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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!
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
" 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
Astronauts don't read Arabic. He should have written it in... Cyrillic? Mandarin?
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?"
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.
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.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=30.083503,-97.13562&spn=0.105759,0.210114&t=h&z=13
>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