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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
I heard the sharif didn't like it and is planning to rock Hamad's casbah shortly.
I hope he didn't infringe on a copyrighted font for that project!
1000m high and 2 miles long - now everybody can complain about the units of measurement!
1000m high? That's quite an achievement in just "weeks" - the Freedom Tower is only going to be 1776 feet (541m) high, and is taking *years* to complete. We need to hire this guy's workers!
antipaucity
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.
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".
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.
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
" 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
Astronauts don't read Arabic. He should have written it in... Cyrillic? Mandarin?
If they were paid to do the work, who cares how pointless it seems?
Now slave or indentured labor is another story.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
It's text, its size should be measured in points!
The text is written in 2,834,645 point font.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
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... ---
I would.
"This man is so vain, so rich, he would spend on writing his name. The first thing this tells us, is that he has too much. The second thing this tells us, is that he works very little for it - only a man who does no work, would value his resources so little. The third thing this tells us is that he is a weak, wasteful fool. Why should we not rise up, and take what he has, when we can make so much better of it?"
> It has length, width and depth, not height.
It may also have a significant value of the seldom mentioned dimension of debt.
He should have used Comic Sans.
True, I love it every time a sheikh does something extravagant like this because jealousy at the wealth of non-American oil barons is the only thing that motivates US right-wingers into supporting alternative energy.
FTFY
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Like this is the only reason. These people are slavers and it's an outrage the west supports these regimes. I mean just read this article about Dubai :
"It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.
In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.'"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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
True, I love it every time a sheikh does something extravagant like this because jealousy at the wealth of non-American oil barons is the only thing that motivates US right-wingers into supporting alternative energy.
FTFY
Obviously the disgust is for the fact that the oil barons are non-American, not for what they choose to do with their money.
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.
only on a 72 ppi display, what if you were on an 96 or 120 ppi?
You are confusing points with dots or pixels. Points are a font metrics unit. Dots/pixels depend on the resolution.
On a 72ppi display (note that "ppi" means "pixels per inch"), you have one pixel per point. On a 96ppi display, you have 1.5 pixels per point.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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
Keine Sheisse, Hauptmann Offensichtlich?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>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.
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