Sheikh Carves His Name In Desert So It's Visible From Space 336
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."
Meters and miles? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Obligatory Shelley quote (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Shouldn't this be in the Arabic alphabet? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Wash Me" on my car is visible from space (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:0, Insightful)
Not true.
Most "Right-Wingers" are fine with alternative energies as long as they make sense.
Taking away cheap corn to feed people to put into your tank is stupid.
Doing it when it is very expensive is worse.
Using taxpayer money to subsidize the effort is something that the retarded can tell you is a really bad idea.
As oil becomes more expensive and alternatives mature and become less expensive move in the market will take place.
Trying to force the move by use of Government is a horrible idea.
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Riddle me this then! Why did a "right wing" US administration create corn ethanol subsidies despite fervent opposition from every credible "green" organization on the planet? Are you saying Bush, Rove and Cheney are "left wing"? 'Cause I ain't buyin' that corn...
I personally have participated in a letter-writing campaign opposing corn ethanol, and while it's true I was the only Republican I know that was involved, I can tell you that corn ethanol isn't a right/left issue or even a green/brown issue - it's a corporate pork issue, politicians from both parties favoring corporate short-term profit over long-term societal benefits.
There's several big problems with that.
One is that oil is used for more than just fuel - it's an extremely important resource for lubrication, for example, and largely recyclable in that application. Since the market has been historically distorted to favor the exhaustion of oil resources, you've got the same problem you pointed out with corn ethanol; the US government's continuous intervention to keep oil prices artificially low has always been a really bad idea. Every US administration since Jimmy Carter has interfered with the oil market to prevent $10 a gallon gas, and that's why the free market has not already solved our oil addiction.
That's not really true. Certainly corn ethanol subsidies (and farm subsidies in general, for any purpose other than national self-sufficiency) are a bad idea. You're absolutely right in that one specific context! But only government intervention (or civil war) can deal with the twin problems of corporate cost externalization and regulatory capture.
As long as any organization is free to socialize costs and privatize profits, the major corporations will be driven by darwinian market forces to impose the cost of burning carcinogens and depleting critical resources on the bodies of the powerless. A properly structured capitalist market uses regulation to level the playing ground by imposing strict and fair standards on all players in a marketplace - for example, by making it illegal for me to secretly put addictive drugs in my food products, and by making it illegal for me to keep illegal Mexican immigrants as virtual slaves in meat-packing plants.
The problem is not that our government imposes regulations, it's that our government is catastrophically corrupt, at nearly every level. During the last presidential campaign both major candidates rushed back to Washington to reward banks for failing to do business profitably, and to exempt telephone companies from prosecution for federal crimes. The problem is corruption and while the Obama adminstration is clearly smarter than the Bush administration, it doesn't seem to be any less corrupt.
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:5, Insightful)
>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.
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:5, Insightful)
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.