve the pressure. The tilt has now returned to where it was in the early 19th century. Nicholas Shrady, author of Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa, says that the tower was destined to lean from the outset because it was built on 'what is essentially a former bog.' Shrady adds that the tower previously came close to collapsing in 1838, 1934, and 1995. (The commission convened in 1990 to study the tower's stability was the 17th such.) Although Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped cannon balls from the tower in a gravity experiment, Shrady says the myth is the result of 'the overripe imagination of Galileo's secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani.'"
...tower of Pis began...The first of those is pretty obvious.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Hmm, proof readers day off then?
I'm usually leaning when I have a tower of piss.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I had Aug 2034 in the office pool.
You bastards.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Hint: Remember when Supes straightened the Tower after being exposed to the tar-kryptonite?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Am I right?
Tower Of Pies
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Another 300 years of putting up with Leaning Tower of Pizza jokes.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Are you saying there are icebergs in Pisa?
it's = it is
its = belonging to it
"ardurous" not "arduous"... :-(
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a tower on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest tower in these lands.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
yar....why ye be posting as AC?
you should be proud to attach your name to a post declaring your belief that the great pasta in the sky created all life
RAmen
-I only code in BASIC.-
1. build tower
2. it leans!
3. $$$
Is Gal Civ 2 entirely written in Python, then?
...built.
There was a baker who had become rather popular with his breads, sandwiches and soups. He experimented with new and wonderful, and sometimes not so wonderful meal idea. By accident one day a shelf bracket in his kitchen gave way and though nothing had gotten broken various item spilled onto the counter where he was making various products. In cleaning up the mess he scoped meats and chesses and sauces onto a flatten, by the shelf, bread dough. Being the experimental type and not wanting to waste his supplies he decided to put the results in the oven instead of throwing it out.
This was the first pizza, but it wasn't perfected as the dough seemed to be a problem. Regardless he found the meal was good and decided to offer it to his customers, one of which was a close friend and building contractor who had been given a contract for a tower. These fluffy pies were selling well but the bread was still a problem and he couldn't figure out what had gotten mixed in the accident to cause the bread to stay flat rather than rise and spill the toppings.
He got to talking with his building contractor friend and explored ideas as to how to make the dough stay flat. They thought they figured it out, with a hard object (shelf) suddenly against the bread dough to flatten it. The contractor had an idea, that he'd build the building just slightly off level so his good friend could drop the dough from a height that would flatten the dough as it hit he hard ground. And once the building was built they tried it, and it worked. They were going to many many such pies and become rich. Teh lower they dropped the dough, teh thicker the crust, the higher the thinner.
So theu went to work, moving dough ingredients and tools to make it and lots of water up the tower. Of course teh overflow of water that had to keep away from teh spot where they woudl drop teh dough, so the contractor made a drain that diverted the drained water to under the building. This pie production went on for a few months but another problem was discovered, a seasonal one... birds and more specifically bird poop. Seems the bread also attracted birds and the slight tilted angle of the building, upon which teh birds would purch, was also contributing to the collection of bird poop on the ground right where they would drop the dough.
Customer began to notice the underside of the pies and questionable taste. and there were many such customer and notables.
Anyways Italy started to become embarrassed with this "bakers invention" and decided to put a stop to it but realized it word had spread far about this new and wonderful pie invention. So they had to cover it up and deny it ever existed. So they renamed the tower of pizza to Pisa. As things were, teh water being directed under the building weakened the foundation and teh building has ever since continued to tilt more and more.
But the custom of dropping the dough from a height to flatten it, still exist today and some still do it outside, so check the bottom of any pizza you by for white spots.
This story details may be expanded by any other in the know...
"I find that work perfectly cromulent."
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Galileo was a smart man, certainly smarter than me. And even I know enough not to take a heavy weight to the top of something that's fixin' to fall over. Unless it was a "Hey, Bubba, watch this!" moment.
The same points distribution has happened to myself, so I hazard a guess that the pool of moderators is limited, compared to the amount of moderation needed, so they are giving each moderator more points. This is supported by the fact that they don't extend the time given to use the points, so the net effect is that more mod points are awarded. Based on the age of some of the meta-mods I have done, they are months and months behind on that task, so it is reasonable that they could be behind on the moderating one. Given that the head honchos have unlimited mod points, to "mop up" what the moderators don't get, this new arrangement should free them a bit from the never-ending moderating task. Feel free to mod this -1, speculation.
On-topic, the Tower Of Pisa is like Windows -- throw more money at the problem, but never fix it, and people will actually enjoy the defects. Marketing over engineering wins again!
I come here for the love
That's the problem with slashdot moderation. You can clearly see the violence inherent in the system.