Source: Wikimedia Commons
The paper drinking straw is not a modern environmental compromise. It is the original manufactured straw, patented in 1888, and the thing it replaced was an actual straw…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The hospital gown is probably the most disliked garment in widespread use. It is open at the back, it ties with cords most people cannot reach, it exposes…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is a particular kind of American administrative object that works by accident, and this is the purest example of it.
The Social Security number was created in…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Walk through two American towns and the hydrants will not match. One place has red ones, another yellow, another silver, and in a great many places the body…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
An American parking lot is visually chaotic in a way that visitors notice before they can say why. The plates do not match. They are different colours, different…
Look at any American television, any remote, any cable box, any channel listing. The numbers start at 2.
It is one of those things that is so familiar nobody questions…