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Sheikh Carves His Name In Desert So It's Visible From Space
While it isn't as cool as carving his name on the surface of the moon with a giant heat ray, Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan's enormous signature is quite an accomplishment nonetheless. Measuring 1,000 meters high and two miles long, the sheiks name is now visible from space. From the article: "And rather than allow the writing to be washed away by the ocean, the letters actually form waterways that absorb the encroaching tide.The ruler's name is even visible on Google's map service. Hamad dreamed up the idea and had his workmen toil for weeks to craft the enormous piece of sand graffiti. It is not known how much it cost to make."
You can see this from summary-level!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
1,000 meters high is a kilometer, yet the length is given in miles.
Didn't NASA have a problem when they didn't convert from metric to standard?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1000m high and 2 miles long - now everybody can complain about the units of measurement!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I heard the sharif didn't like it and is planning to rock Hamad's casbah shortly.
I guess some people still haven't learned the lesson from Arab Spring.
#DeleteChrome
I hope he didn't infringe on a copyrighted font for that project!
Largest reason for alternative energy visible from space.
As if you needed another reason why the people getting our oil money are absolutely insane. Just look at Dubai.
It's only a matter of time before this guy buys the world's biggest laser and writes his name on the moon. http://www.popgunchaos.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/chairface-moon.jpg
I sure hope there are warning lights mounted on top, to warn the airplanes...
Sig?
Come on, granny, we're trading in our goats for a flashy island! This oil's gonna let us spend our money in ways so obscene and ridiculous that no one will ever guess that that we're really just bedouin trash that can't read and write!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here it is.
In 2000 years people will have violent disputes whether this was a message to god, or a message to extraterrestrial visitors, saying "welcome" or "land here".
And some will say the extraterrestrials were the gods.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Good thing he didn't try to spell out his entire name. He'd run out of desert. Besides, if you look this up in Google Maps, you can read "Futaisi Island" right next to it and it didn't cost a thing.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
WAS HERE!
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Maybe I don't know enough about Arab culture, but I find it a bit strange that the letters are all from the Roman alphabet.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
...that it's upside-down? Check out the google maps view: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=k&ll=24.34328445750892,54.32608366012573&z=16
This HAMAD thing looks to be old news compared with the Lueke ranch--check on googlemaps or googleearth for Smithville, Texas, and pan north a bit.
Life is tough. Life is even tougher when you're stupid.
Launch and series of charcoal power filled probes at the Moon and writing his name in dot matrix letters.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
" Measuring 1,000 meters high and two miles long,"
Other interesting facts
It took 3 fortnights to build
The length of all the letters is 2.3 leagues
The entire name can hold 1000 mega hogsheads of seawater
The estimated cost of the monument is 500 Million Drachmars
http://maps.google.com/?ll=24.344281,54.333744&spn=0.042071,0.092869&t=h&z=14 He somehow managed to write it upside down too. Whoops.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Be slightly more impressed on several levels if someone could write their name in the snow so it is visible from space. Not sure I could drink that much water though...
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I don't know about that "visible from space" thing. Sure, anything is visible from space if you have a powerful enough lens, but even the Great Wall of China isn't visible from space to the naked eye, and even zooming out a little bit on the map shows how small it really is...
--Edward Dassmesser
Isn't pretty much everything visible from space?
I could swear I saw an episode where Cartman did this. Didn't I? Am I wrong? How?
GOD DAMN YOU SHEIK HAMAD!!!
They've only gone and done it upside down:
http://goo.gl/ptrDV
Do it again, and do it properly this time.
Someone wrote "Wash Me" on my car.
Pretty sure that its visible from space as well.
Lately visible from space doesn't really mean anything.
How small does your penis have to be for this to compensate?
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
--- the smaller the pencil
Once he realized that they wrote it upside down!!!!
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=uae+hamad&hl=en&ll=24.344281,54.325955&spn=0.013939,0.030899&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.223579,93.076172&t=h&z=16
Or is that standard in Arabic, like right to left, or top to bottom writing...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
In case you were wondering where a lot of the cash that gets gouged out of your wallet when you buy gas. It goes to mobsters who are so colossally unimaginative and dimwitted that their Big Idea is to carve their initials on the earth. Really, really big ones.
That pretty much takes the wind out of my griefing sail.
People starve around the world and this tosser wastes how much money to satisfy his enormous ego, scum!
