1EQQ8ZzGD

• How much more thought you could have put into your
costumes.
• How much more deeply you could be invested in everything
that you do.
• That the hours you spend waiting in line at the gates could
be pure anticipatory glee, if only you knew what was waiting
for you.
• That a piece of art could make you want to quit your job
and spend your life with a welding torch.
• That boredom is always your fault.
http://www.quora.com/l/boq-ben-newman
american culture
Why does the USA insist on doing
things differently than the majority
of other developed nations?
Gary Teal, Republican
America doesn't insist on doing anything differently. We just
do whatever the hell we want because we grew up in a world
where we didn't know, and didn't need to know, what anyone
else was doing.
From Columbus to the turn of the twentieth century, we
weren't isolationist, we were isolated. of course, we imported
our language from england and most of our culture from europe,
but it's amazing how much we had to figure out on our
own. When someone had the idea to build the erie Canal,
there were no civil engineers living in America, so a couple
of judges laid it out. obviously there are a million stories like
that one, and just as obviously, it didn't mean that they did
a better job than the dike builders in Holland. It's just that
Americans waded into problems with little or no reference to
how things were done outside the US. I don't want to exaggerate
this effect; people continued to immigrate to the US and
read books printed in england. But we were solving problems
on our own even while others were doing the same work else-
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