Saudi Arabia has made the world’s largest clock in Mecca. The only thing is we kinda stopped the largest clock competition about a hundred years ago and moved on to other things like space travel. If Saudi Arabia landed on Mars, that would be impressive, but as it stands making the world’s largest clock is a bit like making an impressive finger painting. We can pat Saudi Arabia on the head and tell them what a smart boy they are, but we’d just be patronizing them.
Apparently the Middle East was really advanced like a thousands years ago, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve really done much since then. Best they can do these days is ape Western culture using their oil money, but they don’t seem to contribute anything useful to the world. Then again, it seems like the West has slowed in advancing. What impressive thing have we done lately other than come up with better iPhones? We once went to the moon, but I’m not even sure we could do that again today because it would violate too many OSHA regulations. Maybe if we slow down enough, eventually the Middle East will catch up with us. They already have a really big clock.
I can’t be bothered clicking links, does their really big clock have the date too?
If so, what is it set for?
Is it 11am, August 12th, 734?
You will burn in hell for all eternity, infidel!
And that eternity will be all the more miserable, comprised as it will be of your tiny little infidel minutes, not our glorious gigantic Islamic minutes!!
It would be better if the clock were digital, so that every minute when the numbers changed the crowd would let out a collective, “ooooooh!” Then again, that sort of thing is probably so advanced a concept for most of the people in the middle east that they’d probably just stand there transfixed and that would give the men one heck of a sunburn.
What would be minorly hilarious would be if that clock chimed like the bells at Westminster Abbey.
The UAE and Kuwait manage to build some pretty impressive structures and cities, but if I an a small oligarchy had control of hundreds of billions and no care for the starving peasants, I could probably hire elite Dutch firms to build me leaning skyscrapers, too.
Dang it Frank warn us when links point to the dark insane places.
The clock marks the exact time when we nuke them and take their oil?
They want mecca time to replace Greenwich Mean Time, course they want their crappy relieon to replace all the goods one, so…
So what are we supposed to stand in awe that a bunch of retards made a clock?
I totally agree that the pace of advancement in the West has slowed over the last half century or so. We’ve made lots of progress on making things better (semiconductors, IC’s, lasers, computers, planes, etc.), but it seems like there haven’t been any groundbreaking new discoveries/inventions.
I blame the “research culture” at universities, where graduate students spend 5 years on one minor project to get a PhD, and professors spend most of their time trying to get money instead of doing anything useful. This same attitude then migrates to the buisness world as well. This may just be a symptom of a lazy generation of Americans though…
In the end, I blame progressives/stupid hippies for devaluing hard work. Stupid hippies.
See, but that’s the thing… people ARE retards and will be impressed with this. It drives me kinda nuts when I hear people say they love the work of Jackson Pollack. Really? Work? It’s called paint splats, you moron, now please move to Saudi Arabia and go worship the giant clock.
>>>Best they can do these days is ape Western culture using their oil money
And they don’t even do that very well. Living in a college town with a lot of international students, by favorite time of year is when the roads ice up and the rich saudi punks put their BMWs wheels-up on the curb.
Imagine where all those middle Eastern would be today without our oil money.
(1) Instead of the heartwarming Westminster Chimes, the new Saudi timepiece has the synthesized voice of a muzzerain calling them to worship. Every hour. On the hour. You don’t want to live nearby at three in the morning.
(2) Mechanical engineers build weapons; civil engineers build targets. Just sayin’.
(3) So now we know where the Arab world is hiding their intercontinental ballistic missiles! Clever disguise FAIL.
(4) For construction, the Saudis accepted a low bid from some construction company in Pisa, Italy. Six years, and it falls smack-dab on the Qaaba.
If the Saudis and other Muslims are so advanced, why can’t they make use of toilet paper? Seriously, they wipe with their left hands!!!
2 million LED lights? That is NOT a clock!
It is an Electronic device built to resemble a Clock.
