[travelpics] Blogging on ancient monuments

I went down to Abu Simbel yesterday.



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.

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

 
 
Ephesus, Turkey

 
Ankgor Wat, Cambodia


Taba, Egypt


Akko, Israel


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.

[travel] Mein Kampf

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.

[travel] Mirage!

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..

Egyptian column styles - art deco and fractals

I had no idea just how much art deco borrowed from ancie4nt Egypt until I saw the Temple of Philate:
    

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

[travel] No smoking!

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.