19 Foods Made Out Of Gold That Could Only Be Found In Dubai

It seems that one of Dubai’s favorite garnish for their food is real gold.

Rafael Nadal biting the Wimbledon men’s singles trophy after defeating Tomas Berdych on July 4, 2010

Dubai has a well-earned reputation for being an incredibly pricey city. Just walking down the street will give credit to its reputation. High-end luxury brands line the roads and exotic cars race down the streets. Dubai’s wealth isn’t just contained to its vehicles and shops, though. Even their food is pricey and worth its weight in gold – and we mean that literally. It seems that one of Dubai’s favorite garnish for their food is real gold.

Gold is entirely safe to consume. We’re not saying you should take a bite out of your wedding ring, that would be dangerous because it most likely contains impurities. Edible gold must be between 23-24 karats and when you eat it, it is usually pounded into thin sheets or ground into glitter before it is used as a garnish. It is essentially flavorless, and its only value to the food beside a spike in price is making the dish look fancy. Which is precisely why Dubai enjoys using it as a garnish to as many of their dishes as possible. From cocktails to burgers to even cakes, here are 19 foods made out of gold that could only be found in Dubai.

19. Black Soil Soup

19.Black Soil Soup

We’ll admit, the name of this soup is not the most pleasing sounding thing. However, this soup actually sounds delicious if you actually read the description of it. The soup is made from wild mushrooms that include black truffles (of course). It is garnished with some toasted breadcrumbs, mascarpone, and truffle gold flakes. You can find this soup at 24 Karat, an Italian restaurant that is located in the Marriott Hotel in Dubai. Even the restaurant is decorated in gold!

The price for this bowl of soup is 103 AED, about 28 dollars. Not too bad in our opinion. If you opt out of the gold leaf, the price drops to 65 AED – about 17 dollars.

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A.S.E.A.N. needs bigger voice in US-China rivalry

  • The United States has decided to postpone a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries it had planned to host on March 14, two officials told Reuters.
  • President Donald Trump had invited leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (A.S.E.A.N.) to meet in Las Vegas.
  • The decision comes amid growing fears that the corona-virus will spread in the United States as countries report new infections.

As the US-China relationship has morphed from uneasy cooperation to uneasy rivalry, the leading Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, like many others around the world, have had to recalibrate their relationships with the two great world powers.

But ASEAN itself has been largely absent from the discussion, risking regional division and global irrelevance at exactly the time when it most needs to develop a united front.

The East Asia Summit (EAS) to be held in Bangkok on November 4 provides an opening for ASEAN to go beyond its EAS convening role to a more forward-leaning posture in shaping and influencing its own geopolitical fate.

The fact that both China and the US view Southeast Asia as a key arena for influence gives ASEAN some degree of leverage. Most observers don’t expect ASEAN to use it, however, which would be a missed opportunity.

Unless ASEAN’s larger member states take an active role in strengthening and articulating a cohesive ASEAN view on issues affecting its member states, the US-China rivalry could end up polarizing the regional grouping and rendering the cherished notion of “ASEAN Centrality” a mere slogan. This need not be the case.Precisely because Southeast Asia is seen as important to both China and the US, and because neither of the global powers sees it in their interest to weaken ASEAN as a coherent regional grouping, ASEAN has some latitude in carving out its own stance on issues ranging from maritime security to infrastructure project governance.

But a clear ASEAN perspective on these and other relevant regional issues will not come into being on its own. ASEAN’s largest member states – especially Indonesia — will need to invest more leadership time and political capital to craft common ground.

Progress will inevitably be slowed by ASEAN’s consensus-based decision-making and its not unreasonable concerns about causing rifts in relations with China and/or the US. But allowing these concerns to sacrifice ASEAN’s agency and voice in a rapidly changing and challenging geopolitical environment is the poorer alternative.

ASEAN’s weak if not absent response to the growing US-China competition has a number of root causes. Four large ASEAN members – Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand – have been strongly preoccupied with domestic affairs in recent years; all have gone through challenging electoral processes.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad excepted, leaders of the other three nations tend to shun the regional stage and are much more inclined to focus on issues at home.

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Three Teams Qualify to Compete in DARPA Launch Challenge & Astra

Launch Challenge aims to accelerate flexible and responsive launch, capitalizing on commercial capabilities; competitors will attempt to launch from two sites within weeks

The DARPA Launch Challenge aims to fundamentally shift military space capabilities to enable on-demand, flexible, and responsive launch of small payloads. Three competitors successfully completed the qualification phase and will attempt to launch to low-Earth orbit from two different U.S. locations within a matter of weeks. Teams will receive notice of the first launch site a few weeks prior to launch and exact details on the payload and intended orbit just days before launch. DARPA is targeting both launches for early 2020.

