
Why Is the Pentagon a Pentagon? - sohkamyung
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-pentagon-pentagon-180962719/?no-ist
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jpfed
It was obviously designed to be a cunning way of limiting the expansion of the
military-industrial complex; they can't just keep building adjacent pentagons
because they don't tesselate.

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stronglikedan
They can just keep adding concentric rings, and the military-industrial
complex expands exponentially with each new one.

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Someone
(Pedantic/educational): quadratically (ignoring the bending of spacetime due
to the mass of the military-industrial complex)

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xvedejas
That's also assuming that the thickness of each ring is constant. If they
increased the thickness by a certain percentage relative to the previous band,
then you'd have exponential growth.

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Someone
But the existing rings are equal-width, and wider rings do not make sense (the
buildings would get less and less daylight)

~~~
xvedejas
Fair point. I guess there's another assumption, that the rings are built at a
constant rate. In fact, if we make the typical assumption that the economy
grows exponentially (which might hold for all but the longest term models), it
could be possible to build newer rings at an exponentially faster speed by
constructing more and more of them simultaneously.

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simplicio
I always thought it was kind of weird choice. You'd think one of the
requirements for your primary military building would be that you wouldn't
want it to be easy to pick out from the air by potential bombers. Especially
in WWII, when aerial bombardment was such a major part of the war, and such
bombing relied heavily on visual recognition of the target. But the Pentagon
isn't just architecturally distinctive, but is so in such a way that's
primarily appreciated from above, and than they named it to draw attention to
the fact. (the article does mention that this objection was at least briefly
considered during the buildings planning).

And indeed, the building was bombed from the air in 2001. One wonders if the
9/11 hijackers would've chosen it as a target if it wasn't so easy to pick out
by eye.

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kesselvon
Probably because the US hasn't had a foreign army on its soil since
like...1812

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avn2109
Pearl Harbor, although pedantically maybe that was just an air force/navy
instead of an army.

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lostlogin
Pedantically? If we take your new definition, how many countries is the US
currently invading with its airforce (particularly drones)? It isn't invading
them because it's armies aren't in them and that's what the term "on its soil"
means.

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paulddraper
Well, the parent was talking about _bombing_, so Pearl Harbor is a reasonable
point.

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franciscop
> "It is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world"

Why do the USA press and people insist that if it's famous in the US it's
famous in the rest of the world? I only guess it _looks like a pentagon_ but
for non-English speaking countries (most of the world) I wouldn't say it's one
of the most recognizable buildings.

Just do a quick google search (probably with anonymous browsing/VPN?) of
"famous buildings" and you'll see it's nowhere near them.

Edit: if you can read this (English + HN) you and your friends/family are most
likely not part of _the rest of the world_ , but I agree that I messed up
confusing _famous_ with _recognizable_.

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interfixus
European here. Never even been to the US.

I'd say that as famous buildings go, the Pentagon is up near the top of my
passive vocabulary - instantly recognizable and nameable. Washington, D.C. is
rich in those.

But actively? No. If tasked with naming ten or twenty world famous buildings,
I simply wouldn't think of it. Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, the Pantheon
(oh yes), and somehow, Word Trade Center, even if it is no more, but no
Pentagon would occur to me.

[Edit: The usual typos]

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nommm-nommm
>instantly recognizable and nameable. Washington D.C. is rich in those.

I'm curious as to what other instantly recognizable and nameable buildings are
in Washington D.C. to a non-American. I can think of the Pentagon and the
White House. I can't really think of any others I would think a non-American
would immediately recognize and be able to name. The Capitol, maybe? The
Washington Monument?

I'm also wondering, with time, if the rebuilt World Trade Center will become
just as recognizable. It certainly is striking in the Manhattan skyline, but
it just doesn't seem "the same" to me for some reason I can't put my finger
on.

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wyldfire
Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, respectively. (American, guessing from the
recognizable structures that show up in our cultural exports)

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Symbiote
Nope. I couldn't identify those, and I visited DC when I was about 14.

The Washington Monument (the big obelisk thing?), the White House, and the
Pentagon -- the last as much because it's used in the news in the same way
that "10 Downing Street" is, but unlike a London street, the Pentagon is a
unique, distinctive structure.

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sandworm101
Correct. It had absolutely nothing to do with the representation of masonic
principals through architecture. Niether does the washington monument. Masons
have had absolutely no influence on american federal buildings. All that
symetry and numbers stuff happened purely by chance.

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arca_vorago
For the pentagon, I have seen no evidence to the contrary, but the rest of
your statement is wrong. Sorry I don't have time to go on a chase for
citations for you, but there is plenty of evidence of Masonic influence (not
that this is a bad thing) on the general layout of the DC area.

