Actually the official standard is UTC, kept by very accurate atomic clocks – with the occasional leap second to stay in sync with Earth’s rotation. When people say GMT these days they usually mean UTC. So what Mo needs to do is build a rival atomic clock instead… go smaller not bigger!
From the Telegraph article, “According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show “Sharia and Life”, Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it is “in perfect alignment with the magnetic north.””
I take this to be a claim that Mecca is exactly on the line of zero magnetic declination. It isn’t. The closest the agonic line currently comes to Mecca is about 1600 km. In fact Greenwich is closer at about 800 km.
Also from the article, “This claim that the holy city is a “zero magnetism zone” has won support from some Arab scientists like Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Centre who says that there is no magnetic force in Mecca.
“That’s why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier and is less affected by the earth’s gravity,” he said. “You get charged with energy.””
Gosh, how I for one, cannot wait for true Islamist science to sweep over the Imperialist West with all our non-magnetic clocks…non-flat-earth god-defying nonsense.
Save us oh Imans! Save us from ourselves!
It actually has millions of LED lights that flash 5 times a day to alert them as to when to rug but!!!! Supposedly can be seen from 18 miles away. I thought that the true magnetic north was in constant flux and has been know to flip poles.
I was forced to answer one commenter complaining about an article on this Mecca non-magnetic zone, saying that it showed the lack of neutral reporting that ‘scientific’ was in quotes. It is hardly an indication of bias to point out that by any real definition of science that finding was bogus and unscientific.
Rather like Colbert’s ‘Reality has a well-known liberal bias’.
How can the metric system be a symptom of British imperialism if in the English still use yards and feet?
Using the metric system we oppose to British colonial memories and current US American imperialism!
Even if their claims made any sense at all, the idea that they really believe they can “supplant” UTC/GMT (thanks for pointing it out, darkgently) as the generally accepted universal time is adorably backward, stupid, and idiotic.
I once devised an original system of measurement, everything from length/distance and mass to time, energy, temperature and more, attempting to base it on something completely non-arbitrary like the size and decay of certain atoms and the speed of light in a vacuum (yeah, I know – I didn’t quite succeed on that score). It was fun, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that even a fully realized new measurement system would supplant either of the two in place today without any particularly good reason to use it.
Human civilization does not work that way. Good night.
Well, its actually being built by the Bin Laden family company. So, what would happen if a Bunch of fundamentalist Christians decided to slam a civilian jet into it?
The most astonishing thing about this news is that .. it happens NOW! How stupid can a tribe be? definitely limitless. If it was not for this stupidity, this really is a hilarious joke. The problem is that billions of muslim take this crap whole, raw and wet .. because it originated from the idiots that run mecca ..
This dampen things a lot.
You know what would be kinda funny in an ironic sort of way?
A bunch of Americans flying a plane through it. Not that I’m advocating that at all, of course, but it definitely will look like a giant target IMO ๐
EDIT: Oops, should have read the other comments first.
It’s good to know that the World of Mohammed Theme Park is shaping up so well. Anyway, surely Mecca Time is time for bingo, no? It certainly sounds just as tacky. http://www.meccabingo.com
Of course, many modern physicists have reached the conclusion that the passage of time is an illusion.
The old joke was:”This plane is approaching Belfast Airport. Please turn your watches back four hundred years.” Change the place and it has a new life.
The metric system is a symbol of French Enlightenment imperialism. It is supposed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator on the unholy Paris meridian.
My wife would most likely not appreciate my acquisition of a girlfriend. Though if she did, well…things might get interesting. ๐
@Didac:
See, that’s just as arbitrary! The only incremental system that isn’t obviously based on some cultural, anatomical, or mathematical bias would be binary, not decimal. ๐
I would have thought that presently having shedloads of money, the biggest priority for the Saudis would be to establish some sustainable form of income for when the black stuff runs out. I have this image of them all sitting around emaciated and dressed in rags saying “Well at least we still have our really big clock, I know it doesn’t actually go or light up any more but still”.
I am thinking that the Author somehow managed to trick the Suadi’s into building the largest irony meter imaginable!!! Bowing, genuflecting, groveling……
Good morrow, all!
To the tunes of Lerner and Lowe:
Sharia!, Sharia
It’s 8:15 Sharia!
