Today Muslims around the world will be able to set their clocks by Mecca-time. The Royal Mecca Clock Tower starts operations today — a Muslim alternative to Big Ben and Greenwich Mean Time. As noted earlier, Muslims have argued that Mecca not Greenwich should be the touchstone for time internationally.
The world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are now expected to set their watches and schedule their prayers according to Mecca time. This will be aided by 2 million LED lights along the 2000 foot structure (Big Ben is only 316 feet high). When it is time to pray five times a day, 21,000 green and white lights will flash — a signal that can be seen for 18 miles.
Personally, I think it is a pretty handsome structure.
Source: Telegraph
Jesus and Mo
Yissil,
Well, everyone here has their little specialty, I happen to be the guy that knows about music. I don’t really get a chance to show off that much, so I use the flimsiest of pretenses to bring it up.
As a side note, have you read Sagan’s “Shadow’s of Forgotten ancestors?” I love the chapter “written” by a chimp female. Fantastic.
Buddah:
When we were roaming the savanah gathereing and hunting we needed to remember through the generations the ways of behaving that kept our little group alive. We had to really really believe in these ways, even if we hadn’t had a chance to test them yet. We had to have faith!
That is the correct and precise Darwinian explanation and anyone who doesn’t believe it will be devoured by the Sacred Tapeworm who lives beneath the Peat Bog of Divine Justice.
Culture is slightly different, but sort of the same.
I’m not sure how much of that I made up myself and how much I got from playing Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a blur of booze, drugs, and sex, frankly.
Gyges,
That was very interesting. It makes me want to make a joke about the military records of both France and Italy, but I feel that this would play right into the hands of our enemies.
(PS Napoleon was a Corsican and doesn’t count.)
Buddha,
You sound like a male sexist pig today….it is probably from that spider bite…ya better watch out or you will get bit by the spider of death….and then ….well ….Just sayin…..
“Yissil 1, August 12, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Gyges,
I see. I guess I just think of pissing contests more as religious phenomena than expressions of culture. Thinking it over I could be wrong.”
I’d like to have Two Cheers and a Word with you.
Go Team Jesus!
Go Team Mo’!
I’m a Mac!
I’m a PC!
and the word “tribalism”.
Yissil,
For a fun (and operatic) time, look up “War of the Buffoons.”
Gyges,
I see. I guess I just think of pissing contests more as religious phenomena than expressions of culture. Thinking it over I could be wrong.
Yissil,
I said culture’s not religions. The true question is how do you decide what a “great culture” is. I personally go by the theory that if you have to ask if yours is included, it’s not.
Gyges–
So here’s my suggestion. Once ever 100 years or so we get all the major cultures of the world together…
=============================================
There’ll be a big dispute about exactly how long “100 years” is and whether or not to read it left to right, right to left, or up and down. In what direction should they piss? Is it a sacred duty to piss in the direction of Mecca/Jerusalem, or is it blasphemy? Since both Jews and Muslims pray in more or less the same direction will they refuse to compete unless the other guy does a 180? (After all if you turn around you’re sort of pointing at the same thing, so nobody should take offense.) And no good Pentecostal is going to participate if a satan-worshipping Epicsopalian is involved.
What the heck is wrong with you Gyges? You trying to sow discord or what?
Elaine,
Women would have better sense than to agree to it in the first place.
Gyges–
So here’s my suggestion. Once ever 100 years or so we get all the major cultures of the world together. They each get to choose one person to represent them, and the one who can urinate the furthest gets to be the one who chooses a clock to set the rest of the world too.
Sound fair?
**********
I assume women will not be invited to serve as cultural representatives to a competition such as the one you suggest.
You men! If it’s not a gun or the TV remote–it’s…you know.
How about a urinary competition to see who can drink a gallon of water and hold it the longest??? That would show true grit!
As long as I don’t have to worry about converting Mecca-time to Central Daylight time I don’t care; I still have trouble converting Pacific time to Central, srsly.
I’m voting with BIL: that is a staggeringly ugly building AND it’s Western. Plopped down in the heart of the Moslem world to accurately call the faithful to prayer with no more than a few arch details to place it geographically advances them spiritually exactly how? The Muslim culture has a dazzling architectural history to draw on and they give the Muslim world this? If I were a fundi-Muslim I’d be thinking that architect needs a good beheading 🙂
lol
Now there’s a dispute resolution system that needs to be used more often.
Or not.
So here’s my suggestion. Once ever 100 years or so we get all the major cultures of the world together. They each get to choose one person to represent them, and the one who can urinate the furthest gets to be the one who chooses a clock to set the rest of the world too.
Sound fair?
So here’s my suggestion. Once ever 100 years or so we get all the major cultures of the world together. They each get to choose one person to represent them, and the one who can urinate the furthest get’s to be the one who chooses a clock to set the rest of the world too.
Sound fair?
The Royal Mecca Clock Tower… quite a brainstorm session, was it?
Might just as well have called it the
BP Goldman Terrorist Minarets Management Service Clock Tower….
Sounds just as good to me.
… fight over a pile of dirt, fight over an unseen god, fight over who has the correct time … if a good muslim doesn’t set his or her time piece to meeca-time will he/she be stoned or hanged?
I’ll say this about the building.
Tacky and aesthetically unpleasing. Semi-gothic neo-bling isn’t an attractive look in architecture.
And now, the architect sketch . . .
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE?fs=1&hl=en_US]
I suppose that is good. It took Russia and Greece until the early 1900 about 400 Hundred years after the Gregorian Calendar was fully accepted by other country’s.
Maybe the October Revolution happened in October maybe it didn’t….It may have been a religious difference between the Orthodox Russian and the Patriarch enemy the Pope of Rome issuing the decree.
What is kinda funny The United Kingdom accepted it a mere few hundred years about 1781 to accept it after 1582 papal bull…and they have been giving the world the Bull ever since.
So hey whats a few minutes here or there when you pray?