The beach they go to has real sand, lots of it, with blankets and beach umbrellas, salt water, a refreshment stand, seagulls, dead crabs, sandbars, waves.

NEWYORKER: Getting Closer

The Water Taxi Beach, a bar with real sand and volleyball courts, serves up drinks and snacks, as well as spectacular views over to Ellis Island and Manhattan.

BBC: An urban oasis off the coast of New York City

It can be made a model of DNA, or a model of a whole city like this one is, and sometimes they can make the model exist in the silicon of a computer, so you've got a computer model, and other times, they actually use real silicon and sand, which they're doing it, in this case, like a giant hands-on model.

NPR: Scale Model Aids Probe of Katrina Damage

This is further proof of how volatile sand state real estate still is.

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There's an interactive orchestra, live videos from around the world, and a real robot that will draw your portrait in sand at the Science Museum in London.

CNN: Hidden gems of the Webby Award nominees

But Paller said he also fears that some CIOs may still have their heads in the sand, unwilling to acknowledge they have a real problem.

CNN: Survey: CIOs not worried about security

Surely, they say, anybody who can both run a large multinational company and also get up and down out of a nasty sand trap must have been designed by something real smart.

NPR: The Golf World's Biggest Controversy

This piece of Key Largo real estate may be the closest thing to a swaying palm and white sand island.

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