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."
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
You can see this from summary-level!
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Looking at that, I would hardly say it's "visible from space" In fact, I would say that without a decent telescope and exact instructions, no one in space would have a chance of seeing that.
Re: (Score:2)
That is because he didn't write his full name, "Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan'"
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
FAIL!
All that money and the contractors still fucked it up.
Re:First Post (Score:4, Funny)
"Up" probably has to be aligned towards Mecca, or some similar retarded reason.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a gimmick for a housing development.
Zoom in on the SW corner:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Hamad+Bin+Hamdan+Al+Nahyan&hl=en&ll=24.346862,54.329238&spn=0.033117,0.055747&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=22.087036,57.084961&radius=15000.000000&t=h&z=15 [google.co.uk]
"Tits." - Jack Ryan
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?
Re:Meters and miles? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
They're just using metric feet per second
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever it is, they need to make the URL available
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting you used Markdown syntax for your link. May I ask why you chose to?
Re: (Score:2)
Tsk, that's not impressive at all.
Mr. Hamad should be ashamed of his feeble attempt.
It's a miracle the satalites picked up anything at all of this miniscule bauble.
Re: (Score:2)
You'd have to be hamad to mix metric and imperial!
TFS is so PC (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
I guess they meant "wide", considering this is horizontal.
Re: (Score:3)
Keine Sheisse, Hauptmann Offensichtlich?
Not done in weeks. (Google knows all) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not done in weeks. (Google knows all) (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
True, digging down certainly is a lot easier than digging up.
Re: (Score:2)
My only complaint would be if it's not 1000 meters and 2 miles.
As long as it's right, it doesn't matter if it's inconsistent.
Re: (Score:2)
Being consistent does matter. Its the difference between successful and failing restaurants, the difference between successful and failed scientific experiments, and its the difference between whether or not someone will continue to pay you money for your effort.
The article is simple enough that the inconsistency is forgivable, but it is potentially a tell of bad character traits that are prone to cause failure. And while not everyone feels the need to improve self, not everyone garners high regard from o
Re: (Score:2)
If it's 600 meters by 1 mile, I want to know it's 600 meters by 1 mile, because 2400 by 5280 feet is not the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
My only complaint would be if it's not 1000 meters and 2 miles.
As long as it's right, it doesn't matter if it's inconsistent.
Complain away. I measured it with Google Earth's measuring tool. It's actually 1.6km long and 0.48km high. Both measurements are out by a factor of two.
Re: (Score:2)
I intent to complain about the dimension damn it.
Its a channel. It has length, width and depth, not height.
Re:TFS is so PC (Score:5, Funny)
It's text, its size should be measured in points!
The text is written in 2,834,645 point font.
Re: (Score:2)
No way... font points is probably one of the most inconsistent things I've encountered!
Re: (Score:2)
only on a 72 ppi display, what if you were on an 96 or 120 ppi?
Re: (Score:3)
> It has length, width and depth, not height.
It may also have a significant value of the seldom mentioned dimension of debt.
Sounds like a Clash to me. (Score:5, Funny)
I heard the sharif didn't like it and is planning to rock Hamad's casbah shortly.
Re:Sounds like a Clash to me. (Score:5, Funny)
Why, did he feel excluded due to the use of a sans-sharif font?
Well now (Score:2)
I guess some people still haven't learned the lesson from Arab Spring.
Re: (Score:3)
Now slave or indentured labor is another story.
Re:Well now (Score:4, Interesting)
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?"
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much everybody in Dubai speaks English.
Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
I hope he didn't infringe on a copyrighted font for that project!
He's using a Sands Serf font
Re: (Score:2)
Notice that he is using our alphabet, not the one used in Arabic.
Re: (Score:3)
And we use his numbers.
No, we use an "Arabic numeral" system, but the glyphs that they use are actually quite different from ours. [wikipedia.org] I would include the numbers from 0-9 here, but I imagine that slashcode will maim it to the point of it being fruitless.
Re: (Score:2)
At least he didn't use Papyrus.
Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)
At least it wasn't Comic Sands...
Re: (Score:2)
it's worse than that [nwalsh.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I think the AC is saying the same thing as your link. The scalable font formats (like TrueType) are Turing complete programming languages, in the same way that postscript is. Thus those font files are often referred to as font programs or software, although that easy to misinterpret as meaning the software that renders the font files.
Re: (Score:2)
He's almost saying the same thing.
