Interesting Links for 19-10-2015

[andrewducker]

• Nice Fire Phoenix Puppet
  • (tags: video fire puppets )
• Amazon sues1,114 fake reviewers
  • (tags: Amazon reviews fraud )
• Soldiers share fascinating (and frankly horrifying) stories about Afghanistan
  • (tags: afghanistan )
• There will be no second Scottish Independence referendum without a year of 60% support
  • (tags: Scotland independence referendum snp )
• MIT

Comments

[miramon]

I worked in Abu Dhabi for 6 months and we visited Dubai a couple of time to talk to suppliers and once just for tourism. We went to see the old part of Dubai (yes, it still exists) and it was quite nice. We also went to the mall and the Burj Khalifa, because after you've spent 6 months in Abu Dhabi you'll go and look at anything that isn't the same old stuff. Can't see why anyone would get on a plane to visit though, not unless you're really interested in mad architecture or on your way somewhere. Not too keen on the Emiratis' attitude to "guest workers" but when you're chucking unfeasible amounts of money in all directions, there's always going to be layer on layer of middlemen taking their cut and making sure that the people at the bottom get screwed. Most of the people in the middle aren't the Emiratis, they don't like anything that resembles work in my experience. Most of them have no real conception of what the effort of building a city in the middle of a barren waste actually entails - I spent part of my childhood in Abu Dhabi when it was a small fishing village, and it's like it's not even the same world any more.