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Revolutionary Tower in Brazil
An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever thought about retiring in Brazil? If you have thought about doing so, this might be just the piece of real estate you were looking for. 'An unusual apartment building was inaugurated in Brazil, each of whose 11 storeys turns independently, giving lucky residents 360-degree views of the eco-friendly city of Curitiba.' Now, if they could only tilt it a little bit to look like Pisa's Tower..."
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
Just imagine the electricity bill these guys have to pay every month. Assuming that the rotation is done by means of some electric motor. The electric motor itself is an amazing thing to begin with.
It's only revolutionary if the space I purchase rotates counter to the other rings.
I was wondering how I was going to screw in that lightbulb...
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
...next thing you know, they turn the RPMs up to about 60 and you're stuck to the outside wall.
But what about folks on the bottom of the stack? $300k seems a bit steep for a remote-controlled, revolving street-level apartment. ^_^ "hey look honey, it's the gas station again! ...there's the liquor store... yep.. alright! gas station again!"
except that you could have that one view for every room in the house ...
---- death to all fanatics
How do they handle the air, water, and electrical I wonder? That has to be a bit of engineering in itself.
I have been in Curitiba, and I must say that it's a Wonderful, Incredible city.
Amazing architecture, excelent transportation, lot's of things to do, and see.
They are heavely influenced by Centro European inmigration, I was surprised finding typical ucranian foods, etc. They also have parks representing the cultural carachteristics of each community (poland park, ucranian park, german park, etc.).
They really are the "Ecological Capital of Brazil"... they have a saying:
"If you cut a tree, and the police catch you, you better kill the policeman... you will spend less years in prison".
The only bad part is that, being a city at 850-1000 meters of altitud, it's not uncommon to have 25 Celsius degrees at midday and 6 degrees at 10 p.m. It's not really cold, but the difference between night and day is excesive.
Anyway, it's a really nice city, full of nice people!
Well, for once I did RTFA, and having lived previously in San Antonio (Texas) as well as Dallas (Texas), I've had many opportunities to dine at a couple of tower-top revolving restaurants (rotation ~1/hr). While not "exactly dizzying", it can be somewhat disconcerting to see the scenery changing minutely but perceptively. When writing the comment, I was thinking more along the terms of subtle changes over months/years of "exposure" as I'm not aware of any prior prolonged human experience like this being studied/reported... I was just curious. If nothing else, I'm sure lying in bed at night, you'd feel the machinery.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
Wrong. They are not poor. They are a relatively wealthy country with the worst income distribution of latin america.
Just to give you an idea, their GDP per capita is around $7600 a year. Wealthier in comparison to China ($5000) and way beyond India ($2600). Compare that to Rwanda ($1300) or Haiti ($1600). The US is around $35.000 a year and France around $27.000.
My point is that even if you lump all those countries together under the label "third world", there are huge differences between them, bigger differences than between let's say, the US and France.
On the technology sector, I think that they have the best technology of Latin America. BR has its own Linux distro (Conectiva) and I know that many commercial systems are developed using their own programming languages. They also used to have their own compressed files formats and that sort of thing.
But software is not their stronger sector. In Civil and electrical engineering they are very good. They've built the biggest electric damn in the world, Itaipu, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (Time/Life selection).
Check out the website:
http://www.itaipu.gov.br/
Brazil is the eight economy of the world (2002). It used to be the first latin american economy after Mexico, only surpassed slightly, but very recently. The Mexican economy however, is much more dependent on foreign investment. i.e. 92% of Mexican banks is in the hands of foreign capitals.
Great music, beautiful gals, great beaches, what else do you want?
Just in case you were thinking about it . . . I am not Brazilian . . . and I am not dating a Brazilian.
I had a vision. A 6 storey rubic's cube with horizontal 360 scrolling.
I like to make them squirm - Bobby Fischer
... that if a bunch of Marxists decided to hold one of their meetings in this place, they would be plotting Communist revolutions? (Ba-DUM)
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
That actually sounds like a good idea. Maybe they could have a whole section of the living space that stays fixed while the outer ring rotates.
My first thought was they should make three identical buildings and fabricate a giant robot hand to solve the Towers of Hanoi problem.
They should also put some things in there like prisms or compasses to make all of the rotation a lot more interesting.
The Seattle Space Needle uses a one-horsepower motor to rotate its restaraunt once per hour. It can be done easily.
I'm sure with modern technology, we could design a much more powerful motor that would spin the restaurant at 15,000 rpm.