I’ve only traveled through the Dubai airport many years ago, and cannot speak from personal experience of having been there recently, but these reports are fascinating.
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa building
DUBAI—Foreign travelers visiting New York or Chicago in the 19th century often came away with mixed impressions. Some found American cities ugly by comparison to their European counterparts: They seemed vulgar, blatantly commercial, lacking in taste. The natives had higher living standards, but they were crude, and the ethnic mix—German, Irish, Italian, Jewish—was terrifying.
A few sensed that there might be something in this new civilization worth admiring. “It is an absorbing thing to watch the process of world-making—both the formation of the natural and the conventional world,” wrote Harriet Martineau, an English traveler, in 1837: “I witnessed both in America; and when I look back upon it now, it seems as if I had been in another planet.”
I thought about those old visions of urban America not long ago while strolling through the Marina, a neighborhood in “new” Dubai (as opposed to “old” Dubai, mostly constructed in the 1970s). The architects were hired in 1999; the first phase was finished in 2004; soon the Marina will contain 120,000 people, along with hotels, restaurants, yacht moorings, shopping malls, and canals meant to remind visitors of Venice. It might go bankrupt, and it has once already—Dubai is plagued by an overabundance of real estate—but dozens of brand-new skyscrapers, some still with their scaffolding around them, are nevertheless pushing upward around the Persian Gulf, while the sand behind them is being surveyed for more buildings.
The Marina, to a jaded American eye, is incurably vulgar. So is the rest of the city. There is almost no evidence of history or of local culture. International brand names are plastered everywhere, from Applebee’s to Rolex, and everything is imported, from the raw fish at Nobu to the coffee at Starbucks. In Abu Dhabi, the emirate down the road, they’ve even bought the names Louvre and Guggenheim and are constructing museums to match. I am instinctively appalled—how can you buy the Louvre?—but perhaps visiting Europeans once felt the same way about Henry Frick’s New York mansion and the Old Masters within it.
And just as Europeans found it odd to see their own architecture copied and altered in America, I found it odd to find American architecture copied and altered on the Arabian Peninsula. Sometimes there are local elements—the odd Arabian Nights turret, a fake “souk”—but the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, distinctly resembles Chicago’s Willis Tower, which also used to be the tallest building in the world. This is no accident: Both buildings were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, also from Chicago. If the fountains around the Burj Khalifa (illuminated by 6,600 lights at night) seem like something out of Las Vegas, that’s no accident, either: They were designed by the same company that built the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel.
Like Europeans once impressed by America’s wealth, I am startled by the wealth of Dubai’s inhabitants and visitors. Someone must be buying all those Rolexes and staying in the executive suites at the Armani Hotel. I am also intrigued by the ethnic mix. Indian, Nigerian, Japanese, British, Russian, Filipino, and Australian sunbathers mix on the Marina’s beaches with the occasional Emirati in a white headdress. Women in bikinis walk by women in burqas. Everyone talks on cell phones.
Yet this apparently harmonious, multiethnic society has a dark side. Occasionally, the invisible Arab police state arrests a tourist for an alleged indecent gesture or deports somebody without explanation. Nobody protests, because almost nobody “lives” in Dubai, in the sense that a 19th-century immigrant lived in New York. Fewer than 20 percent of the 1.7 million inhabitants of Dubai are citizens. The rest are expat bankers and traders—there is no income tax in Dubai—or low-wage laborers, mostly from South Asia, some of whom live like indentured servants.
No wonder they aren’t bothered by the vulgarity of the place: They’re probably going to move somewhere else next year anyway. A transient population isn’t likely to launch a movement for democracy or political rights. If they protest, they risk expulsion. The natives aren’t excited about the prospect of majority rule, either, since the majority is foreign. That’s why you’ve heard nothing about Dubai since the start of the Arab spring.
Like the Europeans before me, I resist the idea that Dubai heralds the civilization of the future. But I have to concede that in some senses it might. Not only Singapore and Hong Kong but parts of central London now populated by transient bankers and their semi-legal Filipino servants have more in common with Dubai than with their own hinterlands, even if the architecture is different. I can also see how Dubai, which is clean, law-abiding and well-run, might seem like a safe haven if one were coming from a messy, violent society such as Pakistan or even Russia.
To me, it seems stultifying as well as strange: Like Harriet Martineau, I feel as if I had been in another planet. Yet there have always been people who dream of escaping from their culture, who long to forget their history, and who are content to live without the past. And now, in Dubai, they can.
Day: June 21, 2011
Milk Chocolate Brownie Sundae: Guaranteed To Disarm!
What could be better than a pan of milk-chocolate brownies? Well, making a sundae with them, of course! Here’s what it would look like!
Summer Solstice 2011: Why It's the First Day of Summer
“Paying attention to the solstices is a way of teaching mathematics, celestial mechanics and astronomy and culture and history,” she said. “It is also a pretty good party.”
The first day of summer—heralded today by a manic bunny and bear in a
(Pictures: Summer Solstice Marked With Fire, Magic.)
The summer solstice is a result of the Earth‘s north-south axis being tilted 23.4 degrees relative to the sun. The tilt causes different amounts of sunlight to reach different regions of the planet.
