Billionaire carves his name on island

[n2doc]

BY JESS ZIMMERMAN
27 JUL 2011 10:33 AM

Hamad bin Hamdan al Ahyan is a real-life Chairface Chippendale. He owns a private island near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, but what fun is that if everyone doesn't know it's yours? So he wrote his name on it, in letters a third of a mile long that are visible from space.

Al Ahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, owns the world's most expensive car (it has a caviar tray!), the world's largest truck (it has an apartment inside!), and seven Mercedes 500 SLs. So clearly he's not a super conservationist or anything. But turning an island into a walking allegory of the cavalier attitude that the super-rich have towards the Earth ... that's pretty ballsy. It's not clear how he did it -- dynamite? Backhoe? Just doing ceaseless wheelies in his Bugatti? -- but my guess is that he has a phalanx of adorable endangered animals holding the dirt in place.

On Google Maps, the "Hamad" is upside down; al Ahyan apparently is slave to no man's conventions of north as "up." It's also so big that I almost passed right by it when looking for it, assuming I was hunting for something much smaller. Hey, when some people decide to leave a mark on the world that can be seen from space, they don't mess around.


http://www.grist.org/list/2011-07-27-billionaire-carves-his-name-on-island

[mdmc]

1. holla at yo boy!

dude is too cool for school..

[gateley]

2. That's obscene. Does this person get a sense of fulfillment from this?

Does stuff like this, and all the toys, make him truly happy? I doubt it.

[lob1]

4. I believe this is the same guy...the body of his car is made

from solid platinum.

[gateley]

26. It's almost sad - I just can't identify with such meaningless

acquisitions.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. +100

[Lyric]

3. What's really weird is that he wrote it in English.

He must be aiming his boast at Americans, Brits, etc., because I'm assuming that his cultural language is probably not English.

[Divine Discontent]

8. their text is hard to see in print anyhow, so maybe that's why, and the elites of their society get

taught at University and are involved usually in Western business, so that's probably why, more directly. Anyhow, I say, "Spend it all, man, spend it all buying cars and boats and keep the economy going with your lavish spending". I think the movie Syriana was a little about this, how they are blowing all their money, and eventually oil will be gone or not used, then what will they do. It's good to see he says he gives plenty away to charities. I hope he really does.



He figures, I'm getting older, I'm blowing it! lol

[formercia]

17. "then what will they do."

Go back to herding Goats and robbing Pilgrims.

[Mimosa]

21. I wondered about it too.

What a shallow, stupid man.

[Aristus]

30. If he carved it in Arabic script, it would have just looked like a river or something.

:P

Arabic calligraphy is beautiful, but doesn't lend itself well to large-scale signage...

[Warren DeMontague]

6. I'm wondering what font he used.

:shrug:

[Divine Discontent]

10. Looks like Arial, or Corbel...

font size 120000 :rofl:

[Warren DeMontague]

11. See, I could have saved that dude a ton of money

shown him how to do it in Photoshop, instead.

[Divine Discontent]

13. exactly.

[Occulus]

27. Since the only way you can possibly *see* it all is from waaaaay up high

or from space- or in a picture of it from those places- I think we all should erase his name in Gimp (or Photoshop) and add our own instead, and then send him the final picture.

It's so pointless. Who the hell is going to see it?

I have to rewrite the rest; I learned a bit more about the things he's done with his money. Building a pyramid to house your 200 cars is one thing, but a mobile home hand-built in the shape of the Earth at a scale of a million to one is just cool.

I should also note here that his name in the desert is temporary. The desert will reclaim all of this; the only thing in question is how long it will take. I think now something interesting to do would be to track, on a daily basis, the natural progress of that reclamation. We might have a scientific opportunity here to study how the desert in that area of the world reclaims land, and we can also learn exactly how long it takes in this particular case.

Trying to find an upside here.

[Warren DeMontague]

31. To be fair, this kind of thing is probably hard-wired into the primate brain.

Shit, the mammal brain, even.


