#america (10 links)
<blockquote>The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all in this together or are we all not?</blockquote>
- America the Anxious - NYTimes.com opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
While the British way can be drainingly negative, The American approach to happiness can spur a debilitating anxiety. The initial sense of promise and hope is seductive, but it soon gives way to a nagging slow-burn feeling of inadequacy. Am I happy? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could I be doing more about it? Even basic contentment feels like failure when pitched against capital-H Happiness. The goal is so elusive and hard to define, it’s impossible to pinpoint when it’s even been achieved — a recipe for neurosis.
- Trickle-Down Distress: How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic - The Atlantic theatlantic.com
To the question of anxiety: Should we be thinking about ways to make America more of meritocracy in the hopes of quelling our stress? Says McNamee: "A pure meritocracy is not possible and may not even be desirable." (Just ask Harrison Bergeron.) Far more important, he argues, is debunking the myth of meritocracy, harmful "because it provides an incomplete explanation for success and failure, often mistakenly exalting the rich and condemning the poor."
- Amtrak adventures | Travel | The Observer guardian.co.uk
As travellers who wanted a journey more than a destination – and craved the room to work, read and relax on the way – the train seemed an obvious solution. And it was surprisingly affordable: $389 covers you for two weeks of train riding. Or, more specifically, it covers you for eight separate segments of travel within 15 days.
- Charlie's Diary: Merciless antipope.org
There is a cancer in the collective American soul — a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit. Nor is it as simple as a left/right thing: no political party has a monopoly on merciless behaviour. Rather, a creeping draconian absolutism has cast its penumbra across the entire arena of public discourse, tainting every debate, poisoning and hardening attitudes across the board.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against Target Corp brought by plaintiffs claiming the discount retailer's Web site is inaccessible to the blind, according to court documents.
- Main Street Arts Festival :: Home :: msfwaf.org
Good timing: "The MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival, Fort Worth's most honored event, celebrates its 20th year on April 7 - 10, 2005."
April's trip?