reddit Pic

Josh Cripps photographer

Solar eclipse in Dubai

Headlines

Bad blood: Rand Paul moves to block a Liz Cheney Senate run

Trump heads to UN with a list of deals he’s yet to close

Iran preps war ...

Pope Francis: Money is the Devil’s doing

Trump wants ‘diplomatic solution’ with Iran, Pompeo says

Democrat Adam Schiff says Trump’s Ukraine call could justify impeachment

Trade regulators approve APPLE trade exemptions ...

Hollywood joins climate strike: Kids will lead us

Iran wants West to leave Persian Gulf

Suspected drone activity diverts flights coming into Dubai, airport authorities

EU’s Juncker convinced Brexit will happen ...

Iran’s General Salami boasts ‘hidden’ military powers

Future Imperfect

To return to my theme of egomaniacal architects designing monuments to themselves, the above is the  latest -- the Museum of the Future in Dubai ... see: Museum of the Future. I ask you -- is this an attempt by the architect to overshadow what the museum contains by the museum itself? Gilding the lily?

It is quite doubtful that our future will be so rolling in wealth, from oil in this case, that this extravagant of an edifice will become the template for many follow-on buildings of any flavor. I know I am not the final arbiter of aesthetics ... but, to me, this museum is a big donut.

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which ones from Politico?

U.N. Security Council passes sanctions on North Korea after missile tests

As Obamacare twists in political winds, insurers profits surge nearly 30 percent

Venezuela crushes military rebellion

Sweden: 550% rise in grenade attacks ... police panic

Trump praises Sessions for 'taking action' against leaks

Media Matters is coming after Sean Hannity advertisers, and his job

Another fire erupts in Dubai residential highrise ...

Kissinger: End of Islamic State could lead to 'radical Iranian empire'

Fox News' Bolling suspended after lewd texting allegations

VW executive faces 5 years in prison after pleading guilty in emissions scandal

France rethinks romance with Macron as his popularity sinks ...

Planned Parenthood to preschoolers: Genitals don't make you a boy or a girl

Conspicuous Constipation

Skyscrapers were invented on Manhattan Island in New York City because of limited ground space and the pressure of population growth forcing the need for more office space. As buildings grew taller and taller, they also became status symbols ... witness the "whose tallest" competition between the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in the 1930s.

So was born skyscraper envy to the point where people and countries with more money than brains build skyscrapers where they are not necessary. Witness Dubai, which has well over a thousand square miles of open desert on which buildings could be erected, but instead chooses to spend its copious oil money on ostentatious skyscrapers crowded into a small section of its emirate ... see the above picture.

How very silly and wasteful of them. When their oil money runs out these skyscrapers may well form a very impressive ghost town.

Afterward: See: World's Tallest Tower.

Conspicuous Consumption

The gusher of oil money flooding into the Middle East has created an equally gigantic problem .... how to spend it?  In the United Arab Emirates, the city of Dubai has found a number of novel ways to piss away this largess ... an edifice complex.  Here are some notable examples:

World's Largest Aquarium

Artifical Islands

Crescent Building

Indoor Ski Slope

World's Tallest Building

Underwater Hotel

There are dozens more examples of such eccentric (can I say tasteless?) extravagance.  I wonder what will happen to these structures in the not too distant future once this supply of petroleum pelf dries up?

Vertigo

A view from the tallest building in the world (in Dubai, UAE) ... found on the "reddit" site.