All entries for Tuesday 05 April 2005

Supervillians Dream Hideaway

Writing about web page http://www.theworld.ae/

Ok, the latest tourist scheme. 300 islands off the coast of Dubai arranged into the shape of the World, with most of the islands representing a country, or region in the case of larger nations like Russia and the US.
Investors are invited to apply for consideration to own one of these regions and it is supposedly intended to be "a balanced mix of private investment and commercial development"
Visiting and area of the site somewhat ominously titled "Master Plan" allows visitors to download pdf descriptions of each region. Each of these appears to give a diagram which "may be subject to change" and an estimate of the area of land which each region will cover. The UK is 4.0 hectares/9.88 acres apparently. Since the Falkland Islands are going to be 2.88 hectares, The World isn't exactly to scale, but when the entire thing is shown the general idea is visible. There are also "celebrity islands, which appear to go pretty unexplained.

If I'd noticed this a couple of days ago, I'd have written it off as an April Fools joke, but the site itself seems too serious and a little too professional for that.

As far as I can tell the "investors" are free to do whatever they choose with their island, and as the blog Boing Boing says, there's no reason why it couldn't be a perfect hive for a supervillian, complete with "hidden missile silos, or possibly a labroatory for breeding a race of superbeings."

I wonder how much these things cost, I've always fancied owning France, and surely it would appeal to our wonderful Vice-Chancellor for Warwick to own an island.

Update: Watch the video on the Home page of the site

: 05 Apr 2005 14:58 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem