Dubai's Climate-Controlled Dome City Is a Dystopia Waiting To Happen 265
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Dubai is building "the world's first climate-controlled city" — it's a 4.3 mile pedestrian mall that will be covered with a retractable dome to provide its shoppers with air conditioning in the summer heat. The Mall of the World, as it's called, will become the sort of spectacular, over-the-top attraction Dubai is known for. Shortly after, it will probably become an equally spectacular real-world dystopia.
By sectioning off a 3-million-square-foot portion of the city with an air conditioned dome, Dubai is dropping one of the most tangible partitions between the haves and the have nots of the modern era—the 100 hotels and apartment complexes inside the attraction will be cool, comfortable, and nestled into a entertainment-filled, if macabre, consumer paradise."
By sectioning off a 3-million-square-foot portion of the city with an air conditioned dome, Dubai is dropping one of the most tangible partitions between the haves and the have nots of the modern era—the 100 hotels and apartment complexes inside the attraction will be cool, comfortable, and nestled into a entertainment-filled, if macabre, consumer paradise."
Humph (Score:4, Funny)
Someone sounds jealous...
Slaves of Dubai (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone sounds jealous...
Someone is well-informed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh-vlQwrmU [youtube.com]
Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone sounds jealous...
Someone is well-informed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh-vlQwrmU [youtube.com]
Which has nothing to do with a dome, and everything to do with Dubai... The reaction to the dome is unfounded panic. Dubai will separate the people because Dubai separates the people. Dome, or no dome.
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Plus this ignores the upside. I'd expect several staff per wealthy occupant of the dome, and so many poor enjoy the nice environment for each rich person. For Dubai, that's a step forward.
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Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score:5, Insightful)
Slaves? WTF? Are you so blind to the conditions in much of the world that you think offering a job to someone is bad? Are you insane? These are the best jobs most of the poor in Dubai are likely to have offered in their lives.
It's not right for the first world, so better the jobs don't exist at all? Seriously, I can't imagine how you think this is bad. These jobs are vastly better than early industrial revolution American jobs, let alone no job at all in a place with no real social safety net.
Sheltered suburban enclave American middle class are something else. No sense of perspective at all.
Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score:5, Insightful)
Slaves yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.vice.com/vice-news/... [vice.com]
The fact that it's a tough world out there doesn't excuse Dubai or UAE in general from acting like asshat clowns. They have the economy to take care of their foreign workers, but choose to screw them over. That's really not OK.
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That's the one's who survive. Hundreds die and thousands are injured. Dubai is a stain upon the earth a clear measure of what is in store for the majority of workers if they allow it to happen.
Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score:5, Insightful)
sounds like a republican capitalist paradise. we should import a couple of the Dubai leaders to put the US poor to work. finally.
Right ... because it's Republicans who want to concentrate people in cities. Got it.
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sounds like a republican capitalist paradise. we should import a couple of the Dubai leaders to put the US poor to work. finally.
Right ... because it's Republicans who want to concentrate people in cities. Got it.
No...it must be because the poor in Dubai get paid well and have good lives compared to the poor Americans. /ironyoff
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2480... [nbcnews.com]
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sure beats the 'people's paradise' that is north korea
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Why? Do you think it's better to be worked to death in the heat?
Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, one giant building requires a lot less energy to cool than an equal volume of multiple tiny buildings, because the big building has much less surface area / volume and thus transfers heat more slowly.
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Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the pictures, it's mostly enclosed walkways connecting all the buildings.
It's easier to cool a building if you're not pissing your cold air out the doors.
Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Volume and mass do not matter as much as surface area. This is an ecological win. The enclosed area will also mean less evaporation, so more green spaces and more efficient use of fresh water supplies. This is a win, at least in theory.
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Think of the mold and mildew
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But one large dome probably contains 100 times the volume of the individual buildings it encapsulates.
As far as I can tell, it's not one large dome. I looks pretty well thought out. There is one largish dome in the complex, but it's the park part, and who knows if they'll even get to that.
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Nuclear plants need large supplies of water for cooling.
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Does it need to be fresh water? There's plenty of sea water around Dubai.
modpoints (Score:3, Interesting)
I have modpoints but I'm still waiting for some of you fucktards to figure out you're talking about a 50 year old reactor design
and post instead about, you know, a modern design, or even a, gasp, non weaponizeable design, that has a self limiting reaction and doesn't need water to cool it.
apparently nobody has any idea, and your liberal/green propqganda lies are going to propagate for yet another generation of idiocrats because no one stands in your way to correct you for me to mod up
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Still why people live in such places
Because that's where they're allowed to live. You think some European country with a nice, mild climate is willing to give up a large fraction of its territory so that the entire population of the UAE can relocate their country there?
Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:4, Informative)
If you read the news from Europe these days, they seem to be doing exactly that.
Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The extra ironic part is that by selling you the gasoline to burn, they contribute to the slow heating and eventual flooding of a city that is basically on an island at sea level ...
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If you buy gasoline, it was probably your money they used.
No, it is their money that they used. Once you traded your money for gasoline, it's no longer your money. If you don't like that then don't make the trade, nobody is forcing you to do so.
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You could say the same about the difference between shopping malls and individual shop units. With housing, terraced homes are more energy efficient than detached homes since the common walls are usually at the same temperature compared to the outside.
Imagine you divided the space up into cubes, each the side of a shop. Each side of a cube can be outside air, insulated wall, uninsulated wall, open space. Suppose you have 1000 units. With individual stores, that's 5000 sides that need to be insulating. If yo
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It would be ok if they used solar to power the AC.
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Ideally to power something like that, they'd really need to a giant massive solar power plant somewhere in the middle of a large desert, and maybe some energy storage based on pumped water.
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Re:Not about jealousy, but ... (Score:4, Funny)
Vokda?
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What you say would have more merit if there was free choice for these Bangladeshi people to come and go. Why have their passports been confiscated? Why is there not a viable means (steerage in low cost cargo ships) for them to return home if they wish? The arrangement as it stands amounts to what is called 'Indentured Servitute' which is a fancy name for slavery.
Extra points, though, for trying to turn the issue into something 'dirty and sexual' by using the term fetishise. Tell your masters to give you
Overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
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When I was in Africa, the 2 malls I visited had 2 guards at every entrance with AK47's that did exactly that. We walked through as At one entrance a guard was a 60yr (I'm guessing) old african with grey/white hair, a velvet purple suit that looked like it was as old as he was, it had faded white fuzz in certain areas, he wore silver aviator sun glasses and his AK47 had an aged, glossy nickel silver finish. He stood motionless as we walked past. It was one of the most surreal sights I've ever laid eyes on.
Re:Overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that but that's exactly it's intention. To seperate the rich from the slaves.
And this is a new thing? Cities everywhere tend to do this.
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Doubtful. Slaves usually outnumber the rich in these places, if only to tend to their every need.
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I don't see how this is any different from our current rich/poor housing divide.
Clearly, it's the part about the dome... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
Isn't all of Dubai an issue? (Score:3)
Life on Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Being the largest climate controlled dome of its kind, perhaps the engineering "lessons learned" could be applicable to creating a self-sustaining space colony -- one of the chief challenges being climate control. ..or else, I've just been playing too much Kerbal Space Program and reading too much Heinlein;)
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That's... actually a really good point. Let's hope the lessons are shared.
Re:Life on Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Life on Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Earth is already a permanent space colony.
Yeah.
And just LOOK at how THAT turned out!
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I'm a techno-optimist but I agree with you. The rate things are going, it isn't going to make much sense to have people living in space colonies. I can't think of any good reason to do it other than the coolness factor. Unfortunately a lot of people are emotionally invested in this idea and will fight logic tooth and nail to promote their fantasies.
