OT: Degrees as barriers to entry [was Re: - E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF]

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 23:13:01 +0000, 
	Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> attempt to draw direct comparisons. Maybe having an uncle helped you in 
> to the trade, but it didn't cut you much slack in terms of required 
> standards, hence the absence of cathedral-shaped heaps of rubble. York 
> Minster was built in the 1400s, for example, and doesn't look like 
> falling down any time soon.

Googling for "cathedral collapse" finds an interesting page at
<http://www.newcomen.com/excerpts/beauvais.htm>:

	... As a matter of structural fact there is almost no argument
	possible. The decay sensed by the eye after about 1250 stems
	from a slow relaxation of the firm structural grasp that had
	been acquired during the preceding hundred years.

	...

	Beauvais seems to have been particularly unfortunate. The apse
	and choir were started in 1247, and finished in 1272. On 29
	November 1284 the vault fell... Whatever the actual reason, it
	was certainly believed at the time that the pier spacing was
	too large, and the repairs over the next 50 years included the
	intercalation of piers between these originally built for the
	choir, so that the bays were halved from about 9m to about
	4.5m. ...

--amk