This is a large CLOCK. It has gears, and leevers, and screws, and pulleys, and other mechanical stuff.. This is what is inside a Clock
http://www.dugnorth.com/blog/uploaded_images/Reilly-clock.jpg
This is what is inside a LED (Light-emitting diode)
http://www.remuen.ch/ledstuff/fotos/led_inside.jpg
[Okay, I’m finally going to ask: Are you for real? -Ed.]
Yes, the Arab culture was quite rich and quite advanced in its day. Their science was cutting edge; their learning centers the envy of the world. Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut were the go-to sites for scholarship.
Up until Islam arrived on the scene. That pretty much stopped them in their place. Haven’t busted out of it since, and are unlikely to. At best, they can piggy-back on Western progress, except that (a) they won’t touch pigs, (b) Western progress means that hateful Western culture, and (c) ain’t that much Western progress anymore anyway.
Yeah, no one really gave a d__n what they did to and with each other until the Brits discovered oil there back in the ’30s.
Whats this.Islam embracing technology… I thought they only did that with weapons.. Whats next ? Women drivers
Same place they are now, but with less stuff. 😉
Speaking of Islam and changing the “times”
http://bible.cc/daniel/7-25.htm
“…and think to change times and laws”
The lofty heights of achievement that the Islamic world especially Iraq and Iran (once the center of the world 4k years later still a desert slum) fell from shows not only the backward nature of Muhammads Islam but also the cultural and scientific black hole that is left behind for multi-millenia after a once great empire collapses.
More recently and closer to home for us the movie “Fish Tank” is a sad but clear window into the collapsed empire of the once great Britain.
This is retarded. Let us count the ways:
1) The idea of a universal standard is that it is universal. Hence the name. A moronic standard would be one in which everyone had their own standard.
B) GMT didn’t become the time standard because they had a big clock. It became the standard because the combination of an empire and telegraphic communication made it essential to establish a standard.
3) We’ve already gone politically correct by changing GMT to UTC. The “U” in UTC stands for “universal.” Isn’t that good enough for a bunch of bed wetters?
4) Replace GMT? Retarded? Like the classic IBM commercial used to say: “YOU MAKE THE CALL!”
5) No one, and I mean no one, is coming to Mecca to celebrate New Years. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains, but the big ball falls only in Times Square.
6) All previous time zone designations discriminate against me. I now keep time according to Burmashave Standard Time (BS-T). BS Time includes two and a half hours that don’t exist on Sundays. These hours are used for napping.
7) Big Ben is adjusted by adding or removing a copper penny from on top of its massive counterweight. You can’t beat that for engineering coolness. LED’s haven’t been cool since the 70’s.
8) I have never felt slighted nor have I held it against England that I am always 5 hours behind GMT.
9) If Muslims want to gain some traction, they should start a movement against Daylight Savings Time.
If GMT became MMT (Mecca Mean Time) I think that the emphasis would definitely have to change to the second word in that abbreviation.
Terrible joke, I couldn’t help myself. From the depths of my heart I apologize to everyone who read it.
You’d think that, as Arabs, they could use, I don’t know, the Arabic numerals on the clock face? Or are those too Western for them now?
What if it’s actually a giant time bomb disguised in plain sight?
A big LED sign reading “In the name of Allah” makes this seedy and pathetic on the levels of 1970s Las Vegas or an old Coney Island sideshow.
Also a bit condescending “Here’s a bright shiny thing, worship me! Next I make fire from tiny box!” But hey, if that’s what they think of their fellow Muslims I suppose I’ve no room to argue.
I can’t wait until some roadside hacker changes the sign. I’m taking bets on it becoming ( . Y . ), second in the standings right now is a depiction of Mohommed, followed closely by bacon.
If Muslims wipe with their left hand, do they use their right hand for masturbating?
So now they have a clock. Maybe soon they’ll have a calendar that goes past the year 700.
Ill take Mecca time if they take the Jewish year.
