On a sandy island in Abu Dhabi Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan has inscribed what is in effect the biggest graffiti tag the world has ever seen. Hamad, 63, a scion of the billionaire Abu Dhabi royal family, has gouged his name in capital letters two miles across and half a mile wide. His moniker is so big it can be seen from space (as this Google Earth pic demonstrates). The tip of the “H” reaches into the strait that leads to the Arabian Gulf, allowing Hamad to fill the first two letters of his name with water. The “M” looks partially filled as well.
Next up: he’s writing “CHA” on the moon.
On the one hand, that’s a really ridiculous thing to do. On the other, I have to admit that were I in a position to do that I’d be sorely tempted too. Maybe not my name, but certainly something.
I searched it out and it’s just not that big. There’s no way you could see it from space; Google Earth photos are taken from an airplane.
Still, your very own name carved into your very own beach! The rich just aren’t that different from us, they do the same absurd things we’d do if we had a shit-ton of money.
I’ll bet he used a different technique from the one I used to write my name in the snow when I was eight.
Oddly, he writes his name using the western alphabet, not Arabic characters.
My first thought as well.
Da DWEE da da da dwee dah!
Here’s a question: if he’d written, say, Allahu Akbar or something similar instead of his name, would this have been seen as an act of great devotion or a blasphemy?
I’m not posing this to be incendiary; I was just wondering how it would be viewed there.
Eight? I do that now and I’m 56!
Well, not “now” because it’s July and very non-snowy outside, but you get my meaning.
If you are in southern california I’d say “never”.
Maybe he just had more people?
He does have cheap labour all around him.
I’d love to sneak people in there at night to add “is a Buttfuc*er” to that name. 
I wonder how long before the wind & sand cover the name? It will require maintenance to keep those letters visible.
It was a mistake to have an asparagus themed week at the dig site cafeteria.
I was wondering about that, too.
Whatever. What you need to do is write your name in trees. It looks like it’s a little more than two miles wide. It’s been there for years. Or if you’re going to write your name in a desert, at least do it in style.
Enjoy,
Steven
That second one reminds me of an ad campaign for a grass fertilizer, I think it was, where they wrote the name of the product in fertilizer, and the grass came up green and lush where they applied it.
AFAIK most Google Earth imagery is taken from satellites.
I didn’t see a Google link or coordinates so spent some time looking for HAMAD myself. Here it is (upside-down with North at top).
(I’m a fan of short URLs, but don’t know which parameters here are inessential.)
Is there a good discussion soemwhere of Google’s Earth maps? I’m curious.
I live in a remote place where even the nearby town appeared on no map I was aware of other than certain unavailable maps used by government. Now there is a thoroughly labeled Google map. I was astounded to see our dirt driveway as a marked road and would have gotten paranoid, except our neighbor’s driveway was also marked.
It can be seen from space if you are using a powerful telescope. To me, ‘seen from space’ means with the naked eye.
That does seem strange. Arabic has more of a flowing script, which is useful if you want to fill it with water.