Today the North Pole is tipped more toward the sun than on any other day of 2011. The opposite holds true for the Southern Hemisphere, where today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
As a result, at high noon on the first day of summer, the sun appears at its highest point in the sky—its most directly overhead position—in the Northern Hemisphere.
That doesn’t mean the sun will be exactly overhead at noon for everyone, said Cornel University astronomer James Bell.
It depends on the viewer’s latitude—the sun will shine down directly overhead at noon only along the Tropic of Cancer, an imaginary line that circles the Earth at about the latitude of Cuba.
“It’s still at a low angle if you’re up in Alaska,” Bell explained.
No matter where you are in the Northern Hemisphere, the path of the sun across the sky—which rises in the lead-up to the first day of summer, then begins descending over the rest of the summer—seems not to change for the few days before and after the summer solstice. (See pictures of the sun’s path across the sky—an entire year in a single frame.)
In reality, the sun’s position is still changing, but at a slower rate.
(Related story: “In Scandinavia, Solstice Means Fun in the Midnight Sun.”)
Summer Solstice Wobbles Around the Calendar
While the June solstice generally occurs on the same day every year, the date can change from year to year. For example, in 2008, the summer solstice occurred on June 20.
This date shifting is a result of the discrepancy between a human calendar year—which is usually counted as 365 days—and an astronomical year, which is about 365.24 days.
Our leap year system—which adds an extra day to the calendar every four years—ensures our calendars are accurate, but it also causes the solstice date to flop around a bit.
“It’s nothing astronomical changing. What’s changing is the human side of it,” Bell said.
Solstice Is Longest Day of the Year—Not Hottest
On the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than on any other day of the year, but that doesn’t mean the first day of summer is also the hottest day of summer.
Earth’s oceans and atmosphere act like heat sinks, absorbing and reradiating the sun’s rays over time. So even though the planet is absorbing lots of sunlight on the summer solstice, it takes several weeks to release it. As a result, the hottest days of summer usually occur in July or August.
“If you think about turning up an oven—it takes it a long time to heat up,” explained Robert Howell, an astronomer at the University of Wyoming. “And after you turn it off, it takes a while for it to cool down. It’s the same with the Earth.”
First Day of Summer Sparked Ancient Celebrations
The summer solstice is recognized and often celebrated in many cultures around the world, in both the past and present.
The ancient Egyptians, for example, built the Great Pyramids so that the sun, when viewed from the Sphinx, sets precisely between two of the Pyramids on the summer solstice.
The Inca of South America celebrated the summer solstice with a ceremony called Inti Raymi, which included food offerings and sacrifices of animals and maybe even people. (See a picture of an Inca summer solstice festival.)
Recently, archaeologists discovered the remains of an astronomical observatory in a long-buried Maya city in Guatemala in which the buildings were designed to align with the sun during the solstices. During such times, the city’s populace gathered at the observatory to watch as their king appeared to command the heavens.
And perhaps most famously, Stonehenge in the United Kingdom has been associated with the winter and summer solstices for about 5,000 years.
Observers in the center of the standing stones can still watch the summer solstice sun rise over the Heel Stone, which stands just outside Stonehenge’s stone circles. (Read about pagans’ campaign to enter Stonehenge on the summer solstice and other sacred days.)
This year modern-day Druids will gather at Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice for the first time as members of an officially recognized religion in the U.K., following a controversial vote by the national Charity Commission for England and Wales last fall.
(Related: “First ‘Skyscraper’ Built to Fight Solstice Shadow?”)
Summer Solstice Not What It Used to Be
For many of the ancients, the summer solstice wasn’t just an excuse to party or pray—it was essential to their well-being.
Associated with agriculture, the summer solstice was a reminder that a turning point in the growing season had been reached.
“The calendar was very important—much more important than it is now,” said Ricky Patterson, an astronomer at the University of Virginia. “People wanted to know what was going to happen, so that they could be ready.”
But for many modern cultures—and Americans in particular—the solstices and equinoxes no longer attract the same kind of attention that they once did.
“The only people who really pay attention to what’s going on outside on a regular basis still are like the neo-pagans in America and farmers, because it’s important for their growing and harvest seasons,” said Jarita Holbrook, a cultural astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
“But we’re pretty much an indoor culture at this point … so we have less of a connection to the sky.”
Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, said he doesn’t feel too bad about the declining significance of the solstices in modern society.
“Ancient cultures and some modern religions pay very, very close attention to certain natural alignments … and there’s a lot of mysticism and special supernatural significance attached to them,” he said. “The fact that we don’t pay attention to that stuff as much anymore, I think, is a rational thing.”
The University of Arizona’s Holbrook, however, thinks there are certain benefits in keeping the tradition alive.
“Paying attention to the solstices is a way of teaching mathematics, celestial mechanics and astronomy and culture and history,” she said. “It is also a pretty good party.”
More: See pictures of the last summer solstice >>
Google doodle by artist Takashi Murakami—officially kicks off today at 1:16 p.m. ET, the beginning of the summer solstice and of the longest day of the year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Cigarette Health Warnings
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A lovely pink rose– also from a climbing bush.
