Will the real Pierre Poilievre please stand up? | Page 31 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Will the real Pierre Poilievre please stand up?

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jc100 said:
Yes they can, the Romans used volcanic materials rather than that available to the originators in the Middle East.
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Sorry, no. I watched a documentary about Roman times not long ago, released in 2021 IIRC and they talked about how the exact chemical components that made Roman concrete are still not fully understood. It's lasted many centuries now, some of it even in ruins of an old bathhouse, partially underwater.
jc100 said:
A global empire modifying previous cultures inventions at times.
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Of course.
jc100 said:
I feel like I’m having a hard job bringing your attention to absolutely fundamental history facts. This could be due to a poor school system or perhaps something else.
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You're having a hard time because no other society of people in the history of the world took the innovations of others as well as their own AND ACTUALLY BUILT THE WORLD WE KNOW TODAY WITH THEM. That's why. Personally, I think you're purposefully being argumentative for the sake of it, but maybe you just can't grasp the concept.

Yet here we are, a political party excluding white male members from speaking (or as near as they can get away with) and schools teaching children the evils specifically of white men (usually in terms of colonialism and privilege). Right here in Canada. It's racism, and in the context of Canada which remains part of the British Commonwealth, bewildering.
 
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Shaman said:
Sorry, no. I watched a documentary about Roman times not long ago, released in 2021 IIRC and they talked about how the exact chemical components that made Roman concrete are still not fully understood. It's lasted many centuries now, some of it even in ruins of an old bathhouse, partially underwater.

Of course.

You're having a hard time because no other society of people in the history of the world took the innovations of others as well as their own AND ACTUALLY BUILT THE WORLD WE KNOW TODAY WITH THEM. That's why. Personally, I think you're purposefully being argumentative for the sake of it, but maybe you just can't grasp the concept.

Yet here we are, a political party excluding white male members from speaking (or as near as they can get away with) and schools teaching children the evils specifically of white men (usually in terms of colonialism and privilege). Right here in Canada. It's racism, and in the context of Canada which remains part of the British Commonwealth, bewildering.
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Bewildering indeed.
 
This is my last thought on this thread.

 
I have nothing to add to the broader debate here, but as a Roman history obsessive and someone who has been in concrete my whole working life, I have the following two points to add:

- The 'Roman Empire' didn't 'fall' in 476 or whatever other arbitrary date is picked. The power source of the Roman Empire had long since moved east to Constantinople, which was the centre of trade and money, and they continued there until 1453. We may call them Byzantine, but they called themselves Roman and considered themselves as such. Even as far back as Hadrian, emperors had begun to see the city of Rome itself as a symbolic nod to tradition (e.g. the Senate), but were much more interested in the far wealthier and more stable eastern provinces (even Antony thought he'd essentially beaten Octavian by taking control of the far wealthier east after the dissolution of the second triumvirate, though he didn't factor for Octavian being a genius politician and stone-cold killer). By the late-4th C, the western empire (mostly Europe) was broadly pretty poor, decimated by plagues, pillaged of its most valuable resources, and was essentially a backwater that was extremely expensive to defend against various threats. As it got further ignored, people popped up to proclaim themselves emperors of the west, but that was mostly as legit as the Holy Roman Empire being Roman. Even as far back as Gibbon (he mostly blamed Christianity, a theory long-since debunked in academic circles, but still holding a place in the popular consciousness, especially among the New Atheist crowd), people have projected their biases and fears onto that time, but as is typical with almost all of history, the 'truth' is much less clear-cut and often impossible to know with any certainty.

- Roman concrete was genuinely amazing for the time, and allowed for the construction of engineering marvels. But it's not the miracle product that many click-baity videos pretend it to be. The simplest way to show this is that most modern concrete has a cured compressive strength of 35-70 MPa. Roman concrete was typically around 6 MPa. Most modern structures couldn't be built with it, even factoring for adding things like rebar to improve tensile and shear capacity. It's amazing, but not magic or some indication of long-lost secrets.
 
Priller said:
- Roman concrete was genuinely amazing for the time, and allowed for the construction of engineering marvels. But it's not the miracle product that many click-baity videos pretend it to be. The simplest way to show this is that most modern concrete has a cured compressive strength of 35-70 MPa. Roman concrete was typically around 6 MPa. Most modern structures couldn't be built with it, even factoring for adding things like rebar to improve tensile and shear capacity. It's amazing, but not magic or some indication of long-lost secrets.
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Roman concrete - Wikipedia weirdly fascinating
 
Interesting, indeed.