Non-scalable fonts are software, too. The distinction between data and instructions as "computer programs" is somewhat artificial.
And, in some places, everything about typefaces is copyrightable. Which means they might as well be copyrightable everywhere, if your code that emits them doesn't know where not to.
Chairface Chippendale? (Score:2)
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 [popgunchaos.com]
Re:Write it on the Moon? (Score:2)
The Bedouin Hillbillies (Score:3)
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!
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, what? This is photographic evidence they can write.
Of course, it does seem to take a lot of them a very long time and some heavy machinery to complete one word...
Re: (Score:3)
Good thing (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Was Ozymandias, king of kings, a narcissistic asshole who hopelessly overestimated the duration of his pitiful little civilization, and who intended the "mighty" to despair in the face of his superior might? Or was a a forward-thinking sort of chap who urged the "mighty" of the era reading the inscription to despair when they looked upon the oblivion that had become of his civilization and considered the likely fate of their own?
Either way, the Sheikh is a dumbass.
Re:Obligatory Shelley quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
That's why it's a famous poem.
Needs appended ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WAS HERE!
How about "sucks"?
Shouldn't this be in the Arabic alphabet? (Score:2)
Re:Shouldn't this be in the Arabic alphabet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
All those curves in the arab letters would've made the project infinitely more complex. Latin block letters are nice and easy though, just straight canals.
No big deal--check out the LUEKE ranch (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Love the use of mixed units (Score:5, Funny)
" 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
North is ... which way? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd imagine it's related to the direction the sphere rotates, or in which it orbits.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, given that the whole point was a vanity attempt to have his name show up on satellite photos, he should've considered that in most representations, those photos follow the convention which is north up.
Writing Name in Snow (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't they do this on South Park? (Score:2)
I could swear I saw an episode where Cartman did this. Didn't I? Am I wrong? How?
GOD DAMN YOU SHEIK HAMAD!!!
"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.
And What Are We Compensating For? (Score:3, Interesting)
How small does your penis have to be for this to compensate?
Re: (Score:3)
How small does your penis have to be for this to compensate?
Naw, thats the guys who buy 5 mpg trucks and send him their gas money.
Most likely they're compensating for having no arable land, and too much money floating around too many unemployed people.
Its only funny because he's in another culture. Over there, he's probably laughing at our makework projects like "bridges to nowhere" etc.
Re: (Score:2)
How small does your penis have to be for this to compensate?
Naw, thats the guys who buy 5 mpg trucks and send him their gas money.
I think he has them beat too, from TFA:
The Arab sheikh has a taste for doing things on a large scale. He built the world's largest truck - eight times the size of the Dodge Power Wagon, with four bedrooms inside the cabin.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure sombody died (Score:2)
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 [google.com]
Or is that standard in Arabic, like right to left, or top to bottom writing...
Re: (Score:2)
Who says North is up?
Of Morons and Mobsters (Score:2)
LOL, U MAD BRO? .. oh.. HAMAD.. Nevermind. (Score:2)
That pretty much takes the wind out of my griefing sail.
What is it with these knuckleheads? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
What? Was he planning to hitchhike to heaven?
Poor font choice (Score:2)
I know this insn't the most insightful comment (Score:2)
Compensating (Score:2)
Or feed the poor.. (Score:2)
Or he could have, I don't know, fed the desperately poor people in his country...
Wow- Nazca? (Score:3)
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 [wikipedia.org]
all of ya, turn in yer nerd cards now..
Hamad's neighbor (Score:3)
Everything's Bigger in Texas (Score:4, Funny)
http://maps.google.com/?ll=30.083503,-97.13562&spn=0.105759,0.210114&t=h&z=13 [google.com]
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: (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
but using government to force oil companies (or any squatter) to either use or give up their patent rights to alternative energy methods would put a good dent in the problem.
Re:Rename Post Title (Score:5, Informative)
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 [independent.co.uk] :
"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.'"
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Those Dubai artificial "World" islands are already sinking back into the sea [telegraph.co.uk] and they're what, 3 years old now ? I doubt this'll last 50 years beyond the arrogant asshole's death.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? He did it UPSIDE DOWN?!
What a maroon.
And according to the scale on that map, it's only about 600 meters by 1 mile.
Re: (Score:2)
He really should have gone to the trouble to do it right-side-up.
BTW, if you zoom out a few steps, you can see a work-in-progress version. It's a little clearer on the US version of gmaps.
Re: (Score:2)
All that planning and he didn't even get it right side up?