The qualifying competitors are Vector Launch; Virgin Orbit, which entered the competition via its wholly owned subsidiary, VOX Space; and a third company, which has requested anonymity for the first few months of the Challenge. DARPA awarded a $400,000 prize to each competitor that completed the qualification phase, which included submission and acceptance of an FAA commercial launch license application. Teams will receive a $2M prize for successfully delivering payloads to orbit in the first launch. For a successful second launch, prizes of $10 million, $9 million, and $8 million are available for the top three teams respectively, ranked by factors including mass, time to orbit, and orbit accuracy.

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This is why we use gold as currency

Why Gold is Money

The economist John Maynard Keynes famously called gold a “barbarous relic”, suggesting that its usefulness as money is an artifact of the past. In an era filled with cashless transactions and hundreds of cryptocurrencies, this statement seems truer today than in Keynes’ time.

However, gold also possesses elemental properties that has made it an ideal metal for money throughout history.

Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer from Columbia University, broke down the periodic table to show why gold has been used as a monetary metal for thousands of years.

The Periodic Table

The periodic table organizes 118 elements in rows by increasing atomic number (periods) and columns (groups) with similar electron configurations.

Just as in today’s animation, let’s apply the process of elimination to the periodic table to see why gold is money:

  • Gases and Liquids
    Noble gases (such as argon and helium), as well as elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine and chlorine are gaseous at room temperature and standard pressure. Meanwhile, mercury and bromine are liquids. As a form of money, these are implausible and impractical.
  • Lanthanides and Actinides
    Next, lanthanides and actinides are both generally elements that can decay and become radioactive. If you were to carry these around in your pocket they could irradiate or poison you.
  • Alkali and Alkaline-Earth Metals
    Alkali and alkaline earth metals are located on the left-hand side of the periodic table, and are highly reactive at standard pressure and room temperature. Some can even burst into flames.
  • Transition, Post Transition Metals, and Metalloids
    There are about 30 elements that are solid, nonflammable, and nontoxic. For an element to be used as money it needs to be rare, but not too rare. Nickel and copper, for example, are found throughout the Earth’s crust in relative abundance.
  • Super Rare and Synthetic Elements
    Osmium only exists in the Earth’s crust from meteorites. Meanwhile, synthetic elements such as rutherfordium and nihonium must be created in a laboratory.

Once the above elements are eliminated, there are only five precious metals left: platinum, palladium, rhodium, silver and gold. People have used silver as money, but it tarnishes over time. Rhodium and palladium are more recent discoveries, with limited historical uses.

Platinum and gold are the remaining elements. Platinum’s extremely high melting point would require a furnace of the Gods to melt back in ancient times, making it impractical. This leaves us with gold. It melts at a lower temperature and is malleable, making it easy to work with.

Gold as Money

Gold does not dissipate into the atmosphere, it does not burst into flames, and it does not poison or irradiate the holder. It is rare enough to make it difficult to overproduce and malleable to mint into coins, bars, and bricks. Civilizations have consistently used gold as a material of value.

Perhaps modern societies would be well-served by looking at the properties of gold, to see why it has served as money for millennia, especially when someone’s wealth could disappear in a click.

පාස්කු ප්‍රහාරයෙන් පසු රටේ ආර්ථිකය යථා තත්ත්වයට

පාස්කු ඉරිදා ත්‍රස්ත ප්‍රහාරවලින් පසු මෙරට ආර්ථිකය යථා තත්ත්වයට පත්වෙමින් තිබෙන බවත් මේ වසරේදී ආර්ථික වර්ධන වේගය සියයට 3.7ක් වනු ඇති බවත් අන්තර්ජාතික මූල්‍ය අරමුදල සඳහන් කරයි.

ප්‍රතිපත්ති ප්‍රමුඛතා ආරක්ෂා කරමින් ඒවා ක්‍රියාත්මක කිරීමටත්, තරගකාරීත්වයට සහාය දෙමින් එය ශක්තිමත් කිරීමටත් සියලු දෙනාගේ සහභාගීත්වය සහිත වර්ධනය දිරිගැන්වීමටත් ආයතනික සහ ව්‍යුහාත්මක ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ සිදුකළ යුතු බවත් අන්තර්ජාතික මූල්‍ය අරමුදල පෙන්වාදෙයි.

අන්තර්ජාතික මූල්‍ය අරමුදලේ ශ්‍රී ලංකාව වෙනුවෙන් පත් කර සිටින දූත මණ්ඩලයේ ප්‍රධානී මැනුවෙලා ගොරෝතී මහත්මියගේ ප්‍රමුඛත්වයෙන් දූත පිරිසක් ජනවාරි 29 වැනිදා සිට පෙබරවාරි 7 වැනිදා දක්වා ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ සංචාරය කළහ.

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