They are, depending on your perspective, either pursuing the ultimate vanity project or are on the forefront of a new age of exploration that harkens back to the great adventurers of centuries past when men (and they were nearly all men) ventured into the vast blank spots on the world map.

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The Liberal Democrat group said the contribution had been "little more than a vanity project" for the Tory group.

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Aside from its inexcusable length, this is a solid piece of filmmaking, not just the work of an actor who's generated enough power to get a vanity project off the ground.

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Mr. McNamee dismisses the perception that Moonalice is a vanity project, given its roughly 100 performances per year.

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It is instead one about what it means to be a liberal in today's media environment....Gore refused to sell his channel to conservative Glenn Beck saying that he didn't wish to see his vanity project fall into the hands of those who disagreed with his politics.

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More than a decade ago, VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, commissioned a vanity project to rival the pyramids: to resurrect the great French luxury and racing marque Bugatti, right down to Ettore Bugatti's l'orangerie in Molsheim, in Alsace, France, and build there the greatest sports car of all time, with no compromise.

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The decision to do this can only be perceived as a vanity project or a massive error of judgement by his advisers.

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Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, which campaigns for lower taxes, said HS2 was a "great vanity project... poor value compared to more affordable alternatives, but there is still time to reconsider that white elephant".

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