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Islands in the ... er, stream?
Aug. 8th, 2006 09:54 amThere's a story on the Yahoo! homepage today about island-building off Dubai (if you aren't familiar with Dubai, just do a Google search. Better yet, do a Google image search for "Dubai hotel" and agog at what you turn up). I'd heard of both the palm-tree islands and the world islands; the latter is what fascinated me.
http://www.asiatraveltips.com/travelnews03/219Dubai.shtml
You can find a press release there about the world islands, as well as a photo that you click on for a close-up of the conceptualization of it. (Rumor has it that Mick Jagger has bought one, and possibly also either David Bowie or Sting. Or both.)
The Yahoo! article is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060806/ap_on_bi_ge/dubai_palm_island_1
When I first heard of these about a year or so ago, I wondered how wise it would be to invest in a man-made island. I'm not talking about "playing God" or anything antiquated like that; the fact is, the globe undergoes natural processes that regulate all kinds of things, and it's generally a bad idea to fuck with them unless you have an unremitting and pressing need to really do so. For example, so many people think our current state of global warming can be blamed on man-made pollution, but the fact is, the Earth heats up, cools down, rinse, repeat. (It's a combination of factors that include geothermal energy and also possibly our solar system's position in the Milky Way every 33,000 years - which seems to be a refrigeration cycle on Earth, cold-to-hot-to-cold, but that's just my own pet theory.) The point is that while industrial and emissions pollution is bad for health on a localized level, it has little net effect on the whole planet (and really, I don't know why pollutant-protesters don't focus on the local angle of it more - there's all kinds of evidence to support the position, and they wouldn't come off as nutters, and then MAYBE someone here would be adequately pressured to sign a Kyoto Treaty. Plus, I would think people would act faster based on what is happening to their own children, rather than to some stranger they'll never meet on the other side of the world and whose religion they probably scorn anyway).
Boy, was THAT a tangent. Point is, if you build an island, you've gotta expect problems - such as the sinking referenced in the Yahoo! article. Who wants to plunk down several million on an island and wake up one morning breathing seaweed? And just how would you buy homeowner's insurance for a man-made island? (It's hard enough to get a policy these days on a split-level in the Midwest.) I'll be investing my millions in something else, thanks - like maybe buying my own Senator.
http://www.asiatraveltips.com/travelnews03/219Dubai.shtml
You can find a press release there about the world islands, as well as a photo that you click on for a close-up of the conceptualization of it. (Rumor has it that Mick Jagger has bought one, and possibly also either David Bowie or Sting. Or both.)
The Yahoo! article is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060806/ap_on_bi_ge/dubai_palm_island_1
When I first heard of these about a year or so ago, I wondered how wise it would be to invest in a man-made island. I'm not talking about "playing God" or anything antiquated like that; the fact is, the globe undergoes natural processes that regulate all kinds of things, and it's generally a bad idea to fuck with them unless you have an unremitting and pressing need to really do so. For example, so many people think our current state of global warming can be blamed on man-made pollution, but the fact is, the Earth heats up, cools down, rinse, repeat. (It's a combination of factors that include geothermal energy and also possibly our solar system's position in the Milky Way every 33,000 years - which seems to be a refrigeration cycle on Earth, cold-to-hot-to-cold, but that's just my own pet theory.) The point is that while industrial and emissions pollution is bad for health on a localized level, it has little net effect on the whole planet (and really, I don't know why pollutant-protesters don't focus on the local angle of it more - there's all kinds of evidence to support the position, and they wouldn't come off as nutters, and then MAYBE someone here would be adequately pressured to sign a Kyoto Treaty. Plus, I would think people would act faster based on what is happening to their own children, rather than to some stranger they'll never meet on the other side of the world and whose religion they probably scorn anyway).
Boy, was THAT a tangent. Point is, if you build an island, you've gotta expect problems - such as the sinking referenced in the Yahoo! article. Who wants to plunk down several million on an island and wake up one morning breathing seaweed? And just how would you buy homeowner's insurance for a man-made island? (It's hard enough to get a policy these days on a split-level in the Midwest.) I'll be investing my millions in something else, thanks - like maybe buying my own Senator.
