Tallest Tower: Madness on an Entirely New Scale

Hanging out with a neighbor who works part time at a supermarket to add to her incredibly low pension, she asked what I thought of Dubai's new tower. She knew in advance what I thought of it.

It's a half-mile high. At more than 800 metres, if it was lying down the fastest runner in the world would have a hard time running its length in under 2 minutes. It's more than twice the size of the 102-storey Empire State Building. Okay, so it's shocking how big it is.

But what a waste of time and energy. And money. Dubai is currently 100 billion in debt. They renamed the tower after the leader of Abu Dhabi, as a "humble public display" to the neighboring state that bailed out Dubai. Humble? Whaaat?

Well, if my neighbor knew about this tower, I'm sure half the world's population knows about it. I wonder what the 20% of the world's population that didn't have the luxury of a school to go to think of this tower. Or the 33% of the world's population that are suffering malnutrition. (both are United Nations stats.)

It's more of the same. Capitalism, one huge friggin' party for the rich and a weird thing to look at from the outside for the rest of us.