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We don't? We already have AI that can autonomously land on other bodies and extract material. In fact we've had it for 4 decades. See: almost any planetary lander/rover ever. It seems the barrier to mining is more up-front cost and on-site materials processing than AI.
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Why does it have to? Build them out of cheap, expendable, easily-replaceable parts. Which you can do, because the entire premise of asteroid mining is that it will make the cost of building and deploying space equipment dead cheap (otherwise why do it in the first place?)
Coolness factor is enough (Score:2)
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Sure, but the problem is that once the coolness factor wears off, they stop doing it. It's not sustainable.
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I think the implicit assumption is one of: we're going to completely fsck up this planet and have to leave, something else is going to threaten to fsck up this planet (and we'll have to leave), or we're going to outgrow and want to be elsewhere.
Do I think it likely we could pull it off (or even have the resources)? That I'm skeptical of.
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Oh I believe you underestimate the stupidity of the electorate and the congressional love of pork.
Figures for NASA's SLS costs
http://www.thespacereview.com/... [thespacereview.com]
They are putting the costs at a potential 5 billion/launch before any development overruns.
This is to get us to Mars. Brilliant like we have done so much with the Moon in half century since we went all out to get there.
Re:Life on Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one will EVER live in a permanent space colony. Sorry.
While I share your pessimistic outlook for the foreseeable future, forever is a really long time. Are you willing to say that absolutely nobody will be living in a permanent space colony in 100 years? 500 years? 10,000 years? If so, what makes you so certain?
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"Ever" - rhetorical device. Not a statement of actual infinite temporal determination. :-)
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On our current trajectory, it will only happen if your dystopian overlords want it to happen.
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No one will EVER live in a permanent space colony. Sorry.
This fantasy was promoted in an age where achieving terrestrial dominance through orbital trajectory of warheads was under intense and competitive development. It did its job.
Rockwell rode on the tail-end of this era, for the final boondoggle of the US Shuttle Program, in the 1970's. You won't see anything like that again.
Ever is a long time bub. If shit goes as pear shaped as scientists are predicting here... Rich people will be glamoring to get out. They've already bought up most of the islands, when those run out the new rich people will need somewhere to go to get away from the rest of us.
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Yeah. But they are really good at spectacular failure, and undermining long-term success prospects through want for cooperation... :-)
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm missing the part where something in Dubai is waiting to be a dystopia...
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I'm missing the part where something in Dubai is waiting to be a dystopia...
What do you mean "waiting to be". For most of the Indian and Filipino "guest workers" it already is.
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I'm missing the part where something in Dubai is waiting to be a dystopia...
What do you mean "waiting to be".
For most of the Indian and Filipino "guest workers" it already is.
That is kind of the point. The article is titled "Dubai's Climate-Controlled Dome City Is a Dystopia Waiting To Happen" and Shoten is saying that everything about Dubai already is one.
Surveillance City Made to Order (Score:3)
"macabre, consumer paradise" or monitored controlled populace?
World's largest mall: Occupying 8 million sq ft (Score:4, Interesting)
A big shopping center - sounds like hell on earth! I just can't understand the obsession with shopping, once you have your clothes & stuff just leave and do something interesting.
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What if looking at more clothes and stuff is interesting?
Your complaint boils down to "What's wrong with these people? They're completely unlike ME!"
Yeah, I'm not nuts about rampant consumerism, and shopping is not entertainment to me, but I acknowledge that I'm not typical.
It'll be like... (Score:2)
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And the crappy CBS show [cbs.com] it is based on.
Asimov predicted it! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what happened to Trantor [wikipedia.org] in Asimov's Foundation series:
Trantor is depicted as the capital of the first Galactic Empire. Its land surface [...] was, with the exception of the Imperial Palace, entirely enclosed in artificial domes.
And so it begins...
Reaching for symbolism - and failing (Score:2)
I too have seen Elysium. (OK i haven't. but this author is describing the plot.)
