Libyan Desert Glass is strewn over an area of hundreds of square kilometers in the Great Sand Sea, a region desolate even by the high standards of the Sahara. As one account of a recent trip to acquire Libyan Desert Glass puts it: "Out there, death sits on your shoulder like a vulture." While some would have you believe that Libyan Desert Glass is evidence of ancient atomic warfare, it is probably evidence of a massive meteorite or comet explosion nearly thirty million years ago, similar to Tunguska, but much bigger. The stone age Aterian peoples made tools from it, but the remoteness and inhospitality of the Great Sand Sea has ensured that until recent times it has mostly been undisturbed. However, a breast ornament buried in Tutankhamen's tomb has a scarab made from Libyan Desert Glass, the only piece made of the material to have been found by Egyptologists, and how Tutankhamen's jewelers acquired it has remained a mystery. Until now. [Previously]
posted by Kattullus on Dec 8, 2011 - 38 comments

Revolutionology is the blog of a sociologist in Libya.
posted by serazin on Apr 2, 2011 - 5 comments

Air India (in collaboration with Indian Airlines, the Indian Air Force and Aeroflot) is in the Guinness Book of World Records for their airlift in 1990 when they successfully evacuated 111,711 Indian citizens from Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan by operating 488 refugee flights over a period of 59 days. While they have never quite managed to break that record in the intervening years and subsequent strife, Air India in collaboration with any available merchant ships is at it again after Egypt to deal with the largest evacuation since then ongoing right now from Libya.
posted by infini on Mar 1, 2011 - 15 comments

The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil: "our satraps are falling, and the people we paid them to control are making their own history – our right to meddle in their affairs (which we will, of course, continue to exercise) has been diminished for ever."
posted by SueDenim on Feb 26, 2011 - 27 comments

A mixtape of tracks by North African hip hop artists from Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, music which reflects the current zeitgeist in the region. To listen and/or download (zip): enoughgaddafi.com
posted by Mister Bijou on Feb 7, 2011 - 15 comments