Happy 7's day!

It's 7/7/07, and it's 8:17. Or, you might say... 7:77. Hooray! Go buy a lottery ticket or wish upon a star or step on a crack and break your mother's back or something.

This group made a list of the "New 7 Wonders of the World", released today, and I've been inordinately following this story. Yeah, it's dumb, and it will probably bring tourism to all of these places to catastrophic levels, but boy do I like top-N lists.

Thoughts? I dunno about Christ the Redeemer. A big Jesus statue? Ehh... I hear Petra is awesome, so I can get behind that. Taj Mahal might not deserve winning; it's pretty, but so are Angkor Wat and Neuschwanstein. I'd vote for the Sagrada Familia, but maybe that'll have to wait until it's finished. Things that should not have even been candidates: Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Statue of Liberty. (and if the Statue of Liberty (145ft) shouldn't win, then Christ the Redeemer (100ft) shouldn't either.) Other than that, though, I'd say it's not a bad list. Picking out 7 wonders of the world is a tough task, and maybe not even one that people should be trying to do, but this voting approach was a good effort.

Lots of other people (like USA Today) tried to make their own lists, and a lot of them seemed like "I know about more cool places than you" sort of wankery. I mean, if you're making a list of the 7 coolest things in the world, the Great Wall of China should probably be on it, right? And "Polar Ice Caps"?! I think we're talking about man-made things here. I was about to debate "The Internet", on grounds that shut up we're talking about architecture, but when you think about it, the Internet really IS one of the coolest things ever.

Canada made a "7 Wonders of Canada", upon hearing that nothing in Canada made it into the list. Good for them.

Also, I'm getting spammed a lot, and I didn't know why. So I googled my email address, and lo and behold, there it is, on the cmu cs site! D'oh!