A kilometer tall

I stand by my statement and add Saudi Arabia to the attribution:

The people of Dubai (and Saudi Arabia) have more money than sense.

Seriously, a building more than a kilometer high? Insane...and kinda cool.

My head is spinning

I love Dubai...absolutely love it...

I imagine Dubai the way that I'm thinking many immigrants immagined the US in the early twentieth century - streets paved with gold; people wandering around in richly appointed attire, letting money drop from their pockets without any notice at all, their rich laughter filling sidewalk cafes all along the avenues; money flowing so freely that people just do stupid things with it because it's that of buy cartoonishly gigantic wallets.

I have, of course, no clue whatsoever whether any of this is real, and I would imagine that I'm blowing things way out of proportion, but some of their plans and buildings do make me wonder.

Today's example is the planned - I don't know if it's ever to be realized - spinning cactus plate building:

If you want to actually know any more about the reality of dubai, check any of the following sites:

• PhotoDubai.com - a photo blog of life in Dubai
• DubaiDailyPhoto.blogspot.com - pretty much the same thing but from a different person
• Dubai.Metblogs.com - blogging about Dubaia from a Dubai resident...a recent story skims the surface of the supertall construction in Dubai

Make something of yourself...

Today's task for you lucky blog lurkers, posters, and just plain ol' enjoyers is to make something, anything. For hints, head over to the Make blog. They've got a video for a sculptor that I blogged about a while ago, a disco bar that looks like a blast, and another very cool DNA model. It's a great little community of folks who have been able to improve on what's been presented to them.

And, in case you were curious, the people in Dubai still have more money than sense.

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.