As they might say in southern Arabia:
Allahu Akbar, y’all! – CTZen
just for fun, but the thing you propose is actually possible using constants of nature only. Take the speed of light c, in (m / s), the gravitational constant G, in m^3 / kg s, and Planck’s constant h, in g m^2 / s. By combining these constants you can obtain truly objective measures for mass, length and time. The square root of h * G / c^3, for example, gives you a number that has the dimension of distance, etc.
Nice! I did that project almost 20 years ago, but if I ever revisited it, that would be some smart stuff to incorporate.
Until, of course, a new level of unification reveals that even those constants are derived from something even less arbitrary. But I think it wouldn’t be too biased or anthrocentric to just stick to our own universe. ๐
Your human parochialism is only getting in the way of joining the galactic market. Of course we all use nature’s own units, which hveerten has mentioned above.
@soof – What’s weirder is that the metric system (you mentioned it but I can’t figure out what it has to do with timezones: pardon my skimming) was a product of the French Revolution, so it wasn’t even British to begin with.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
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The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
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Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
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January 13, 2021
So when exactly did imperialist Britain colonise Saudi Arabia Mo?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jantien ten Brink, author. author said: New comic: clock http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/08/13/clock/ […]
Yay, I hoped you’d do one on “Big Bin”.
Actually the official standard is UTC, kept by very accurate atomic clocks – with the occasional leap second to stay in sync with Earth’s rotation. When people say GMT these days they usually mean UTC. So what Mo needs to do is build a rival atomic clock instead… go smaller not bigger!
From the Telegraph article, “According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show “Sharia and Life”, Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it is “in perfect alignment with the magnetic north.””
I take this to be a claim that Mecca is exactly on the line of zero magnetic declination. It isn’t. The closest the agonic line currently comes to Mecca is about 1600 km. In fact Greenwich is closer at about 800 km.
Also from the article, “This claim that the holy city is a “zero magnetism zone” has won support from some Arab scientists like Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Centre who says that there is no magnetic force in Mecca.
“That’s why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier and is less affected by the earth’s gravity,” he said. “You get charged with energy.””
Evidence, they are doing it wrong.
My favorite quasi religious news story in quite awhile. Hilariously stupid.
@JC. Yes, very healthy- unless they get crushed to death chucking stones at a big rock! e.g.:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-blame-gods-will-as-300-pilgrims-crushed-to-death-at-haj-568561.html
Gosh, how I for one, cannot wait for true Islamist science to sweep over the Imperialist West with all our non-magnetic clocks…non-flat-earth god-defying nonsense.
Save us oh Imans! Save us from ourselves!
I hope they never ever build a clock like that.
everyone in the world must use the orginal clock
It actually has millions of LED lights that flash 5 times a day to alert them as to when to rug but!!!! Supposedly can be seen from 18 miles away. I thought that the true magnetic north was in constant flux and has been know to flip poles.
Ahem, Big Ben isn’t a clock….it’s a bell in the clock on top of St Stephen’s Tower at the House of Parliament.
I think the metric system is also a symptom of imperialism. Let’s go old school and use cubits.
http://laughinginpurgatory.blogspot.com/2010/08/ground-zero-mosque.html
I wish them the best of luck in building their huge gaudy clock. All the money they spend on that is money that’s NOT going to terrorism.
I was forced to answer one commenter complaining about an article on this Mecca non-magnetic zone, saying that it showed the lack of neutral reporting that ‘scientific’ was in quotes. It is hardly an indication of bias to point out that by any real definition of science that finding was bogus and unscientific.
Rather like Colbert’s ‘Reality has a well-known liberal bias’.
Fra
godbots don’t let facts or reality interfere with their preception of facts or reality
When they establish their time standard, it will already be about 400 years slow as that represents where Christianity was about 400 years ago.
How can the metric system be a symptom of British imperialism if in the English still use yards and feet?
Using the metric system we oppose to British colonial memories and current US American imperialism!
Even if their claims made any sense at all, the idea that they really believe they can “supplant” UTC/GMT (thanks for pointing it out, darkgently) as the generally accepted universal time is adorably backward, stupid, and idiotic.
I once devised an original system of measurement, everything from length/distance and mass to time, energy, temperature and more, attempting to base it on something completely non-arbitrary like the size and decay of certain atoms and the speed of light in a vacuum (yeah, I know – I didn’t quite succeed on that score). It was fun, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that even a fully realized new measurement system would supplant either of the two in place today without any particularly good reason to use it.
