'The World'

I just watched a documentary on Dubai. Perhaps the most outragous feature of the tiny kingdom is The World:

The World Islands, are a collection of man-made islands shaped into the continents of the world, located off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It will consist of 300 small private artificial islands divided into four categories - private homes, estate homes, dream resorts, and community islands.

Each island costs between 10-45 million US dollars to buy (without building, just the land). Of course it reminded me of Second Life´(in principle anyway...if not in magnitude).

The History of Toast

I amused myself this morning with what I thought would be a strange idea for a text; "The History of Toast" but it seems it is already a field in which many are interested:

The ancient Egyptians, around 6000 years ago, were the first to develop the bread that we know today. They realised that if they let the bread sit out in Egypt's warm climate it would rise, and when baked would retain its risen shape. However, they also noticed that after a few days in the dry desert air, the bread would become hard and unpleasant to eat. BBC

as well we have:

British Toast Racks for Collectors and the History of Toast (Paperback)
Author: Margaret Crumpton Joint Author: Peter Crumpton (I wonder if they are ever refered to as the crumpets?)
This book discusses the history of toast- a peculiarly British way of serving bread- and illustrates over 1,000 ceramic toast racks from the late eighteenth century to the present day.

No Real than You Are.

I have a feeling that No Real Than You Are will be joining All Your Base Are Belong to Us. How a 2.5 meter tall lego man made it to the beach at Zandvoort may be explained here. His name is Ego Leonard.

Dogs Sniff Pirates

These are dogs who are trained (by who?? The man in the picture?) to locate pirated DVDs. Apparently they sit down when they "smell plastic". Not only this but a 'contract' has been put on their lives by the local "movie pirates"- It is all beyond me.
It is part of Malaysia's attempt to get itself off a "U.S. [read MPAA] watchlist on piracy". The dogs are the property of the Motion Picture Association of Malaysia (difficult to find information about) which was formed as part of Operation Trident. It is interesting that so many parallels between drugs and media copyright infringement are made in this story:

Lucky and Flo are not the first dogs to have attracted a bounty. In 2004, a drug
cartel in Colombia placed a US$10,000 (RM35,000) price on the head of a golden
Labrador Retriever named Agata, one of Colombia’s best drug-sniffing dogs. She
began her career in 2003 and has since helped track down 300kg of cocaine and
20kg of heroin.

Should we be panicking?