passim in passing

As just about the entire world must now be aware, popular revolt has swept Egypt. I'm not on the ground there, and haven't been for a few years now, but there is something to be said for watching the places you know and lived as they turn topsy turvy. It's a little like watching the world from underwater... you can kinda recognize the landscape, but it's all out of whack. So, I'm not going to try to keep pace with events--I'll leave that to Al-Jazeera  (English) and the twitterverse, especially the tireless and well informed @bencnn .  I do want to highlight the very Egyptian nature of the response to the instability in terms of protecting heritage.  You can listen to Dr Zahi hawass explain it here: But I think the most amazing thing of all is  this footage  (external link, sorry) , showing scores of ordinary Egyptians linking arms to protect the National Museum from looters. That's a level of dedication you don't see very many places. In the ...

I've just come across this  wonderful little video from the ever-optic-enabled Mr. Quinlan .  It brought back a whole host of memories from the couple seasons I spent on the Giza Plateau Mapping Project . Morning Commute from JasonQ on Vimeo .  The journey up to the  finds store on the Giza plateau itself has to rank as one of the most iconic morning commutes. Ibrahim, the homicidal taxi driver, used to pick us up in the strange little neighbourhood across the concrete river of death that is al Matar road and take us up the hill to the plateau every day around 6 am. The big construction pit you see in the first minute was a smaller construction pit in my day, but not much has changed. Men in galabeyahs still attempt ritual suicide by crossing the road, the guards at the gate still wave imperiously, and the pyramids, of course, are still there.