And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. - Sylvia Plath
|
|
Saturday, July 07, 2007,4:18 PM
New Seven Wonders of the World
7-7-7
The day has arrived. Apparently the rapture is supposed to happen today. More weddings are planned for today than any other day in history (Mike's doing one tonight). And since I've been blogging on the process of this for the past couple of years - two millennia after the Greeks created their list, the New Seven Wonder of the World have finally been announced. After the casting of millions of worldwide votes and much controversy, a new list for promoting tourism is in. Of course Egypt insisted that the Pyramids be removed from the voting list since it is an absurd insult to have one of the ancients wonders being voted on. So they were removed and are considered an honorary wonder, whatever. The Vatican is bitching that the list has an anti-Christian bias because the Sistine Chapel wasn't included. Oh and India was insisting that the reason the Taj Mahal wouldn't make the top seven is because most rich Westerners (who hate other countries) voted with their expensive internet accounts and poor Indians couldn't vote or be educated that such a beautiful structure even exists (guess it wasn't an issue after all). If the whole thing is a marketing and tourism scheme to get people more aware of history and to go visit these places (and provide funds to help maintain these sites), does it really matter if the perception is that most of the votes came from the West? That's strange because part of the point of this was to raise awareness of worldwide wonders (as opposed to the Greek's list that were all in the Mediterranean). And the truth is that most of the West didn't really care. Other countries had huge mobilization campaigns to get out and vote - promoting their country's wonder (like setting up voting terminals and waving phone fees for votes). Since when do American's care about anything but ourselves anyway (and it was obvious that the only American structure on the list, the Statue of Liberty, had no chance of winning ever).
Anyway enough talk, the results are more interesting. After an Olympic style ceremony celebrating all of this with a lot of international celebrities I've never heard of (I so don't keep up with Bollywood or European soccer), the official New Seven Wonders of the World are -
The Pyramid of Chichen Itza
The Great Wall of China
Christ the Redeemer Statue
Machu Picchu
Petra
Roman Colosseum
Taj Mahal
Read more about it here.
The day has arrived. Apparently the rapture is supposed to happen today. More weddings are planned for today than any other day in history (Mike's doing one tonight). And since I've been blogging on the process of this for the past couple of years - two millennia after the Greeks created their list, the New Seven Wonder of the World have finally been announced. After the casting of millions of worldwide votes and much controversy, a new list for promoting tourism is in. Of course Egypt insisted that the Pyramids be removed from the voting list since it is an absurd insult to have one of the ancients wonders being voted on. So they were removed and are considered an honorary wonder, whatever. The Vatican is bitching that the list has an anti-Christian bias because the Sistine Chapel wasn't included. Oh and India was insisting that the reason the Taj Mahal wouldn't make the top seven is because most rich Westerners (who hate other countries) voted with their expensive internet accounts and poor Indians couldn't vote or be educated that such a beautiful structure even exists (guess it wasn't an issue after all). If the whole thing is a marketing and tourism scheme to get people more aware of history and to go visit these places (and provide funds to help maintain these sites), does it really matter if the perception is that most of the votes came from the West? That's strange because part of the point of this was to raise awareness of worldwide wonders (as opposed to the Greek's list that were all in the Mediterranean). And the truth is that most of the West didn't really care. Other countries had huge mobilization campaigns to get out and vote - promoting their country's wonder (like setting up voting terminals and waving phone fees for votes). Since when do American's care about anything but ourselves anyway (and it was obvious that the only American structure on the list, the Statue of Liberty, had no chance of winning ever).
Anyway enough talk, the results are more interesting. After an Olympic style ceremony celebrating all of this with a lot of international celebrities I've never heard of (I so don't keep up with Bollywood or European soccer), the official New Seven Wonders of the World are -
The Pyramid of Chichen Itza
The Great Wall of China
Christ the Redeemer Statue
Machu Picchu
Petra
Roman Colosseum
Taj Mahal
Read more about it here.
Tags:
Labels: Culture
