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After the Dark Ages, where the Church basically did their best to wipe out human knowledge and sanitize everything...

I was under the impression that it was rather the opposite. In reality the "dark ages" were neither literally nor figuratively dark. The name was given by Italians who were butthurt about not ruling the world anymore.

It also seems that Christianity (Catholic monks in particular) was responsible for preserving western culture, civilization, and knowledge during the "dark ages" not destroying it.

Even a gutter press site like Cracked seems to disagree with you on this matter.

Contrariwise, there's a lot of evidence that certain modern, "scientific", and atheistic governments have destroyed and censored knowledge (I've linked only a few obvious and famous examples but there are others).

the modern day Library of Alexandra burning

That's precisely why the Library of Alexandra hosts a mirror of the Internet Archive http://archive.bibalex.org/

A nice page from 2006 is here: http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MarsEclipses.htm

Every location on Mars gets an eclipse by both Phobos and Deimos twice a year.

Dude, re-read your link.

A nice page from 2006 is here: http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MarsEclipses.htm

"The two moons pass between Mars and the Sun so frequently that solar eclipses would not be a rare event to the Martian observer. Phobos eclipses the Sun 1,300 times a year; but the eclipses are so brief, lasting about 20 seconds!"

"As the orbits of Phobos and Deimos lie near the plane of Mars' equator, and due to the proximity of the moons to Mars, Phobos (and its eclipses) cannot be seen above Martian latitude 69, and Deimos (and its eclipses) cannot be seen above latitude 82."

A nice page from 2006 is here: http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MarsEclipses.htm

Every location on Mars gets an eclipse by both Phobos and Deimos twice a year.

Dude, re-read your link.

A nice page from 2006 is here: http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MarsEclipses.htm

"The two moons pass between Mars and the Sun so frequently that solar eclipses would not be a rare event to the Martian observer. Phobos eclipses the Sun 1,300 times a year; but the eclipses are so brief, lasting about 20 seconds!"

"As the orbits of Phobos and Deimos lie near the plane of Mars' equator, and due to the proximity of the moons to Mars, Phobos (and its eclipses) cannot be seen above Martian latitude 69, and Deimos (and its eclipses) cannot be seen above latitude 82."

Every location on Mars gets an eclipse by both Phobos and Deimos twice a year.

It's nice that Curiosity is looking into the sky, but it's worth pointing out that this is by no means the first time we've watched eclipses from the surface of Mars-- we've caught both Phobos and Deimos transiting the sun, from both of the the MER rovers:
Spirit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer/phobos_transit_104a.gif
and Opportunity http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer/Phobos_Sol45B.gif

A nice page from 2006 is here: http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MarsEclipses.htm

Interesting. With I had mod points. Some of those pictures:
"Opponents and supporters join hands in protecting the library"
http://www.bibalex.org/imagegallery/BA_Gallery_EN.aspx?ID=54&Name=Opponents%20and%20supporters%20join%20hands%20in%20protecting%20the%20library

One site that stayed up through all this was the Library of Alexandria, which, among other things, hosts a copy of the Internet Archive. They now have photos up of their supporters surrounding the Library to protect it.

They stayed up because they have a direct connection to the 10Gb/s FLAG, the Fiber Optic Around the Globe link. That has a cable landing at Alexandria, and the Library is tied in there, without going through a local ISP.

Wikipedia says:

To ensure the stability and endurance of the Internet Archive, its collection is mirrored at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, so far the only library in the world with a mirror.

The Internet Archive has a mirror in Alexandria (Egypt), and there used to be an EU mirror as well.

The Archive may not be unique (English for "a singleton"), but the number of non-profit organizations with multiple Petabytes of storage and insane amounts of bandwidth is fairly low, for some odd reason. :)

It's apparently a little-known fact that the Internet Archive maintains a periodically updated copy of the Wayback Machine, fittingly at the Biblioteca Alexandrina in Egypt. It's not as up-to-date as the main site (its most recent archive is from 2006), but it's a useful as a backup, and sometimes it's able to retrieve pages that give an error on the original site.

The Archive will probably be around long after YouTube is gone. Among other things, there's a duplicate of the Internet Archive in Egypt.

The Internet Archive, which is a nonprofit, is also in the free video archiving business. Their main concern has been storage, of which they now have petabytes. Making the system friendly to the casual user has been a lower priority, and the Archive has a tiny staff. But you can get an Archive account and upload your video right now. If you have anything of historical significance, please do so.

The Archive has had some problems with bandwidth, but they just moved to a new data center, and that's improving. Last year, they obtained an archive of Greatful Dead recordings, which can be played out as streaming audio. The Deadheads, with their short-term memory loss problems, would play the same stuff over and over again. This was sucking up most of the outgoing bandwidth and interfering with video playback.

The Archive will probably be around long after YouTube is gone. Among other things, there's a duplicate of the Internet Archive in Egypt.

There is a Wayback machine mirror in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. It would be very difficult for them to find any legal basis in Egypt to get this one offline.

Well, it is my home town. I was born and raised there many moons ago.

Anyway, to give some perspective and background:

• Here is a Map of Alexandria.
• The Brucheion would be on the promontary that is just east of where "Raml Station" is marked, facing West.
• Where it says, Qaitbay Fort still stands today, and is said to be on the site of the famous Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the world, and build using the stones from its ruins.
• Just at the base of the promontary, the new library of Alexandria recently opened.
• The original library was most probably burned during the Roman attack of the city.
• The story of the Arabs buring the library is inaccurate and discredited by most historians.
• There was another daughter library at Pompey's pillar (which was not built by Pompey by the way). This one survived for 4 more centuries, but was plundered by Christian fanatic mobs. The same mob dragged the philosopher/mathematician/priestess Hypatia
• Here is another map of underwater artifacts
• Yet another older map from 1855 depicting the battle of Alexandria on 1801 between the French and the British.
• Franck Goddio has done extensive marine archology excavations in the eastern harbor and other places in Egypt (Abu Qir for example). Interesting photos there, including this map of underwater buildings and artifacts, and an artist view of the same.

Egypt is floating on archeology, literally. It is very common to find amphorae and stuff when digging foundations for buildings.

Oh, and by the way, here are some pictures from the city today, focusing on the electric tramways, two types, narrow carriage for downtown, and a wider one for the eastern parts.

I miss it!

There's a place for you and a place for me,
it's the local public library.
They have books and things that they lend for free
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

Educational, informational,
entertainment that's sensational.
It's a way of life, it's for you and me
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

They have histories, they have mysteries
And for mothers, books of recipes
See a movie show, hear a symphony
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

Actually, the Internet Archive's main Wayback Machine servers are located in a co-location center in San Francisco, so it's not correct to say they're located outside the US. There is a mirror of the Archive's web content at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, however - maybe that's what you're thinking of?

In any case, the Archive's work with the Library Of Congress and, increasingly, national libraries who want to archive the Web content of their countries, proves that the establishment also thinks Web archiving is a vital thing to do for posterity. But the rights issues are definitely tricky.