I have finished planting some portion of the two front landscape beds and I am still fighting a nasty cold, So I decided to rest and watch some television. I am watching a program called "Impossible Islands", a National Geograhic show. This show is about that enormous palm shaped artificial island being built with oil money in Dubai. The island is a palm tree shape offshore which will be a luxury resort and ocean city. The engineering aspects of this monumental task are phenominal. Using a private satellite is the only way they can get the curves on the palm branches accurately curved. Tons and tons of rock are taken from the inland and delivered on a 24-hour-a-day schedule to build the breakwater which I see slowly takes place before they can deposit the sand for the actual island on the inside of the breakwater.
This whole enterprise is mind boggling. The narrator explains that enough rock to build two pyramids was used for the breakwater. Tons and tons of sand are dredged for the island. Environmental issues have not reared their tenuous head yet on the show, although I admit I am watching from the middle of the program. Somehow, though, while I have personally listened to Arabs criticise the way Americans waste petroleum resouces, this argument is not being applied in Dubai.
The engineer that they interview sounds as though he is American. Why do I think that Halliburton is involved somewhere in the massive distribution of money?
Lots of engineering problems are discussed such as stagnant water during the finish of the breakwater (no biologists were clearly consulted in this engineering nightmare), being built in an earthquake zone, and problems with newly deposited and uncompacted sand.
"22 hotels--3 mile island--two years to complete phase one--400,000 apartments and shopping malls." All of the houses are sold in something like three days with the most expensive going for 1.2 million dollars. They keep adding and expanding and as I watch this I wonder why anyone would want to live on a crowded busy island with the business of Miami...wouldn/t a tiny island with a small cottage be so much more lovely?
In a world with starving people, weapons of mass destruction, and new disease challenges every day, this whole project is such a waste of resources and time to me. If I were a Crown Prince, I would like to think I could spend my money in better places. For centuries leaders have built temples, palaces and pyramids to insure eternity of their memory and to show their power.
If you get a chance to see the show, it is most fascinating!
You are right about that, Tabor. Dead is dead.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me quesy to think about it. What a waste of resources. I wonder how people felt about the pyramids back when they were beeing built?
ReplyDeleteConsidering the failure of the big dig in Boston, I wonder about this.