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Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

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Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#21

Post by nhebb »

bendtheblock wrote: post #20
nhebb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see: country borders. I don't know why the author thought that was so profound . Did he really expect the borders to be outlined with lights?

It's profound because it's a reframing - we lose assumptions by viewing the Earth from Space.

The author looked at a night photo of one part of the world and made a wispy proclamation on par with a John Lennon song. Nice idea when you're stoned, but he doesn't really expound on the thought to any depth. It's not profound.

One of my favorite shows is The Sons of Anarchy, a modern day take on Hamlet with a motorcycle club as the back drop. The club was established on the principles of anarchist writer Emma Goldman, and it's interesting how they portray the world of anarchy. As a biker gang, they reject the laws of the world at large, but they seek order at a tribal level, with a president and VP of the club. They want to maintain peace in their hometown, but their quests are geared toward survival and prosperity. It's just a TV show, though. It's not profound. But as a microscopic view of what a borderless world might look like, it's a better starting point that a night photo of the Nile.

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#22

Post by mynameishere »

mapleoin wrote: post #18
nhebb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see: country borders. I don't know why the author thought that was so profound . Did he really expect the borders to be outlined with lights?

I think this paragraph should shed a bit more light on what the author meant: But if enough people can get to space, they’ll see the planet for what it is: a fragile, magnificent ball with a thin shell of atmosphere protecting it from the entire Universe… and no artificial boundary lines to be seen. We made those ourselves, and we put an awful lot of stock in them. Remembering that fact might also be an important way…

That "fragile" ball and "thin" atmosphere have been going strong for millions and millions of years. What the heck does he consider "enduring"? Fashionable politics really clouds the brain.

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#23

Post by tienshiao »

simonw wrote: post #6

I'm in Egypt at the moment. We're in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsular - but we spent several weeks travelling on the Nile from Cairo to Aswan and Luxor before we got here. The experience that really brought home the importance of the Nile was taking the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. You wake up in the morning to sunrise over the Nile. If you look out of the left hand window of the train, you see desert - nothing…

I just returned from a very similar tour (Cairo to Aswan to Luxor, skipped Dahab), probably one week before you. The tour was in Dahab last week. Maybe we crossed paths as our group was leaving and your group was coming.

I took the hot air ballon option in the Valley of the Kings, and from the basket you could see the Nile. Turn a little bit, and you see the farmlands, and turn some more you would see the desert.

At a wide angle, I was able to take a picture of all three in one shot. The Nile is truly the lifeblood of the region.

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#25

Post by masklinn »

mynameishere wrote: post #22
mapleoin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this paragraph should shed a bit more light on what the author meant: But if enough people can get to space, they’ll see the planet for what it is: a fragile, magnificent ball with a thin shell of atmosphere protecting it from the entire Universe… and no artificial boundary lines to be seen. We made those ourselves, and we put an awful lot of stock in them. Remembering that fact might also be an important way…

That "fragile" ball and "thin" atmosphere have been going strong for millions and millions of years. What the heck does he consider "enduring"? Fashionable politics really clouds the brain.

> What the heck does he consider "enduring"

Our pretty fragile species. As a ball of rock going through the solar system, the earth itself will keep going until the sun blows up, and so will life itself more than likely. But we don't live in the whole planet, the biosphere (and even more so the section of it we can in) is a fragile shell and its destruction will translate in ours.

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#26

Post by demallien »

simonw wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #6

I'm in Egypt at the moment. We're in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsular - but we spent several weeks travelling on the Nile from Cairo to Aswan and Luxor before we got here. The experience that really brought home the importance of the Nile was taking the overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. You wake up in the morning to sunrise over the Nile. If you look out of the left hand window of the train, you see desert - nothing…

Here's a video my wife took that illustrates the point: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliedowne/5120992880/

Great video. I find it depressing that they couldn't think of anything better to do with that fertile land than to put a highway along the middle of it.

From Luxor onwards the fertile band is substantially wider, more like 20km, as can be seen on Google Maps.

http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.61167,31.330261&#38...

Does anyone know why the desert of North Africa is so... desert? - In Australia, even the deserts, which are supposed to be some of the driest in the world, in terms of rainfall, have far more vegetation. See here for an example:

http://maps.google.fr/?ie=UTF8&ll=-21.002351,124.804816&...

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#27

Post by eru »

nlwhittemore wrote: post #11

Pretty amazing. On the books, Cairo has 11 million people. Most people think its closer to 20, and that, day to day, another 20 or so come in from outside for work. I lived there on and off for a few years, and it's truly one of the most remarkable places in the world.

Day to day only 20 people on average and net come to Cairo? That would be just 7300 a year and nothing to write home about. (I guess it's more than that. By comparison, Istanbul grew by around a million people a year for a very short time in the 90s.)

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#28

Post by eru »

shivam14 wrote: post #4

Looking at a composite night picture of the world, another river with a heavy relative concentration seems to be the Indus in Pakistan. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.j... In general, the picture provides a great insight into both the affluence and population density of various parts of the world.

That picture is now ten years old. I wonder how affluence and population density have changed since then.

Re: Turns out, it is a river in Egypt

#29

Post by oiuytgfyhujik »

nhebb wrote: post #14
gojomo wrote: post #8

Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see: country borders. There are some borders you can see from space, such as the transition between North and South Korea: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark....

Of course, pictures like this are more profound for what you don’t see: country borders. I don't know why the author thought that was so profound . Did he really expect the borders to be outlined with lights?

There is a whole-earth poster like this and some borders are very obvious.

Rich countries have street lighting, poor countries didn't - even the west-east German border used to be very obvious. 20 years later cheap fluorescent tubes are everywhere which has blurred this a little

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