i am sparticus: The Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge

Is spectacularly impressive up close. I say up close, but really you're never up close to it, it's always hundreds of metres above you, or a mile ahead of you. The structure gives you vertigo like no other.

What's especially special about the Golden Gate Bridge is this wonderful plaque that can be found at the bottom of a statue of the creator of the bridge on the San Francisco side of things.

1870 Joseph B. Strauss 1938 "THE MAN WHO BUILT THE BRIDGE" Here at the golden gate is the eternal rainbow that he conceived and set to form a promise indeed that the race of man shall endure to the ages

Chief Engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge
1929 - 1937

Now, not wanting to be hyperbolic here, but isn't that the most blasphemous sign you've ever read in your whole life? For those not in the know, the promise that man would never being wiped out by a catastrophic natural disaster was a promise given by God to Noah and as a sign of the promise He put a rainbow in the sky. Mr Joseph B. Strauss however, doesn't think God's promise is good enough anymore and so has made his own promise to everyone; rainbows be damned, we have steel and concrete. Good news everyone! We don't need promises from God anymore, we've got promises from Joseph B. Strauss instead!

The irony now of course is that because the declaration on the statue only implicitly refers to the bible and God's promise no-one really gets it. Error.