jerryfriedman wrote:

>> The article further says that they now want to try without explosives.
>> There are summer cottages nearby that may be damaged.
>
> Somebody needs to engineer concrete-eating bacteria.
>
> Uh, let me rethink that.

Well, it might improve many a city.

--
Bertel, Denmark

On 01/04/24 07:01, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> Sam Plusnet wrote:
>
>> Many years ago a friend placed a pipe bomb in a WWII bunker.
>> Standing some distance away, the ground shook and a letter-box
>> shaped sheet of yellow flame came from the front aperture, but the
>> pill box was quite unharmed. It wasn't a particularly large pipe
>> bomb.
>
> I just found an article from 2012 about Danish attempts to blow up
> the bunkers in 1968. The water-method was tried among other methods,
> but the pieces were too large to handle easily.
>
> I guess there was no will.
>
> The article further says that they now want to try without
> explosives. There are summer cottages nearby that may be damaged.

Newcastle's only wartime bunker is up on a hill, so there's no real will
to remove it. The last time I looked it was littered with cigarette
packets and used condoms.

We did find tank traps on one beach years ago, after a big storm washed
away a lot of sand.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 21:35:45 +0100, Bertel Lund Hansen <gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:

> jerryfriedman wrote:
>
>>> The article further says that they now want to try without explosives.
>>> There are summer cottages nearby that may be damaged.
>>
>> Somebody needs to engineer concrete-eating bacteria.
>>
>> Uh, let me rethink that.
>
> Well, it might improve many a city.

I don't understand photographers who take photos of a "skyline" and say it's pretty. Pretty is natural stuff like trees and mountains.

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024, at 10:54:57, J. J. Lodder posted:
>Paul Wolff <bounceme@thiswontwork.wolff.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 29 Mar 2024, at 18:55:52, Sam Plusnet posted:
>> >On 29-Mar-24 18:27, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> >> On 2024-03-29 17:44:38 +0000, Paul Wolff said:
>> >>
>> >>> On Fri, 29 Mar 2024, at 12:05:31, Janet posted:
>> >>>> In article <l6njctF3nmuU1@mid.individual.net>,
>> >>>> me@yahoo.com says...
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On 2024-01-27 01:01:06 +0000, Peter Moylan said:
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> (I've just done an Irish dictation, where I had to listen to a
>> >>>>>>sentence
>> >>>>>> and write it down, and I misheard "aige" as "agam". A native speaker
>> >>>>>> would have immediately known that "agam" didn't fit in that sentence,
>> >>>>>> regardless of the quality of the audio, but as a learner I don't have
>> >>>>>> that instinct.)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Last night we watched the first three episodes of a Faroese series
>> >>>>> called Trom (less good than the write-up in the TV magazine led me to
>> >>>>> expect, but OK.) Afterwards I looked up the Faroes, Shetland and Orkney
>> >>>>> in Wikipedia, and learned that the Faroes have a population about the
>> >>>>> same as the other two put together.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Anyway, from the Orkney article I learned that "Speakers of Old Irish
>> >>>>> referred to the islands as Insi Orc 'islands of the young pigs'. The
>> >>>>> archipelago is known as Ynysoedd Erch in
>> >>>>>modern Welsh and Arcaibh in
>> >>>>> modern Scottish Gaelic, the -aibh representing a fossilized
>> >>>>> prepositional case ending." Is -aibh a suffix you know?
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Now a question for Bertel. In the programme several speakers referred
>> >>>>> to continental Denmark as "Denmark". Does that surprise you? If you go
>> >>>>> to Tenerife and ask a local how far away is Spain, they will tell you
>> >>>>> that you are already in Spain. If you specifically want to refer to to
>> >>>>> the peninsula you have to say "el continente" or "la Peninsula". I
>> >>>>> think it's more or less the same in France. Corsicans don't refer to
>> >>>>> the continental part as "France"; they call it "le continent" or
>> >>>>> "l'hexagone". I've never been to Guadeloupe etc., but I'm fairly sure
>> >>>>> it's the same: they call it "le métropole", not "France".
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> I can't think of a relevant case in English, except maybe Hawaii. If
>> >>>>> you're in Hawaii and ask someone how far away the USA is I expect
>> >>>>> you'll be told that you're already in the USA.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> In Shetland, they refer to their largest island as The
>> >>>> Mainland.
>> >>>>
>> >>> In Alderney, the most northerly of the Channel Islands, which I
>> >>>believe the French call "Les Iles Normandes", and in sight of the
>> >>>Cherbourg peninsular,
>> >> Right. French people think of Cherbourg as a place where it rains
>> >>all the time (the title of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg was not chosen
>> >>at random). English people think of the Channel Islands as places
>> >>where the sun shines all the time. They can't both be right.
>> >> Something that has surprised me a little is no that French person
>> >>I've ever met has claimed that Les Îles Normandes ought logically
>> >>belong to France. It's just not an issue. Admittedly I live about as
>> >>far from Cherbourg as it's possible to be without leaving France
>> >>(1131 km). Maybe people in Normandy think differently.
>> >>
>> >
>> >On the other hand, the architecture on the Channel islands tends more
>> >towards Germany than France.
>> >
>> Germany left a lot of reinforced concrete architecture on Alderney in
>> 1944, and it has proved quite (= very) impracticable to remove it.
>
>Just not taking the trouble, I guess.
>In the Netherlands all bunkers in or on the primary lni of dunes
>were removed already in the 60s.
>
>The easy howto is a nice physics execise btw.
>You might try to invent for yourself,
>it is not too difficult,
>
Not taking the trouble? If you can spare 20 minutes, take a brief tour
with Dan Snow on YouTube of the German architecture I was writing about.
Enjoy the wall rising behind Longy beach in the opening sequence,
commanded by the guns in the 'upgraded' Roman fort. Consider the
fortified observation tower at the end, known locally as "the Odeon"
because of its 1930s cinema look. There can be no easy howto on that
island. Bunkers in sand dunes seem trivial in comparison.
>
>Qvt vg serr, whfg n yvggyr ovg vf rabhtu. Oevpx hc nyy bcravatf.
>Svyy pbzcyrgryl jvgu frn jngre. Frg bss n fznyy rkcybfvir punetr vafvqr.
>Gur jngre cerffher arngyl sbyqf vg bhg, yrnivat puhaxf sbe shegure
>phggvat. Cercner n grzcbenel punaary sbe gur frn jngre gb eha onpx.
--
Paul W