Source: Wikimedia Commons
There are a small number of American habits that produce the same reaction in every visitor, and this is the purest of them. The price on the shelf…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is a quiet oddity in American civic life that almost nobody examines, which is that the country conducts its elections on a working day in November.
Most…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
It is one of the most universally shared complaints in the history of television, and for most of that history the people being complained to had a technically…
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 into any shop in the world and a startling proportion of the prices end in a nine. Nine ninety-nine, four ninety-five, nineteen ninety-nine, ninety-nine pence, and so…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
An American sits down in a restaurant abroad, orders a cola, drinks it, and asks for another one. The second one arrives and so does a second charge,…