~~~
sandworm101
I forget. HN has no concept of humor. Absolutely ever word in this place is to
be taken literally.

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revscat
Which, to be fair, is a large part of why it is what it is. There are plenty
of spaces where sarcasm, cynicism, and humor are not discouraged. There's
something... peaceful about HN's norms.

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igivanov
yes, that sense of analness, like half the time you are talking to Sheldon
Cooper.

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orf
Sarcasm doesn't translate to text very well at all. The comments that come
after when people are mistaken about the lack of/use of sarcasm are pretty
pointless and detract from actual discussion.

~~~
sandworm101
It does where readers understand the conventions. Repetition of words or
absolutes points to sarcasm. "I never smoked pot" or "I have absolutely never
ever under any circumstances even been in the same room as pot."

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dragonwriter
Repetition of words with similar meaning is also a common literary and oral
communication technique for emphasis of important points you want the audience
to take away.

So, yeah, it _can_ indicate sarcasm, but it can also indicate the exact
opposite. It oral communication, tone would usually disambiguate between the
two intents.

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jlebrech
If you divide the globe into hexagons there's only one missing piece and it'll
only fit a pentagon. the pentagon is the centerpiece of that grid. no units
can land on it.

~~~
vmasto
I was under the impression that the pentagons would be 12, care to elaborate
how it's only one?

e.g. [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2121175/is-it-
possib...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2121175/is-it-possible-to-
have-a-spherical-object-with-only-hexagonal-faces)

~~~
adrianN
You're not allowed to talk about the others.

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taejo
I always assumed it was a reference to the pentagonal shape of many star forts
(despite not being a star shape itself).

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a3n
My totally unresearched guess was that it referred to the five armed services:
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard.

"Because that was the shape of its originally intended building site" is so
delightfully mundane.

~~~
Shivetya
Yet sometimes the simplest answer is the best if not correct one. My pot roast
story tells it well,
[http://selfdefinedleadership.com/blog/?p=158](http://selfdefinedleadership.com/blog/?p=158)

don't overlook the obvious

~~~
kej
Counterpoint by H.L .Mencken: "Explanations exist; they have existed for all
time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat,
plausible, and wrong."

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empath75
Obviously it's a pentagon because the shape allows it to contain Yog-Sothoth.
Have you people never read Illuminatus!

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apeconmyth
"Are you really keeping him in the Pentagon?"
[https://books.google.com/books?id=gnO76vZELmQC&lpg=PA356&ots...](https://books.google.com/books?id=gnO76vZELmQC&lpg=PA356&ots=4JnNePz1Jl&dq=drake%20pentagon%20illuminatus&pg=PA356#v=onepage&q=drake%20pentagon%20illuminatus&f=false)

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NateDad
tl;dr: because it was designed for a weirdly shaped parcel of land, but then
it wasn't put there, but they stuck with previous designs anyway, because the
president thought it was a neat design .

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bshimmin
17 months to build it; 17 years to renovate it!

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curtis
> _17 months to build it; 17 years to renovate it!_

So kind of like software, then.

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dfrey
It was going to be a circle, but there were 5 rounds of cuts.

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paulpauper
surprised no one noticed this: a circle encloses the greatest area with the
smallest circumference (a fundamental calculus of variations result). A
pentagon being a crude approiamtion of a circle , is more efficient than a
square building, which means less building materials. A a pentagon-shaped
building is also structurally stronger than a square building.

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adventured
> A a pentagon-shaped building is also structurally stronger than a square
> building

That isn't the case for the Pentagon. It's not a single, simple, unbroken
structure and does not meaningfully benefit from that premise. The Pentagon is
a lot of building segments connecting to form a shape. It would be equally
strong as a whole had it been built in the shape of a rectangle or square.

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jxramos
I thought I recall reading someplace that the angles and the walls constructed
from them created some kind of auditory dampening/scrambling effect so that
sounds did not emanate out from the structure in any intelligible way. That
may have all been speculation of sorts, I can't recall the source I got that
impression from :(

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frostirosti
Wasn't the Pentagon meant to be made into a Library post war? That's why the
floors were so thick and sustained less damage from the plane impact.

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techrich
Its so you can renforce one side, so when a missile hits it on 9/11 it wont do
loads and loads of damage!

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rdiddly
She felt the need to use the word absurd.

