You’ve Got To Be Kidding! (#1)

A fine time to open a new dossier, of sorts: You’ve Got To Be Kidding.

(What? I’m not making any claims of originality, here.)

First up: Refrigerated beaches!

Versace, the renowned fashion house, is to create the world’s first refrigerated beach so that hotel guests can walk comfortably across the sand on scorching days.

The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C.

The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.

The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach ….

… Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, said he believed it is possible to design a refrigerated beach and make it sustainable. “We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” he said. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want.”

Words, at least civilized, non-profane words, fail me.

But, you know … you know it just had to be Dubai.

Trenchtown Keystone? The great sand heist

Excuse me, but how do you steal a beach? Okay, Rory Carroll explains this for us, courtesy of The Guardian:

Thieves in Jamaica have embarrassed police and triggered a political row by stealing a beach – and making a clean getaway.

Hundreds of tonnes of white sand vanished from a planned resort on the island’s north coast in July but three months later there is no sign of suspects nor sand.

An estimated 500 truck-loads of sand were removed from the Coral Spring beach in Trelawny and were believed to have been sold to rival resorts, a hefty logistical feat which has stumped police.

“It’s a very complex investigation because it involves so many aspects,” Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner for crime at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, told the BBC.

“You’ve got the receivers of the stolen sand, or what we believe to be the sand. The trucks themselves, the organisers and, of course, there is some suspicion that some police were in collusion with the movers of the sand.”

And while Carroll notes that Jamaican police have received much criticism of late, especially for its investigation of cricket coach Bob Woolmer’s death, he also notes that last year thieves stole a Hungarian resort.

So it’s not just Jamaica, jah?

(A tip o’the hat to Jonah at Slog.)