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Culturematic Clockworks

Here are nine properties that define something as a Culturematic. Not every Culturematic has all these properties, but most Culturematics have most of them.

Culturematics Start Playing in Our Heads Immediately

Culturematics capture our attention. They leap to the mind’s eye. Most of all, they engage us with a problem we begin to solve the moment we hear of it. This means, among other things, that they make good titles for books. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating. “Hmm,” we say, “how would that work?” Alisa Smith, the author, could have called her book Eat Where You Live, as Lou Bendrick did. Or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, as Barbara Kingsolver did. But neither of these titles works quite ...

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