One of the reasons Roman concrete has stood up for so long in many cases (not all) has been that it did not contain steel rebar, which is integral to concrete's use in modern construction. You could not build the CN tower out of Roman concrete, nor have long bridge spans. The Romans did not have skyscrapers, and their bridges were supported from underneath with shorter spans.

But ... steel rebar exposed to environmental conditions is a ticking time bomb. Concrete is not impermeable to air and water (yes, Roman concrete has a degree of self-healing of cracks described in the article above, but that process starts with the crack existing and water getting into it) and air and water cause steel to rust, and the change of shape associated with rusting causes further cracking and further water intrusion. It is a process that takes place over decades, or possibly a century or two if it's in a dry climate or if countermeasures are taken against exposure to water, but the structure will eventually fail.
 
crankcall said:
Whipping that out today would get all your statues put into a warehouse…..
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Or........

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Shaman said:
Roman concrete - Wikipedia weirdly fascinating
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Absolutely, but mostly as an artifact of history. I have to confess a bit of personal fatigue with it, as I regularly get sent some pseudo-historical and pseudo-scientific social media videos by friends and family (knowing both my interests and my job) asking why we don't use something similar today, as it's often presented as some sort of miracle product that's not understood my modern scientists and is somehow superior to modern products.

If there is a modern application for it, someone in the multi-billion dollar concrete industry will be all over it. Pozzolanic (and equivalent) cement simply isn't currently viable as a modern building material against Portland cement. There's huge pressure to find alternatives, especially as the production of Portland is a massive CO2 generator, but nobody has found a way to make it strong enough or cheap enough. I do work with geopolymers, which show more promise, but have issues when scaled to the volumes that we produce concrete today.

Brian P said:
Interesting, indeed.

One of the reasons Roman concrete has stood up for so long in many cases (not all) has been that it did not contain steel rebar, which is integral to concrete's use in modern construction. You could not build the CN tower out of Roman concrete, nor have long bridge spans. The Romans did not have skyscrapers, and their bridges were supported from underneath with shorter spans.

But ... steel rebar exposed to environmental conditions is a ticking time bomb. Concrete is not impermeable to air and water (yes, Roman concrete has a degree of self-healing of cracks described in the article above, but that process starts with the crack existing and water getting into it) and air and water cause steel to rust, and the change of shape associated with rusting causes further cracking and further water intrusion. It is a process that takes place over decades, or possibly a century or two if it's in a dry climate or if countermeasures are taken against exposure to water, but the structure will eventually fail.
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My last company's focus was specifically corrosion in concrete. There are a few alternatives that are much more durable long-term (stainless and FRP reinforcing are the best established currently), but the cost is so high that they're left for niche applications, and often come with other drawbacks. The reality is we build mostly with a short expectation of service life, and are rarely willing to pay for anything beyond 50 years, let alone 100...
 
Oddly the gal I had drinks with tonight is a retired prof , a PHD engineer and was part of the engineering/ design team that built the CN tower . For a lark I asked about Roman cement and she did mention the now submerged cement docks in Egypt that are intact and pre date Romans . She also mentioned the CN tower can flex 6ft in either direction and it doesn’t break off . No Romans had that **** going on .


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I thought that the CN tower was floating.
 
crankcall said:
Oddly the gal I had drinks with tonight is a retired prof , a PHD engineer and was part of the engineering/ design team that built the CN tower . For a lark I asked about Roman cement and she did mention the now submerged cement docks in Egypt that are intact and pre date Romans . She also mentioned the CN tower can flex 6ft in either direction and it doesn’t break off . No Romans had that **** going on .


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So what you really wanted to tell us is you had drinks with a gal who is or was a prof and has a PHD in engineering 👍
 
ToSlow said:
So what you really wanted to tell us is you had drinks with a gal who is or was a prof and has a PHD in engineering 👍
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Anyone on the CN tower design team is past their dating prime I would think......
 
When I get old , I’m buying white shoes , a white belt and moving to the villages . Have crazy conversations with the Trumpsters in the afternoon and bang Grandmas till 10pm curfew .


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