Saddam Hussein built the "Mother of all Battles" mosque, now called "Mother of all Cities." It was supposed to have an artificial lake and an island with the shape of his thumb - so big "God could see it from space." Don't know if they actually got around to making the island, tho the mosque is there.
Man with world's smallest penis writes name in world's biggest letters.
I don't think that Mr Luecke is a Sheikh, but I also don't think you can see this from space:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=&aq=3&sll=30.084394,-97.128067&sspn=0.064316,0.126171&ie=UTF8&ll=30.086771,-97.140684&spn=0.052358,0.066347&t=h&z=14
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
He should have used Comic Sans.
And thus the /. editors reached "measurements and units fuck up" nirvana.
Neither the article nor the summary didn't even spell his name right. It is Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan not "Ahyan".
I kinda see what drove him to do this.
...according to the Google Maps measuring tool.
Or in real measurements, 500m high by 1.7km long.
42 hidden comments
The first thing that came into my head - "What a douchebag"
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Time for the Hamads of the world to rise up!
Or he could have, I don't know, fed the desperately poor people in his country...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Too much money, zero class
Not a single post mentioning the nazca lines?
It's been DONE BEFORE! even before there were satellites to see it...
1500 years before!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines
all of ya, turn in yer nerd cards now..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Using the Google Maps ruler lab, it's:
1.67km (1.04mi) long
494m (1621ft) wide
Nowhere near as large as the summary makes it out to be.
I thought along those lines, but I thought more along the lines that he was compensating for something smaller he had.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Shortened to this: http://goo.gl/E8WJI
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
So now everybody can see, even from space, what a pathetic ego this moron has got.
What a waste of time and money...
The "H" and "A" looks good, but everything from the "M" on looks like crap. Sand washed in, and it looks rough. He should definitely "take it up" with his "employees".
This reminds me of the "Preacher" comic. The part where a man in the desert wrote some text in order to be visible from the space shuttle... (much funnier than "Hamad" by the way..)
On Google Earth, I checked image history at the area (Coordinates 2420'39.79"N, 5419'38.43"E) and found:
Jul 13, 2004: Nothing
Oct 7 2005: H, most of A
Sept 12, 2007: HA, part of MAD
Jul 13, 2009, All letters excavated, but water not in MAD yet.
After thinking about the money wasted on this I can further understand what fueled the Arab Spring.
The palm tree sandbar island thing was cool. This is just douche-baggery at its finest.
I measured the letters in Google Maps and they appear to be only 1 mile wide from the H to the D and about 500 meters "tall". So either the article is wrong or my Maps measuring tool is off by 1/2.
There used to be a time when people spent their resources on things like giant pyramids. This is pretty weak if you ask me...clearly an example of the start of the downfall of man....
I like the way the "HA" part is filled with blue water, and the "MAD" part is filled with sediment-filled/brown water.
Nicely sums it up.
Um, the license number on my car is "visible from space" if you use the right satellite. Can we retire this phrase now?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If I was Hamad's neighbor, I'd pay my team to write "<-- is a dumbass".
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=30.083503,-97.13562&spn=0.105759,0.210114&t=h&z=13
Fairfield College, New Zealand
He should have done it in Comic Sans.
Given the nature of the project, they might as well have skipped the "HA"...
Oh come on now, don't pretend you wouldn't if you could. Only difference is I'd throw down the extra cost to add "wuz here"
+1 Disagree
The article ends: "It is not known how much it cost to make."
Today that should be: "It is not known how many jobs the Sheik's project created."
... because then we would have a 10 km "Hello World!" visible from space
life Hamad a Get. (anag 4 words)
"Did you check out that vanity desert I got my boy for his sweet 16?"
Nor is his personal fortune 'second only to the King of Saudi Arabia'. Has the Daily Mail been tipped off about Wikipedia yet?
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
A real nerd would know that all the BS about Nazca only being visible from the air/space has been debunked long ago.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
and not in Arabic script?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
> 1,000 meters high and two miles long...
Yes, and I wonder how much time it would take the Sheik to walk around that, say at a rate of 2,245 furlongs per fortnight?
What?????
