{"id":167,"date":"2008-06-25T17:15:04","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T17:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/wordpress\/?p=167"},"modified":"2008-06-25T17:15:04","modified_gmt":"2008-06-25T17:15:04","slug":"dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/2008\/06\/25\/dubai\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nI just saw this:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7472722.stm\">http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7472722.stm<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI understand that they have a relatively small geographic area; &#8216;slightly smaller than Maine.&#8217; and they have lots of money. Still, one marvels at their use of space. Their policy on crumbs found on airline customers aside (it&#8217;s a big aside, I know), one is curious how it is that we can&#8217;, in our infinite wisdom, afford similar efforts of engineering.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMy theory on this is probably population density and relative ethnic, tribal hegemony. I&#8217;m guessing that the more populous, hegemonous, and dense is a population, the easier it is to get things done. It&#8217;s too bad that we cannot somehow formulate some sort of national identity. I&#8217;m not talking about patriotism as much as self identifying as an American.<br \/>\nAfter 911, there were AdCouncil ads with people of various backgrounds saying, &#8216;I am an American.&#8217; I wish we could somehow get back to that idea.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\nI just saw this:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7472722.stm\"><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI understand that they have a relatively small geographic area; &#8216;slightly smaller than Maine.&#8217; and they have lots of money. Still, one marvels at their use of space. Their policy on crumbs found on airline customers aside (it&#8217;s a big aside, I know), one is curious how it is that we can&#8217;, in our infinite wisdom, afford similar efforts of engineering.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMy theory on this is probably population density and relative ethnic, tribal hegemony. I&#8217;m guessing that the more populous, hegemonous, and dense is a population, the easier it is to get things done. It&#8217;s too bad that we cannot somehow formulate some sort of national identity. I&#8217;m not talking about patriotism as much as self identifying as an American.<br \/>\nAfter 911, there were AdCouncil ads with people of various backgrounds saying, &#8216;I am an American.&#8217; I wish we could somehow get back to that idea.<\/p>\n<p>\nThere should be pride in our shared citizenship. That&#8217; all I&#8217;m saying. Then maybe, we could build something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just saw this: http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/7472722.stm I understand that they have a relatively small geographic area; &#8216;slightly smaller than Maine.&#8217; and they have lots of money. Still, one marvels at their use of space. Their policy on crumbs found on airline customers aside (it&#8217;s a big aside, I know), one is curious how it is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westafer.com\/b\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}