Seven Wonders of the World

I'm now all spun up about this "New 7 Wonders" thing. As I write this I'm deciding on what wonders I will vote for, and there are only 13 hours left. But I am shocked at some of the places that have made it to the final 20 or 21 (depending on whether you count the Pyramids at Giza, but more on that later).

How on earth does the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House make it to the final stages of the contest? What are you people thinking? I realize that some of these places may have some symbolic relevance but that hardly qualifies them as a "wonder." And the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, how is that a wonder? A wonder should be something you look at and say "Wow, how the heck did they build that?" and not "Wow, why the heck did they build that?"

The original seven wonders were supposed to be antiquities or old things that were "must-sees" for travelers and not some overblown tourist attraction like the Eiffel Tower.

Automatically, anything built after 1800 should be disqualified. These things like the Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House, even the Eiffel Tower for that matter, have hardly stood the test of time to be considered a wonder. And what's so special about something like Christ Redeemer in Brazil? It's just a statue on a mountain.

But I was surprised by the decision to pull Giza from the contest, seemingly at the last minute. It seems it was pulled from the contest, in consultation with the Egyptian antiquities office, because it is the only one of the original seven wonders still standing. I guess the Egyptians were afraid it would lose this time around.

So I'm making my choices now, flipping back and forth between this blog and the 7 Wonders site. And after making my selections and being appalled at the number of unfit entries, I'm now in a position where I can't seem to choose just seven. Because there are a lot of good choices. What shall I do?

Acropolis, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, Roman Colosseum, China's Great Wall, Stonehenge.