“The president and his aides don’t speak untruths because they are necessarily people of bad character. They do so because their politics and policies demand it.” Joshua Micah Marshall on the constant deceptions of the Bush presidency.
My friend David Derrick is an indefatigable digger. He’s uncovered Unesco’s World Heritage List, which he accurately terms “holiday ideas for a lifetime”. Of the 754 sites on the list, I’ve only seen 106. Lots more to uncover.
Sites are submitted by countries for Unesco designation. It’s revealing that Netherlands, for example, opts for Gerrit Rietveld’s Schroder house and the extraordinary engineering feat of the polder, in equal status with historic town centres. You might devise an index of how forward looking states are by how much they view contemporary heritage as valuable.