Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

• Current world-record holder (for height not size) at a comparatively paltry 508 meters (1,667 feet), the Taipei 101 Tower is about to be surpassed by a host of current projects. The Burj Dubai, planned to be ready in 2009 will reach half-a-mile into the sky, and host Armani hotels, commercial and residential properties. A paragon of capitalism this building unashamedly speaks to perceptions of success in this culture of consumption and self-interest: "Burj Dubai will be known by many names. But only a privileged group of people will call it home. There are a select few who possess the vision, resources, and the opportunity to live in the world's tallest building . If you have that opportunity, you are assured not just unparalleled luxury, but a place in history."
• Doctors versed in cures for altitude sickness and oxygen bars will be available to first-class passengers from July 2006 on the world's highest railway in China. Coach travelers will naturally fend for themselves. The 1,100km (680 mile) of track passes over the haunting Tanggula Pass at 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) through the peaks and valleys of the Himalayas and connects Qinghai with the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. There is plenty of hand-wringing going on worldwide on the implications for Tibetan people. Clear the tracks, the Iron Horse is arriving from on high.
• Over 7,000 workers will live on a converted ferry moored alongside the artificial Palm Islands, the latest larger than Manhattann. The locals and other soon-to-be residents like footballers David Beckham and Michael Owen don't want the roads clogged up with commuters at rush hour. The development in the shape of a palm leaf is the latest project of Shaikh Mohammed. He's a great man. Just asked your local unbiased newspaper. Apparently there is a clash of the titans occurring in our midst as Singapore and Dubai jostle for the world title of most dangerous place to drop a candy wrapper. Just ask the Lutherans.

OK. Maybe we should stop asking and start answering for ourselves. The jackhammers of global growth are pounding away. If you can't hear them just keep your eyes pealed for a billion-dollar ($$) artificial island, half-mile tall building or tracked stairway to heaven near you. Or just lay back and forget about it all sipping on fresh-fruit juice in your room atop the Burj Dubai and wonder if Armani or Versaci should do the design of your place while hollering out at the slightest provocation... "Let them drink freshly squeezed juice!" That is ... if you have the money. The moola.

And if you do have that kind of cash have I got a project for you. We're going to rebuild Atlantis see, but with a twist. It's all going to be one huge bloody underwater casino and you can only teleport to it, which costs a fair bundle of course. But trust me. Atlantis City. It's going to be one hell of a monument to something.

• The bright side of America. Stardust lands: "We feel like parents awaiting the return of a child who left us young and innocent, who now returns holding answers to the most profound questions of our solar system." Launched in 1999 the Nasa capsule took five years to reach to the comet Wild II which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The space dust picked up by flying within 150 miles of the comet could hold the secret to the demise of Dinosaurs on earth if iridium is found.
• The dark side of America. 10,000 people protested at the murder of at least 18 people on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border by an unmanned CIA drone. An Iraqi International MA student of mine at City University comments: "They know better than anyone in the world how to make enemies." How about you? Just think about missiles on your home and community. "There is nothing left. Pieces of the missile are scattered all around. The impact of the explosions has been huge. Everything has been blackened in a 100-meter radius."
• Want some bulletproof Armani?
• The rigorous review of academic publishing is under further threat. Norwegian cancer scientist Jon Sudboe is exposed as a fake by falsifying every patient in his study of orla cancer. 250 of Dr Subdoe's sample of 908 people had the same birthday.
• In Brazil 4,000 slaves were freed last year by the government from 183 farms who mine unemployed workers in impoverished rural communities: "The first impoverishment is that of the soul. Often a worker will have the false sense that he is in the wrong if he flees."
• Prehistoric remains found in northern Spain indicate that neanderthal man mastered some primitive techniques for crossing the sea into Europe from Africa. Small islands may have existed in Strait of Gibaltar making the journey much less than the eight miles of today.
• Over 3,000 child soldiers in Burundi have been demobalized but have little to do and are seeking reintegration with guerilla armies.
• While the 24-hour news giants fight for a relatively small number of viewers they are overlooking the biggest threat to their existence: on-demand broadband multimedia."Rolling news is no longer the future. In 2004 the average broadband household spent 16 hours a week online. As anyone who uses any half-decent news platform on the web understands, the internet is faster, delivers instant depth and unrivalled interactivity. Rolling news - and here I mean the concept of a separate channel and its traditional front-end studio format - is the genre of television least suited to survive the transition to the digital age." (annoying registration requirement at mediguardian.co.uk makes it impossible to link to this story)
• "Thierry Henry was in his element, helping himself to a hat-trick of opportunities Middlesborough laid on for him and reveling in the chance to prove his stated commitment to Arsenal on the pitch."