Human civilization does not work that way. Good night.
They want to build their own clock? Go nuts, no skin off my back.
Well, its actually being built by the Bin Laden family company. So, what would happen if a Bunch of fundamentalist Christians decided to slam a civilian jet into it?
The most astonishing thing about this news is that .. it happens NOW! How stupid can a tribe be? definitely limitless. If it was not for this stupidity, this really is a hilarious joke. The problem is that billions of muslim take this crap whole, raw and wet .. because it originated from the idiots that run mecca ..
This dampen things a lot.
Mecca Time – presumably a permanent 7th century.
@sweetpityfulmercy:
provided those UK xtian fundies owned and flew the plane, and completely filled it up with their mates, I’d be all for it.
It will have stopped 500 years ago.
You know what would be kinda funny in an ironic sort of way?
A bunch of Americans flying a plane through it. Not that I’m advocating that at all, of course, but it definitely will look like a giant target IMO ๐
EDIT: Oops, should have read the other comments first.
GE. I seriously suggest you get a girlfriend…. Wow…. ๐
It’s good to know that the World of Mohammed Theme Park is shaping up so well. Anyway, surely Mecca Time is time for bingo, no? It certainly sounds just as tacky. http://www.meccabingo.com
Of course, many modern physicists have reached the conclusion that the passage of time is an illusion.
The old joke was:”This plane is approaching Belfast Airport. Please turn your watches back four hundred years.” Change the place and it has a new life.
The metric system is a symbol of French Enlightenment imperialism. It is supposed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator on the unholy Paris meridian.
I think what the Arab “scientists” are saying is “Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?”
Shit! Their clock is BIGGER than ours. We have to build one 1500m tall! And with laser beams!
Is this the new arms (of the clock) race?
For a truly SI system of reckoning time!!! Please, use second, kilosecond and megasecond, and forget minutes, hours and days!!!
@JoJo:
My wife would most likely not appreciate my acquisition of a girlfriend. Though if she did, well…things might get interesting. ๐
@Didac:
See, that’s just as arbitrary! The only incremental system that isn’t obviously based on some cultural, anatomical, or mathematical bias would be binary, not decimal. ๐
Life, once again, moves beyond satire.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-13/ground-zero-mosque/
Beat that, author, if you can!
My rock band just bought the new “Mega-Mecca Amp” and it’s certainly a better one because the volume knob goes to 11.
I would have thought that presently having shedloads of money, the biggest priority for the Saudis would be to establish some sustainable form of income for when the black stuff runs out. I have this image of them all sitting around emaciated and dressed in rags saying “Well at least we still have our really big clock, I know it doesn’t actually go or light up any more but still”.
I am thinking that the Author somehow managed to trick the Suadi’s into building the largest irony meter imaginable!!! Bowing, genuflecting, groveling……
Good morrow, all!
To the tunes of Lerner and Lowe:
Sharia!, Sharia
It’s 8:15 Sharia!
As they might say in southern Arabia:
Allahu Akbar, y’all! – CTZen
I love it when Mo wears his burqa. It makes me hot.
The burka probably makes Mo hot too. Does it mean something when he wears it?
That clock looks like a good place for a Jewish community center to me.
@GE,
just for fun, but the thing you propose is actually possible using constants of nature only. Take the speed of light c, in (m / s), the gravitational constant G, in m^3 / kg s, and Planck’s constant h, in g m^2 / s. By combining these constants you can obtain truly objective measures for mass, length and time. The square root of h * G / c^3, for example, gives you a number that has the dimension of distance, etc.
@hveerten:
Nice! I did that project almost 20 years ago, but if I ever revisited it, that would be some smart stuff to incorporate.
Until, of course, a new level of unification reveals that even those constants are derived from something even less arbitrary. But I think it wouldn’t be too biased or anthrocentric to just stick to our own universe. ๐
shame on your self
Your human parochialism is only getting in the way of joining the galactic market. Of course we all use nature’s own units, which hveerten has mentioned above.
@soof – What’s weirder is that the metric system (you mentioned it but I can’t figure out what it has to do with timezones: pardon my skimming) was a product of the French Revolution, so it wasn’t even British to begin with.
@Fra-it’s the Elizabeth tower as of 2012 and the Diamond Jubilee.
I love the joke about Belfast. It was definetely not the best place to play http://www.greatbritishbingo.co.uk/. ๐