Global warming is measured using terms like "degree" and "decade" (degree, as in singular)
Dubai is ridiculously hot already. The Filipino and Indian laborers are already mistreated and underpaid. They already outnumber Emirati's by 3 to 1 (or more?). If they aren't rioting in the streets yet, a few measly degrees warmer in the coming decades won't do it either.
If this retarded gimmick manages to stand up long enough for one
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Global warming is measured using terms like "degree" and "decade" (degree, as in singular)
You are missing the point, people won't burst into flames because of AGW. However the Arab spring was preceded by the worst drought in the the history of the fertile crescent (the birthplace of agriculture). People didn't suddenly log on to facebook and find out they were living under tyrants. There were food riots in Cairo and other major cities BEFORE the uprisings, almost 10% of Syria's total population just walked away from their farms and went looking for work in the cities.
Go and find out why that
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a few measly degrees warmer in the coming decades won't do it either
man, you really don't understand climate change.
Dubai has bigger problems (Score:4)
Dubai a city with a significantly challenging future and it has little to do with a dome. It's the center of little, its propelled by wildy deep pockets vs. social need, and wealth centers in the middle east are already distributing their investments to other regions. Forget the fact that once the oil's gone the wealth remaining in the region will leach away as there's so few people (though it'll take a very long time). UAE: 9mil, Yeman: 23mil, Oman: 4mil, Saudi Arabia: 30 mil. They have huge gulfs of weath distribution, and generally horrible climates. Why would people go to Dubai if it wasn't a spectacle or a huge weath gaining opportunity? My advice: Bilk Dubai for all its worth now, because in 50 years it'll be a distant memory of largesse gone awry by modern standards.
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My advice: Bilk Dubai for all its worth now, because in 50 years it'll be a distant memory of largesse gone awry by modern standards.
Interesting. Kind of like Mono Lake, just a zillion tines larger.
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Hence the fact they're trying to diversify like mad, they're trying to become the financial centre of the region in the same way as New York or London.
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A lot of people forget that the other great cities had their founding in geographical advantages that are no longer essential to their operation. The harbors around New York are still viable, but they are no longer the main focus of the city. It's the fact that a critical mass was established to foster social/cultural/economic centers which once established, became self-supporting. Festering, one might even say.
Re:Dubai has bigger problems (Score:4, Informative)
Forget the fact that once the oil's gone the wealth remaining in the region will leach away as there's so few people (though it'll take a very long time).
Dubai and the other Emirates are acutely aware of the limits to their oil reserves.
They've been very busy turning their States into financial and trade hubs for the Arabian Peninsula,
with plenty of free trade zones (no taxes on corporate income) in order to draw in international corporations.
My advice: Bilk Dubai for all its worth now, because in 50 years it'll be a distant memory of largesse gone awry by modern standards.
Your advice is wrong.
Abu Dhabi is the 800 lb gorilla in the UAE and has the 2nd largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
As long as Dubai's royal family goes along with Abu Dhabi's Sheikh, Dubai can keep borrowing money until the end of time.
/The last time Dubai needed cash, they had to reform some laws as a condition set by Abu Dhabi.
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The real problem is the people in Dubai don't like the Flintstones. Thankfully the people in Abu Dhabi do.
I know someone who works on this kind of stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
I know someone who works on this kind of stuff.
He works on theme parks, recently getting hired (within his company) to fix mistakes and problems with them, in Dubai and the surrounding area. His take is repeatedly that they don't know how to do quality-control there. Their projects SOUND amazing, but they skimp on the essentials and end up with disastrous results much of the time. He believes this is a mess waiting to happen, given the area's track record, but isn't involved in the project.
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Wow, it's Logan's Run (Score:2)
Micro-Weather (Score:2)
Given the size of the dome, I'd be interested to see if any micro weather systems happen inside, or what the plans are to mitigate environmental effects.
