A shape-shifting 'spinning' skyscraper could someday energize the Dubai skyline with its revolving floors and environmentally friendly, electricity-generating wind turbines.

An Italian architect has stated that he is ready to start construction on a new skyscraper in Dubai that will be "the world's first building in motion." The 80-story tower will have revolving floors that give it an ever-changing shape.

According to an AP report, the spinning floors are hung like rings around an immobile cement core.

The electricity-generating wind turbines are a nice touch. Did you know that for the American Solar Industry, there is one lobbyist begging for tax incentives in Washington?
Did you know that the United Emerates has the largest green house system in the world that grows the best organic veggies anywhere? No poison tomatoes for them. But then, we fund it all for them. While we are spending all our money on our addiction, the pushers are buying the world!

Revolving floors. Sounds great. I guess I wouldn't need an amusement park anymore.:D

Let's drill at home, now.

Yeah drilling at home IS the ONLY solution!

Come one mag, the designer is "married to a descendent of William Shakespeare" so he's just putting poetry in motion. He also says "that he can charge more per square foot because each unit commands a complete view." It is an interesting concept...



... although not quite as striking as Burj Dubai.



I guess they had to do something with all that money they were going to use to 'buy' all those American ports.

VDH had a compelling article yesterday :

The Can't Do Society

We have become a nation of second-guessing Hamlets.
Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of "thinking too precisely." His poor Danish prince lost "the name of action," as he dithered and sighed that "conscience does make cowards of us all."
With gas over $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the United States has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil -- and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker.

Building things is a good indication of the relative confidence of a society. But the last American gasoline refinery was built almost three decades ago. As "cowards of our conscious," we've come up with countless mitigating reasons not to build a new one. Our inaction has meant that our nation's gasoline facilities have grown old, out of date and dangerous.

Maybe Americans can instead substitute plug-in, next-generation electric cars that can be charged at night on the nation's grid powered by nuclear power plants? Wrong again. We haven't issued a single new license that actually led to the building of a nuclear power plant in over 30 years.

Shakespeare's Hamlet again would warn second-guessing Americans that, "A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom/And ever three parts coward."

But the problem of inaction extends far beyond the present energy crisis.
Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of a border fence with Mexico, President George Bush signed into law a bill passed by both houses of Congress authorizing over 700 miles of fencing at key junctures. This was back in 2006.
Environmentalists and private property owners tried to legally challenge the fence. And the Mexican government -- the same government that publishes comic books instructing its citizens on how to sneak across illegally into the United States -- cried foul. As a result, nearly two years later, the fence is barely half finished.

We are nearing the seventh anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Its replacement -- the Freedom Tower -- should have been a sign of our determination and grit right after September 11.
But it is only now reaching street level. Owners, renters, builders and government have all fought endlessly over the design, the cost and the liability.
In contrast, in the midst of the Great Depression, our far poorer grandparents built the Empire State Building in 410 days -- not a perfect design, but one good enough to withstand a fuel-laden World War II-era bomber that once crashed into it.

Despite unsophisticated 19th-century architectural and engineering science, not to mention legions of snooty French art critics, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was finished in a little over two years and is as popular as ever well over a century later.
In my home state of California, we spent a decade arguing over the replacement for portions of the aging and earthquake-susceptible San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Now that the design has finally been agreed to, it will be several years before it is finished. That's quite a contrast to the original bridge that was completed in just over three years.
California is also in yet another predictable drought and ensuing water shortage. Despite strict conservation and new water-saving technology, we simply don't have enough water for households, recreation, industry and agriculture. Building new dams, reservoirs and canals, you see, would apparently be considered unimaginative and relics of the 20th century.
The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn't. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile a less fussy, more confident world abroad drills, and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted.
In our present comfort, Americans don't seem to understand nature. We believe that our climate-controlled homes, comfortable offices and easy air and car travel are just like grass or trees; apparently they should sprout up on their own for our benefit.Americans also harp about the faults of prior generations. We would never make their blunders -- even as we don't seem to mind using the power plants, bridges and buildings that they handed down to us.
Finally, high technology and the good life have turned us into utopians, fussy perfectionists who demand heaven on earth. Anytime a sound proposal seems short of perfect, we consider it not good, rather than good enough.
Hamlet asked, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." In our growing shortages of infrastructure, food, fuel and water, we've already answered that: "Not to be!"

...

I served jury duty in Federal Court in down-town Manhattan recently and had the opportunity to ride the PATH train to the World Trade Center station. As the train enters from Hoboken the passengers get to see the hole in the ground where the Twin Towers proudly stood. It has been fenced in as if it were a construction site.

But if any meaningful work was being preformed I did not see it. Instead;the fencing serves to block the view of the "tourists" who are still there daily to honor and pay tribute to the victims and the brave . I have been witness to the petty politicing that has gone on over the site and would've preferred that if a new more majestic building were not going to be rapidly built on the site that they would've instead made it a memorial park.

I know not everyone likes Ann Coulter .But her recent column also deals with the inertia surrounding our energy policy . I will spare you the whole article and quote a couple of quick paragraphs:

Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.

If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!

Great piece, Tom!

What a novel idea.

That is a great piece tom. We need to get our priorities in order. We need to start drilling in the U.S. I don't care if it takes five years to see it. In five years, at the rate we are going, we will be through.

I might be off to Dubai very soon to work on such buildings. I can't wait.

And I agree, we in Australia have large untapped oil deposits that our governments refuse to explore, whilst at the same time telling us they feel our pain at the pump. BS! They don't pay for their petrol (that's what we call it), we do!

Take your own booze and stay away from the females.

Destin Dome off the coast of Florida's Pensacola has a known reserve of 2.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and is within easy access to a major gas pipeline between Texas and Tampa Fla... number 1 and 2 states in natural gas consumption to generate electricity; all of its gas comes from other states. Moratoriums (until 2011) and politics from both parties and real estate developers and environmentalists have prevented tapping into this find.

The Democrats have been bleating lately that Big Oil is not drilling on their available lease areas. In this case they would've loved to drill but have been prevented from doing so. The Federal Government in this case purchased back the lease from Chevron and other companies . Now get this... Chevron has instead taken the buy back money and invested it... in a natural gas project... in Angola.

Way to go team!!

Tom, I really appreciate your posts here and have sent then on to family and friends to help them think before they eat their waffles. Food for tummy and food for thought should go hand-in-hand.

Mag, I thought I lost you after 'private post' and am glad I found you. Hope you are just taking a vacation and that you'll soon be back - I miss our interaction a lot.

Thanks Chery I'm flattered .