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The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a sonnet called “Ozymandias”. It tells of a desert kingdom that succumbs to the ravages of time, until not much more is left than “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” in the sand.
Looking down at Dubai from a circling plane last month, I had a spooky vision of all its towers and highways as ruins in a not-so-distant future. I ascribed…