.opt278x191o0,0s278x191.png

[XemaSab]

33. That island's probably not a rich ecosystem

I doubt he destroyed much.

[greyl]

28. But the "D" looks more like Bell Gothic Black. ;)

It would have been hilarious if he used Papyrus!

[msu2ba]

7. Spooooooooooon!

Any writer who makes a Chairface Chippendale reference is OK by me. :)

[petronius]

20. We'll need to see what it ends up saying after Omnipotus gets done with it:

"HAM" or "MAD"?

[Vinnie From Indy]

9. It would be great if one of his enemies went out and added

"IS A DICKHEAD" underneath.

[Ikonoklast]

16. I can see a

I DID

'S

MOM


in there.

[Terra Alta]

12. what a waste.

The money he used to carve his name could have been used to help the poor and sick. So he's a billionaire, with all these toys he can't take with him when he dies... and when he does die what will be his legacy? Not using his billions to help people in need but using it to carve his name on his own island... how sad.

[pinboy3niner]

14. "...the 63-year-old sheikh also has deep pockets when it comes to philanthropy"

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/man-name-sand-visible-space-190516989.html

[petronius]

23. "Hamad also hand-built a motor home in the shape of a giant globe"

OK, now I really like this guy... :)

[pinboy3niner]

24. He also built a pyramid to house his 200 cars :)

He's richer than God, so he apparently can afford both to give to charity and to be obscenely self-indulgent. What a guy! :)

[Divine Discontent]

15. okay... I don't get it, why would he put up a ham ad?

[BiggJawn]

25. That stuff's been around 190 years?

It's not as bad as Hormel's potted meat "product", but it's far from being the food of the gods...

Cool Hamad.

[Divine Discontent]

32. "potted meat product" lol... ugh...

just sounds horrible. oh wait, I've had it once, it is.

and yeah, nearly 200 years ago they were selling that stuff... wild.

[krispos42]

36. The pun, it hurts...

...ow ow ow ow ow

[originalpckelly]

18. Such a decadent westerner.

"He's from the Middle East."
"Oh."
"He also uses gold leaf toilet paper."
"Oh."
"I use Charmin."
"Decadent Westerner, with your paper product toilet paper. What do you think that grows on trees?"
"It kind of does."

[alphafemale]

19. Actually...that's kind of funny. Build your castles in the sand and delight in seeing them washed a

The UAE is kind of an obscene place of indulgence anyway. Makes Las Vegas look like Cedar Knolls or something. Indoor skiing...really?

[greyl]

29. "rather than ... washed away by the ocean, the letters ... form waterways that absorb the tide"

https://cosmonavigator.wordpress.com/tag/hamad-bin-hamdan-al-ahyan/

Nevertheless, I agree with your sentiment.

[Fuzz]

22. Here's a guy, not encumbered by our burdensome tax system, being able to create jobs!

I'm sure it took quite a crew (of Philipino workers) to do this.

[XemaSab]

34. I went looking for it

From the city of Abu Dhabi it's due south.

And yes, it's large.

[Major Hogwash]

35. Good thing his name wasn't Shithead.

Steve Martin probably would have had a lawsuit stemming from his infamous movie "The Jerk", in which Shithead was his dog.

Boy, that island makes all of the fucking money-grubbing billionaires living here look like a bunch of pikers.

I suppose he's a Muslim and Allah gave him all of that stuff because he deserved it.
That's going to make guys like Joel Osteen feel bad about their petty wealth.

[fujiyama]

37. So this guy carves his name into the earth

Almost 2 miles long, while over 3 million people in Somalia (including some 800,000 kids at risk of dying) are suffering from the worst drought in 60 years...

I've heard that this guy gives a lot to charity, and that's great...but as long as there are people dying of starvation the world over, I don't understand what pleasure someone would get from such a stupid and wasteful exercise in narcissism.