Well:
a. a man's walking pace is "3.5 miles per hour" (a woman's is 3 mph) = 5.6 kilometers per hour (f: 4.8);
b. but, as this is sand, I estimate the actual rate is 2/3 (66.66%) = 3.733 kph (f: 3.2);
c. the letters measure approximately 21 km around the outside (not including the middle of the As or D);
* If the H is 1,000m high, then the upper oblique strokes of the As, M and D are ~1,000m when the cross-over is taken into account;
* the under-part of the A is ~1,000m;
* the curve of the D is ~1,600m -- think of half a circle;
* take into account the 'joining pieces' between the letters...
d. a furlong per fortnight is ~1.663^-4 metres/second, so walking pace is ~2,245 furlong per fortnight;
Hence, at walking pace, in sand, the seemingly spritely 63 year old Hamad would take about 5.6 hours to walk from beach to beach at the top of the H, and (although I can find no mention of her) his wife might get there in about 6.6 hours.
If he had a hard walkway constructed, it would take around 3.75 hours (4.4hrs).
However, he'd probably drive.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
If I could do that. And had a palace near a suitable place, as this guy does.
I'd write "LAND HERE"
Paint over that graffiti soon, or next it'll be broken windows and stolen bycicles.
I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die. (Lowe 1997:165–166)
Google's ruler measures it at just on 500m high and 1.66 km (Just barely over a mile) long.
That's only a quarter of how big the story says it is.
The entire idea behind all of Dubai's development from a western point of view was to gain a tax paradise to avoid paying taxes made on money "earned" in the west. Dubai itself had little else to offer, it is not the place the money making itself happens and it is to far away to even do business deals in. To islamic too, who wants to do a business deal if you can't have drinks after wards? Dubai is extremely Islamic and while they allowed some alcohol they also introduced mandatory dry spells. Not what you want when showing a potential client around.
When money was growing on trees, yuppies had pipe dreams of being able to move all financial trade somewhere were the tax man couldn't touch them... how realistic it all was is simple to see. Did Warren Buffet invest in it? No? Then it wasn't viable. This truly was poor rich man's dream. What is a poor rich man? A man who has enough money that he shouldn't have to worry about money anymore but still does. Buffet is not one of them, to him it is just a way of keeping score and he has long pledged to simply donate his score card upon his death. He lives in a fairly ordinary house, spending a fairly ordinary amount of money and thinks taxes for the rich should be INCREASED.
Dubai was for the likes of that british old far magician, made his fortune under a tax supported umbrella, then runs when it is his turn to pay.
I have had dealing with Dubai myself and the culture there is very intresting, they got ZERO local knowledge, even simple knowledge on how to spend money. If Dubai had been less ambitious and simply build up slow like the asian tigers did including some real production to at least have something of a normal economy it might have worked. It wouldn't be the first time a city sprang up out of nowwhere.
But they basically wanted to create a massive monaco and wallstreet in one. Guess, what, those roles are filled. And neither Monaco or Wall Street got to deal with insane Islamic law.
What is even more intresting if you want an insight into the true nature of Islam is to see how much money Dubai spends on say the current famine affecting muslims in Africa... or the flooding in Pakistan... suddenly all that money seems to flow a lot more slowly.
Yuppies in the sand.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just in case someone is actually looking for a link to take them straight to the location in Google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?...
This is a shrewd business move. Depending on where the water rests, I see advertising revenue from the AMA, "Mad Men", and the United Ham Council.
HA! Erosion!
Do you see where I wrote "a lot of them"? This is called a "plural", which is used in a situation where more than one person or thing is involved. Since one person is not more than one, the use of a plural makes it obvious to the astute reader that "he didn't dig that himself".
In short: "Whoosh!"
Blank until
See http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/12/13/1165685690455.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Just north of the Melbourne-Perth standard track way back then - seems to have been relaimed by Ma Nature, as I can't find it (It was about Caiguna.
Ah, tempes fugit
This is somewhat bigger than any single of those Nazca images, this is also somewhat more labour intensive to create.
A couple of kids write their names on some freight trains, get busted, and all of the sudden are facing federal charges.. This cocksucker, just because he can afford to "commission" his work, gets nothing but a pat on the back.
Fuck capitalism, and fuck Hamad.
Fucking punk ass mark ass bitch ass trick.
Odd that he didn't use Arabic.
I find it amusing that he used western letters for this instead of proper Arabic. Clearly he understood who was likely to be looking down on it. Pathetic...
Someone really needs to write FUCK right above it.
Is it me or does this guy look like W in a sheik costume?