mathoda.com

In a prior post I stated that the American military appears to have deployed relentless see-through-walls flying terminator like unmanned drones.

America’s most powerful tool in shaping the world may be something far different however: Oprah.

As the NY Times reports:

Once a month, Nayla [a young Saudi Arabian homemaker] says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.  … “I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”

…

When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.

…

Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.

…

The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.

The entire article is well worth reading.

Let’s say that you’re looking at condos in Miami, and you notice that price tags are lower for units without water views. And let’s say that 10 days later a friend of yours in New York boasts that her unit is the only one in a high rise with spectacular views of both the Hudson River and the East River. What would you do?

If you were David Fisher, you would think, hmm, if all the floors of a building were to spin, everyone could have a great view. You’d then patent the idea, and put together a team that actually has some expertise in designing skyscrapers, since you yourself have none.

Then you’d find a location where someone would actually be interested in constructing such a building. Say, Dubai.

For more, see this article at the WSJ (free since it’s in their real estate section):
http://www.realestatejournal.com/propertyreport/architecture/20070412-frangos.html?refresh=on