More money than sense...

I am learning so much about the emerate of Dubai.

The first thing that ever brought them to my attention was the Burj al-Arab hotel, the tallest hotel in the world. It's a gorgeous building with some amazing architectural details and prone to stunt athletics to get some press for the hotel.

Then came the plan to build the three largest man-made islands in displays called The Palms. The three islands are each in the shape of a palm tree, but a really big palm tree, complete with homes and roads and shopping and boat docks and everything. All created from rock and sand dumped into the ocean to bring land up where there was previously no land.

Now, though, there is a project that tops them all in terms of sheer ego and disposable income: The World. The World is a project to create a world map made of islands (each around two to four acres in size) which will be sold to allow multi-millionaires to create their own dream island - perhaps a golf resort, a recreated 18th-century Scottish castle, a personal rain forest, an African safari island, a cullinary resort, anything they can dream of. It's just so ridiculous in terms of money and scale that I find it almost hard to understand or believe, but it's so freakin' cool...

I was going to open this entry with some comment about the people of Dubai having oil coming out of their wazoos and more money than God, but in researching this entry, I found that Dubai's oil reserve is dwinlding and that only about 10% of its revenues come from oil nowadays, and that was without even once consulting the CIA factbook on Dubai.