poster
Most dams in this country are straight, not curved.
The arch dam, as the curved type is known, is effectively an arched bridge turned on its side, with the centre of the arch pointing upstream. An arch is a good shape for supporting the load on a bridge or, when turned on its side, the force of the water behind the dam.
The arch dam is best suited to narrow valleys with solid rock walls, because the water pressing against the dam is converted into a side force pressing against the valley walls. There are only a few arch dams in the UK, such as Monar Dam in Scotland.
Other dam types are generally built straight. A gravity dam is so-called because it relies on the weight of the dam resting on its foundations to stop the water behind the dam turning it over or pushing it downstream.
The arch dam, as the curved type is known, is effectively an arched bridge turned on its side, with the centre of the arch pointing upstream. An arch is a good shape for supporting the load on a bridge or, when turned on its side, the force of the water behind the dam
The embankment dam has a central waterproof core, generally made of concrete or clay. Materials are then piled up on either side to support and protect it, and they slope diagonally away from the core.
The embankment dam is the most common in the UK, which has over 3,000 of them, including one dating back to the 9th century.
The buttress dam has a vertical watertight wall on the upstream side supported by triangular buttresses at intervals on the downstream side. These dams use much less material than gravity or embankment ones, so are cheaper to build but just as effective.
Denis Sharp, Littlehampton, West Sussex
QUESTION Have any classically trained opera singers succeeded in pop?
Several opera singers have made forays into pop music. Luciano Pavarotti held Pavarotti & Friends concerts for humanitarian causes in the 1990s and early 2000s. The tenor was joined by some of pop music’s biggest stars, including the Spice Girls, Sting, Elton John, Celine Dion and Bono, singing a mix of classical and pop.
He even had a UK Top Ten hit from these collaborations: Live Like Horses, with Elton John.
Luciano Pavarotti (pictured) held Pavarotti & Friends concerts for humanitarian causes in the 1990s and early 2000s. The tenor was joined by some of pop music’s biggest stars, including the Spice Girls
In 2010, American soprano Renee Fleming released an indie rock album called Dark Hope. On it, she sang the music of Muse, Leonard Cohen and Jefferson Airplane, but she did not use her operatic voice.
Jo Stafford, a popular vocalist of the postwar ‘golden age of popular music’, was a classically trained opera singer who had a host of hits, either solo with songs such as You Belong To Me and Make Love To Me, or duetting on the likes of Candy with Johnny Mercer, Temptation with Red Ingle and My Darling, My Darling with Gordon MacRae.
Peter Hofmann, a German tenor with blond, curly locks, was a huge crossover star in Germany. He sang Wagner before releasing hit pop albums such as Rock Classics (1982) and Love Me Tender: Peter Hofmann Sings Elvis Presley (1992).
Siobhan Owen, Swansea
QUESTION Christopher Hitchens claimed that Karl Marx’s ‘religion is the opium of the people’ was the ‘most misrepresented quote of the 19th century’. Why?
The most common interpretation of Marx’s words is that religion keeps people compliant and passive. Christopher Hitchens challenged this view.
The most common interpretation of Karl Marx’s words is that religion keeps people compliant and passive
In a work in which Marx critiques the work of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), published in 1844, Marx suggests that religion is used as a drug to pursue an illusory source of happiness.
Tomorrow’s questions:
Q: After Hamlet, which Shakespearean character has the most soliloquies?
Marion Coleman, Canterbury, Kent
Q: Did the Vikings reach Africa?
Stan Benson, Lowestoft, Suffolk
Q: Did the U.S. Army have segregated front-line battalions fighting in Europe?
Mark Blackford, Tamworth, Staffs
Marx argues that people would be far more successful if they gave up the illusion of happiness created by religion and searched for real happiness instead.
The full quote from Marx’s writing is ‘Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’
The following paragraph then calls for the abolition of religion. ‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.’
Christopher Hitchens’s interpretation of Marx’s words was that they suggested that the way to happiness wasn’t through religion, it was through self-determination.
The suggestion that the purpose of religion was to ensure compliance, therefore, was a misrepresentation of Karl Marx’s view of religion.
Robert Sutherland, Northampton
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