Which I think is currently 5770 and will become 5771 on 7 September 2010
#12: Bwahahahaha!
I think you could start a new category with this: Islamic Science!
A giant clock, Islamic Science!
A paper airplane, Islamic Science!
And so on…
“In the name of Allah,” their clock is twelve minutes slow.
Plus or minus thirteen hundred years, give or take.
We could sum this and many other stories from the same region with two words: Inferiority Complex
Did you look closely at the pictures of the clock? All the #s on it are “II”.
Abdul: “‘What time is it, brother?”
Achmed: “2:10”
Abdul: “It can’t be – it was 2:10 an hour go.”
Achmed: “You question The Mecca Clock!!?? Die, infidel!!!”
In addition to GMT being the universal TIME standard, every PLACE on earth is located by its Latitude (its distance North or South of the Equator) and its Longitude
(its distance East or West of a North-South line running through the Greenwich Naval Observatory, near London). It’s been the standard of navigation for several
hundred years. But, that’s alright, we can scrap the whole system and move the prime meridian to Mecca, just to avoid offending the F***ing rag-heads.
There’s probably a bunch of gay Saudi men inside that clock moving the hands around to match the time on their Japanese digital watches.
It would be better if the clock were digital,
No, because if our bombing knocked out their power, it would just be the world’s largest blinking “12:00.”
hmmm. Okay, are we going to change the Prme Meridean also? that would move the Date Line. Probably change the day they vote in Hawaii. And we will have to renumber all the longitudes. It’ll screw up the maps and my GPS will go nuts.
[Okay, I’m finally going to ask: Are you for real? -Ed.]
His avatar is perfect, isn’t it?
Somebody please tell those fools that women aren’t laughing at their little clocks.
They’re importing their structural engineers from Pisa, Italy.
The clock will be covered with LED’s but have real moving hands. Of course, they only move for the hours that the electricity is on.
It will make a very impressive platform from which to hang people.
It will show the current hour and minute, but not the century.
There are no bells, of course, because they disturb the rest of the dead. Instead there will be a muezzin call, which only sounds like it will wake the dead, plus millions of flashing lights to trigger every epileptic within twenty miles five times a day.
If the muslims around the world change their clocks to Mecca time, it’s time for us to show them the door. Give them free tickets to the Arab country of their choice and stop all government, humanitarian aid. No more trade with these countries. If they can’t deal with the rest of the world then it’s time for them to ooze back into the slime of irrelevancy that they and their religion so richly deserve.
One wonders what life would have been like if the Lord had chosen Esau to father his chosen people. As dissolute, ignorant, and intolerant a people as they have proven to be, human beings would still be living in tents, herding goat and subsisting on humas. Of course choosing someone to be the father of your chosen people who was willing to sell his birthright for a bowl of porridge would seem to me to be the act of someone who either was not paying attention or was not the smartest bulb in the pack, but the Muslims just can’t get over daddy not picking them for the game. One would think that 3000+ years would be enough time to get over themselves and more on but nothing says immaturity like holding a grudge for milline.
Did anyone notice that the developer is a firm named Binladen? As I recollect, Osama’s pop is a wealthy Saudi developer. I’m sure there’s a conspiracy here, but I can’t figgur it out. Mebbe the selection of dad’s firm is hoped to protect it against threats that oppose commercialization of Mecca.
I can’t believe no one said it yet: Are they trying to compensate for something? I guess they think size matters.
It’d be easy to tell the time if there weren’t this big oversized burqa covering the clock!
I’m amused. They clearly are so obsessed with phallic symbols that they think that Greenwich Mean Time is based off Big Ben. Hate to tell them that it isn’t… it’s so much fun to laugh at them.
The time will never be accurate since they will never sync with the infidel’s atomic clock. OSHA? The cost of a handicap ramp alone will doom any future manned space flights,
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I just shot coffee outta my nose. Hot coffee. Thank you Frank J.