Word: quainted
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Everything about this small Scottish town stresses humility and unpretentiousness: its rugged, unadorned links courses, crumbling medieval architecture, quaint B&Bs and creaky-floored hotels. The hallowed Old Course lies on public ground--golf is forbidden on Sundays so families can picnic on the fairways. But now St. Andrews is undergoing a change that would once have been unthinkable. High-end golf, American-style--loud pants and loudmouths--has come to the uniquely understated home of golf...
...that a quaint idea? The FDA was worried back then about an overmedicated society; in 1956, 5% of Americans were on tranquilizers. But today 7% of Americans are on antidepressants (many more have tried them), and ads have touted the drugs for ordinary problems like fatigue, loneliness and sadness. Still, drug companies aren't the (sole) villain in this story. As Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield point out in their incisive new book The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder (Oxford; 287 pages), we now have a "legal drug culture" built around the widely accepted...
...More and more willy-nilly globalists can probably relate to some version of this theme-park ride, an experience we might as well enjoy since to our grandparents it would have seemed like wildest science fiction, and to our grandchildren it will probably seem quaint and slow-moving. Four nights of my week in the clouds I spend on planes, two of them on flights that last more than 15 hours. At dead of night, near the Himalayas, I wake up and enjoy a lunch made up of the cookies and sandwiches I stashed away in my carry...
...blame us for it? Social Security is endangered. Job security is a quaint memory. Upward social mobility is failing. (A new study by the Economic Mobility Project finds that American men in their 30s are worse off financially than their fathers.) Real estate may not offer double-digit returns anymore, but it does offer an atavistic promise of security, a nest egg embodied in Sheetrock that you can touch and dirt that can't be outsourced to Mumbai. Property fever is in our blood: this country made its fortune in sweet real estate deals--a Louisiana Purchase here...
...debate of 14 years ago about gays in the military seems almost quaint. Kids grow up today with gay friends, gay parents, gay parents of friends and gay friends of parents. If only blacks and whites were as thoroughly mixed together in society as gays and straights are. Kids are also exposed constantly to an entertainment culture in which gays are not merely accepted but in some ways dominant. You rarely see a reality show without a gay cast member, while Rosie O'Donnell is a coveted free agent and Ellen DeGeneres is America's sweetheart. The notion that gays...