Temples

A rendering of the eastern approach structure from the 2014 report shows the complications involved with the massive project. OGS Project S6574

A story in the New York Post caught my eye yesterday. New York wants to rebuild the steps leading up to the entrance to the capital building. There are 77 steps, which is like four big stories, so it's substantial, and it's outside in the weather, so it needs to made of stouter stuff than your typical indoor staircase. However, rebuilding these stairs, which is essentially what they are doing, on account of they have been neglected for decades and were even fricking condemned back in 2015, rebuilding these stairs is going to cost like $80 million dollars, which is like a million dollars a step. So I had to look into a bit to see just what the deal was. As you can see in the above drawing, it's big and complicated, and it's all made of rock. So it's gonna cost.

Isaac Perry staircase drawing, ca. 1892

The building was originally built in 1899 for a cost of twenty-five million dollars. Back then gold was $20.67 an ounce. Gold is somewheres around $3,500 an ounce now, which means in today's money that building would cost four billion dollars, so maybe that $80 million isn't out line.

Fancy government buildings, built out of stone, from a hundred years ago are very impressive, especially if you consider all the work that went into cutting, hauling, finishing and fitting all those big stone pieces. Well, I'm impressed. Don't particularly like being in them, they frown on spitting on the floor.

Why would anyone do this? Because we're building temples, that's why, and we believe in what we are doing. What we believe in is not so important as the fact that we believe in something. In addition most everybody also needs to hold the same beliefs. How do you get a large population to all believe the same thing? You make sure everybody goes to a state school, and if the church and state are in cahoots, all the better.

Look at the pyramids. I wonder how they got all those people to work together for all that time, and now I think primary school indoctrination in their belief system is the answer.

I was looking at the pyramids recently, and I'm reading about all these passages, tunnels and secret compartments, both verified and speculative, and I'm having a hard time making a mental model of this thing (I guess most of this is about the big pyramid), and I got to thinking a scale model would be a big help. It would need to be a big one, like 4 or 5 feet across. Some of those passages are pretty small. A larger model would mean you would be able to see them, they wouldn't  be just pixelated into oblivion. Great idea, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it.