• Swiss are most likely to search for a job online
• Bulgarians are most likely to read news online
• Italians are most likely to use a mapping service
• Ukrainian surfers are most likely to research family history online
• Less than one third of Poland's population uses the Internet but over the past five years the number has risen almost twice as fast as in Britain

• Sometime in 2006 more than half the world's population will be living in a town or city. Contrast this with 1800 when only 3% of the population was urbanised.
• By 2026 China's economy will be bigger than America's and India's will be much larger than that of any individual European country. Russia, Brazil and Indonesia will be not be much further behind.
• The global housing boom is the biggest financial bubble in history. A further jump in oil prices could pop this bubble by undermining consumer confidence.
• The concept of "Granularity" will be the trendy focus of management and consultants worldwide as grand global strategies will be desperately out of fashion and business focuses on efficiencies and exploiting local markets.
• The top three business travel destinations in the world are Canadian - Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Canadian cities fare best because "they have the right mix of feelgood factors without being too expensive. The large expanse of the Canadian wilderness and its cultural diversity make cities cosmopolitan havens".
• Be prepared for turbulent currency markets as the dangers of a collapsing dollar, a fractured euro or a soaring yuan are feasible risk scenarios.

You see them when squinting to shield the sun's reflection off streetcars or with a sudden spin of the head to catch a fleeting glance of one hanging from those hooks on top of deep, narrow houses used to move grand pianos in through windows the size of casio keyboards. Really these purposeful hooks are there to snag the shirt collars of nasty apparitions in nasty moods before they drift down to the streets to whisper sweet nasty nothings in the ears of some poor susceptible traveler intent, but suddenly failing, to keep proclivity for temptation in reasonable check. That's of course why everyone has an Amsterdam story they won't tell anyone, or at least they change it in the telling.

You see the swirling entropy of Amsterdam -- the culture, the drugs, the coffee and Heineken, the sex, the diverse architecture, the art, the hundreds of drawbridges passively threatening to lift -- is really contained at all times within a single moment, within a single dot of life on a landscape portrait of one of their great artists.

Subtle trickery bedevils this fact, like the way the canals studiously reflect the sky to give an illusion of space, but look more closely and the observer becomes the observed. As you are jostled by crowds or stampeded by the all-too-close herald of a 3-speed bike bell on the congested streets, look over shoulders at the angelic muses and dapper dans that flutter wings to provide the gusts of cool air keeping the city alive and in motion.

Gaze from any point and you gaze from all. Just watch out if one those slippery tricksters is freed from a house hook and finds comfort on the shoulder of your mind. Sweet nasty nothings are still nasty after all. In a Gezellig kind of way.

• The phenomena applies to any celestial object in an elliptical orbit. In astronomy, an Apsis (plural apsides "ap-si-deez") is the point of greatest or least distance of the elliptical orbit of a celestial body from its center of attraction (the center of mass of the system).
• Each planet revolves around the Sun in an elliptical path, with the Sun occupying one of the foci of the ellipse (see Kepler's 1st Law of planetary motion)
• Northern summer on earth is 5 days longer than northern winter as planets move more slowly at aphelion than they do at perihelion (see Kepler's 2nd Law of planetary motion)
• Seasonal weather patterns are shaped primarily by the 23.5-degree tilt of our planet's axis, not by the Earth's elliptical orbit. That's why it is not hotter for us Northern Hemispheres in January compared to July.
• The exact dates of Perihelion and Aphelion vary each year as do Equinoxes and Solstices