Its not unheard of for weather to form in large open structures. Take for instance Hangar One at Moffett Airfield: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_One_%28Mountain_View,_California%29) or the Goodyear Airdock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Airdock) Though not climate controlled, these have fog (and apparently, rain) due to the massive size.
And how is this different? (Score:2)
And how is this different from many other urban areas, it sounds exactly like any other mall. The fact that they're building it bigger and more centralized doesn't change the fact that there are many such climate controlled shopping centers in most other cities, more than a few located only a stones throw from the "bad side" of town where their poorly paid workforce lives.
Perspective (Score:2)
It's easy to complain about how awful malls are until you have to walk around outside when it's 105F out, or when it's -5F with two feet of snow on the ground.
No problem (Score:3)
The AC system expels hot air through a small thermal exhaust port, about 2m wide. In order to access it, we'll have to drive really fast down Main St.
all this AC and no tits (Score:3)
or weed, or free speech. In fact you better hide those elbows and knees, or you can be stoned on the street. Did I mention proffered neck line is a turtle neck?
If you are lucky police will be called instead of immediate stoning/being beaten with sticks. Official punishment for dress code violations is 1 month in the slammer.
Dubai - perfect sausage fest vacation destination.
Jealousy talking (Score:3)
Everyone will be free to visit - like Manhattan or San Francisco or countless other desirable places in the world. Most will not be able to afford to live there - again like all of these places. Cost of housing will probably subsidize construction that couldn't sustain itself just on visitors. By all signs, they are trying to keep out desert heat and not their own people. If I lived in this kind of climate, I would love a place to cool down for a couple of hours. I think people just feel jealous that we don't make this kind of projects in United States.
Floating city? (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
.
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Re:Bling Bling Motherfucker (Score:4, Funny)
and when the oil runs out they will have a nice place to park their camels.
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and when the oil runs out they will have a nice place to park their camels.
Or, they can install the solar everyone else is spending a fortune developing in the plentiful sunlight they have.
Re:Bling Bling Motherfucker (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, they can install the solar everyone else is spending a fortune developing in the plentiful sunlight they have.
I think that they'll find that selling solar power is far less profitable than selling oil.
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but needs UFO aliens, not Arabs.
I think it's already been done [wikipedia.org].
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What will happen when eventually, inevitably, the oil and gas of the UAE starts to dwindle, the economy correspondingly does the same, and the energy supply to keep the whole thing cool becomes prohibitively expensive?
Here's [wikipedia.org] some information for you. Oil and gas are a minor (and decreasing) part of the economy. Not sure about pizza and beer, though.
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It's not a product of the anaerobic decomposition of millions of years worth of dead plankton, algae, and any other carbon-based microbiota that lived in ancient seas?
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Nope. Ongoing, current bacteriological process.
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However, do you think those little microbes are pulling carbon from the rock?
Of course the production of any and all fossil fuels is ongoing. The problem is the time scales needed to produce an appreciable amount of them, and the geological structures required to facilitate the wholesale conversion into an extractable hydrocarbon.
In summary, and correct me if I'm wrong (with real citations, please), things die. These dead things lea
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Here's the trick, the people who say there is plenty of stuff are throwing coal, shale, tar and anything else they can think of into the mix and pretend it's the same as easy to extract liquid oil. Another common trick is to pretend that all that unsurveyed land in Iran, the arctic, wherever has huge oil basins when we do not know one way or another. There's plenty of fossil fuels. Oil we
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Yeah, but who the f wants to live in a place like that?
It has great appeal to statists, because they want to crowd the entire population into highrise apartments along mass transit corridors... but I like having a yard (not a manicured one, there are enough people at work nuts about crabgrass and shit like that.) We have what is essentially a 100 year old yard. It has a fairy ring in it (a fairly ancient ring of mushrooms) and rabbits and there are coyotes singing in the distance out across the pasture in