Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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".
True, I love it every time a sheikh does something extravagant like this because disgust at the wealth of non-American oil barons is the only thing that motivates US right-wingers into supporting alternative energy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Astronauts don't read Arabic. He should have written it in... Cyrillic? Mandarin?
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.
>Who are we to judge any of the areas outside EUSia?
We are humans. Being treated as slaves is not something any human would want to happen to them.
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
That's the local culture.
Who are we to judge any of the areas outside EUSia?
It's called the universal declaration of human rights for a reason. Like the americans say "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." This is actually one of the few achievements of western, and indeed human, culture worth fighting for.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.