[Cowperson]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — When Salem Moosa looks out over the skyscrapers spreading like a metallic rash over the sand, this is what he sees: The Eiffel Tower. The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

He's angling to build all of them — but bigger than the originals. And, if you ask Moosa, perhaps even better.

Moosa's constellation of head-scratching oddities would join the marvels already cropping up like mushrooms across Dubai. The man-made islands in the shape of palm trees. The indoor ski resort. The underwater hotel. The lost city of Atlantis. One of the world's largest aquariums, set inside the world's biggest shopping mall, sprawling in the shadow of what will be the world's tallest skyscraper.

At first blush, there's an existential question at the heart of it all: Why? And in the case of Moosa's creations, what kind of tenants would clamor to nest in a swollen pyramid?

In Dubai, a zany boomtown afloat in plastic fantasy, unbridled ambition and rivers of cold cash, such questions are dismissed as the calling cards of the unimaginative. Moosa waves them away like sand flies.

"Who wants to live in a pyramid? Everybody wants to live in a pyramid," he says with evident astonishment. "It's the only address in the world. Imagine your card: 'The Grand Pyramid of Dubai'! "

Damned straight!!!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines

Cowperson