Month: March 2006

Snow Ski in the Desert

Click here to see a slide show

Ski Dubai, the world’s largest indoor ski resort — boasting Alpine chalets, 400-meter ski runs, and 6,000 tons of artificial snow — opened for business in late 2005.

Ski Dubai is actually one of the more modest in a series of extraordinarily ambitious commercial projects undertaken by the Gulf state of Dubai, including the world’s tallest building, the world’s first underwater luxury hotel, and, believe it or not, an archipelago of man-made islands shaped like a map of the world. (While you’re at this site look at some of the other Dubai Developments)
No wonder Michael Jackson moved there.
Not content with merely topping the rest of the world, Dubai will actually best its own record in 2008, if all goes well, with the opening of the new world’s largest indoor ski resort, the 15 million-square-foot Sunny Mountain Ski Dome.

Iraqi official blames Golden Mosque attack on Iran

Iraqi official blames Golden Mosque attack on Iran

The only ones who really stood to benefit, and those who really took advantage of the al-Askariya shrine bombing, is Moqtada al-Sadr and his counterparts in Iran. Now, a preliminary investigation by the deputy governor of Saladin, where the Shia holy city of Samarra and the shrine is located, has yielded that the perpetrators of the bombing was most like… dun dun dun… Iran!

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani immediately issued a fatwa following the attack and urged the Shia faithful to restrain themselves. it was al-Sadr who organized the mass extra-judicial killings of hundreds of Sunnis afterwards. It was his Medhi Army militia, along with men infiltrated into the Interior Ministry through the UIA, who ran people off the streets in fear to their homes, and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques. He was the first to call for revenge, yet he was the one praised for brokering compromise between the Shias and Sunnis afterward.

Al-Sadr is in a power struggle with the traditional Shia leader Sistani. The outcome will determine if Iranian-backed Islamo-Facists take over Iraq or if a Unity government can be formed. The Kurds, Sunnis and Secular Parities (Ex-Prime Minister Allawi) are trying to influence the outcome by refusing to back current Prime Minister Jafari, for the same position in the newly elected Parliament. Jafrai, Sadr’s candidate, won the Shia’s own Unity Party (UIA) backing by just one vote. Now the non-Shia parties, who have 53% of the elected seats, are looking for allies amongst the Sistani followers to back another candidate for Prime Minister. Previously they had backed the current Vice President, who lost when Al Sadr cast the deciding UIA party vote. Under the constitution, the nominee of the biggest bloc in parliament gets the first chance to form a new government. The Shiites won 130 of the 275 seats giving them the biggest bloc, but not enough to govern without partners.

If the religious Shia UIA is going to insist on having its way, and al-Sadr is going to remain the most dominant force in that coalition, then the rest of Iraq is ready to block his seemingly destined ascent to power. They realize the danger of a one-party monopoly based on religion, so they’re ready to make the UIA pick a new one or instead form an even larger bloc, allowing them the pick the new government. In our own history, the Second American Revolution was when power was first transferred peacefully from John Adams, who gave up power to Thomas Jefferson, after the presidential election of 1800, effectively realigning the nation. Now, Iraq will have its own. Can the Shia give up power peacefully should it be challenged?…

Europeans to counter Google print project

Europeans to counter Google print project – Tech News & Reviews – MSNBC.com
the first culture war in cyberspace. I read this article about Google’s ambitious project to digitize several libraries and the European response to it. I think it speaks volumes about the differences between our cultures. America puts books online because a private corporation figured this is a service people want, and it would be a good way to make a profit. European heads of state decide to make this a giant public works project, and they do it because they don’t want an ‘Anglo-American’-centric online library which offers the literature people desire. I like how the article mentions French cinema as if it is a success story about how government intervention can save the arts. Which project do you think will succeed?

120 Years that changed the World

Harold Warp’s parents immigrated to America from Norway and setup a homestead on the Nebraska Prairies in 1873. Harold, born in 1903, the youngest of twelve children, grew up as a barefooted farm-boy herding cattle.
As he grew up, he began inventing new and useful things himself. He noticed that chickens grew faster and laid more eggs in summer and that sunlight prevented rickets in chickens. The plastics revolution was gathering steam at that time and he spent three years developing a practical, weatherproof, translucent material that unlike glass let in the sun’s ultraviolet rays; he called it Flex-O-Glass. He took the advice given to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” to heart. So he moved to Chicago in 1924 with two of his brothers and a capital of $800 and started manufacturing Flex-O-Glass. Flex-O-Glass could be made so inexpensively that in addition to poultry house windows, millions of people began using it for winter protection in their homes in screen doors and window screens. By his forties he had made his fortune. He wrote:

“For thousands of years man lived quite simply. Then like a sleeping giant our world was awakened. In a mere hundred and twenty years of eternal time man progressed from open hearth, grease lamps, and ox carts to television, super sonic speed, and atomic power.

The full list is here.

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya – Indian Express

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya
Interesting Op-Ed perspective in the “Indian Express” from a member of the growing entreprenuerial class situated in the largest democracy of the world.

The Bush family has an uncanny knack of knowing where the future will happen, says Jaithirth Rao

And from the NY Times comes this about the 2 million Indian American citizens:

These issues are of intense interest to Americans of Indian origin, who are the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, whose data shows they are far better educated and wealthier than the average U.S. citizen. …

According to figures compiled from census data by the U.S.-India Political Action Committee, Indian-Americans own 15 percent of Silicon Valley start-up firms, constitute 10 percent to 12 percent of U.S. medical doctors and control about 40 percent of the American hotel sector.
One in 10 Americans of Indian origin are millionaires, while the $60,093 median income of Indian-American families in 2000 was far above the U.S. average of $38,885. They post similarly striking educational statistics.