"If you're truly devoted to something, you stick with it even when you don't like it.
This implies that part of the financing behind the Affordable Care Act has in effect already been devoted to something else.
Thompson touched on the trade unions and the real wage, of course, but most of his book was devoted to something that he referred to as "experience".
Now think of the amount of media attention devoted to something just a tad more common, say the abuse of old people in so-called homes.
"I like the idea that people lead lives devoted to something bigger than themselves – the landscape, the flocks and their continuation.
Our consumer society is all about need and craving, and politics is so much about complaint and resentment, and here is a day devoted to something else.
"It can feel clubby from the outside," he said, but "this place demonstrated to me how to be intensely devoted to something and take it incredibly seriously, but not take yourself too seriously".
Each of the main characters is slavishly devoted to something (baseball, Melville, writing, Westish College, a man), except, of course, the Buddha, who from the beginning is calm and removed, until he isn't, at the end.
Similarly, a growing number of start-ups' names are sporting the word "nano", bidding to exploit the rush of interest in nanotechnology.For an even more troubling echo of the boom years, look at the growing ranks of VC-funded start-ups devoted to something called "social networking".
But if they don't do it, who will? "This is going to sound like what adults say when they're patronizing students, but when you're older, you're saddled with a lot of different responsibilities," said Ari Weisbard, a Harvard junior from Madison, Wis., who was among the sitters through Day 21. "You can't really throw everything aside for several weeks to devote to something important.
