A few weeks ago, Barb and I were in Paris to meet the boyfriend (and probable fiancée) of my stepdaughter Maddy. We stumbled upon this strange structure:
I don’t really know what is for. But it is cool looking.
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
Just like the Empire State Building, its primary purpose is as a dirigible mast.
Sheesh, kids today probably think it was an early cell phone tower.
Blackwing beat me to it. I was gonna say Graf Zeppelin.
Joe: Hopefully the boyfriend is a gunny.
Any thoughts on the political situation in France?
We spent about 90 minutes at lunch with him. I really enjoyed talking about computer learning stuff with him.
I don’t know anything about his gun attitudes. I have zero political insights that you would not have also developed from our US sources.
It’s a barbecue spit. There’s a chicken on top, slowly rotating.
Nah, it’s one half of a really BIG clothesline. They just never got around to building the other pole.
They needed a big one since the French need a place to dry out all their surrender flags.
Apparently it’s a coral growth from a dried sea, that somehow hasn’t collapsed yet.
Lightning rod.
It’s a secret radio broadcast tower for sending signals to our Disney overlords in another dimension.
I only know because I was able to view a secret documentary about them that no one knows about.
No, really. Like 6 people ever watched it…
It was supposed to be demolished after the exhibition it was built for but in the meantime it got redeveloped as a radio tower.
When I see that thing, I’m reminded of the desperate attempt of an Me-109 to lose the Mustang that was chasing him. The German flew under the tower, and the P-51 followed him. I’m thinking the Mustang pilot had some experience flying under bridges back in his training days.
There is a painting commemorating that action:
https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbird-articles/wwii-veteran-aviator-bill-overstreet-p-51-mustang-berlin-express.html
It was the inspiration for the Lavender Hill Mob when they needed a method to move a large amount of gold bullion out of Great Britain into France. I have a life-size replica on my mantel (not of the one you saw, but of the ones made by the Mob).
The good story is what it took to build it.
But as for the tower itself?
It’s French.
Elegant, beautiful, tasteful, and utterly useless. (Unless one stands on top to watch the overthrow/capitulation of France to the muslim hoards.)
” And living in the number one country, we have no idea what it is living like in even the number two country.”
That could change about 20 minutes after the American EBT system goes down. Then we will be in a big pile of #2.
Ya, we like to point at the garbage piled up in other countries. Then I remember “Love canal”.
People are pretty much the same the world over. It’s always about varying levels of malice/stupidity in and out of government.
Sorry, this comment was supposed to be under the;
“Perceptions of Other Countries” Post.
Joking aside, it’s kind of an amusing quirk of history that something built as a throwaway has become such an absolutely iconic, internationally recognizable symbol of a country.