Apr. 14th, 2009

mattbell: (Default)
I went down to Abu Simbel yesterday.

p1050731 by you.

Abu Simbel was officially a temple to Isis, but it's real purpose was twofold:
- Stroke the pharaoh's ego
- Scare neighboring civilizations into providing tribute.

The temple is filled with scenes of the Egyptian army slaughtering and enslaving other civilizations.  They made  sure to be racially inclusive.. they had a Nubian, a Hittite, a Greek of some sort, an Assyrian etc. 

Anyway, Abu Simbel was very impressive, and well worth the 3-hour drive each way through the Sahara.

-------------

So I have this thing about blogging at various ancient monuments and other nice places.  For example:

 
p1030752  p1030753
Ephesus, Turkey

p1010742  p1010744
Ankgor Wat, Cambodia

p1050208
Taba, Egypt

setting-sun
Akko, Israel

P1000347
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Having a laptop has been seriously wonderful.  I chose one (EEE PC 901) that has around six hours of battery life, weighs around two pounds, and costs only $350.  It's good enough to handle email, browsing the web, writing documents, and other basics.  The version of Linux that comes with it is kind of wonky though... any attempt to do something out of the ordinary (eg use an ipod as an external hard drive) has been a pain in th ass.    The computer also crashes half the time when coming out of standby.  Even so, it's wonderful, and it beats lugging around a full size laptop.  It's also a great conversation starter... apparently people haven't seen subnotebooks before.

mattbell: (Default)
Today in Cairo I passed a large bookstore that had numerous Arabic titles on display in the window, along with an English-language modern printing of Mein Kampf prominently placed in the middle. From what I can tell, this is still the most pro-Israeli country in the Arab world, which I suppose isn't saying much.
mattbell: (Default)
p1050690c by you.

Photographed on the way to Abu Simbel, about 200km from the border with Sudan.

It reminds me of Laputa - Castle in the sky.

Mirages and fiber optics both work based on slight differences in refractive index between two adjacent materials... in this case, hot air and hotter air..

mattbell: (Default)
I had no idea just how much art deco borrowed from ancie4nt Egypt until I saw the Temple of Philate:
   p1050569  p1050572

  Separately, this column was very interesting in that it turned out to be a few iterations of a fractal.

p1050543
mattbell: (Default)
P1050199 by you.
Taken inside Rabin Crossing (Israel/Jordan border crossing... no photography allowed)

Can someone identify these two world leaders for me?  I assume one of them is a past Prime Minister of Israel.

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