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Memes about the concept “United States”

101–114 of 114

The Train of Thought to Equality

Since then society has evolved a sequence of ci central con¬ cepts each of which was at one time thought to make it work of itself, and each of which has had to be corrected to the next. There was the early eighteenth-century concept of selfinterest, in Mandeville and others; then came enlightened self-interest; then…

Middlebrow Culture of Effort

The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better himself. Many uneducated lowbrows, particularly immigrants, cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door…

Written Worlds May Not be Memes

Think of the number of things you are likely to say to someone else today -- or the number of words you will hear other people speak. You might listen to the radio, watch television, have dinner with other people, help your children with the homework, answer the phone to people far away. Most of what is said in these…

FDR Defends His Dog

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon…

Replacing the Gold Standard with an Energy Standard

It has been suggested by an ingenious thinker that it is possible to use as a standard of monetary value no substance whatever, but instead, force, and that value might be measured in units of energy. An excellent development this, in theory, at any rate, of the general idea of the modern State as kinetic and not…

ISPs Can Be Regulated Like Banks

The closest analogy to how ISPs operate on the Net is how banks operate on the terrestrial plane today. In most countries, banks are highly regulated, and they have a duty (in most countries) to know their customers. Although their primary mission is to serve their customers, to some extent they operate as (sometimes…

A Classic Example of Selective Reporting

One of the classic examples of selective reporting concerns the testing of acupuncture in different countries. While acupuncture is widely accepted as a medical treatment in various Asian countries, its use is much more contested in the West. These cultural differences have profoundly influenced the results of…

Schools of Croakers Sound Like Drill Machinery in the Chesapeake Bay

During the Second World War the hydrophone network set up by the United States Navy to protect the entrance to Chesapeake Bay was temporarily made useless when, in the spring of 1942, the speakers at the surface began to give forth, every evening, a sound described as being like 'a pneumatic drill tearing up…

Nothing is Fun Until You're Good at It

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist…

A Modern Utopia Requires an Entire Planet

No less than a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia. Time was when a mountain valley or an island seemed to promise sufficient isolation for a polity to maintain itself intact from outward force; the Republic of Plato stood armed ready for defensive war, and the New Atlantis and the Utopia of More in…