Bemused in America

Article 1: "Food for Thought"
-Time & Its Control: The supermarket is open 24 hours here; allowing us to do our shopping whenever we can and want.
-Practicality & Efficency: We have tons of prepared food; saving us time and money and allowing us to push aside eating to make room for other more "important" things.
-Competition: The buy one get one half off sales are there to compete with prices at other grocery stores.
-Informality: The store isn't decorated or made to seem unique or homely.

Article 2: Watching Joggers
-Self-help: People take the initiative to work out and better themselves.
-Personal control over environment: People run to change their appearances, rather than accept how they are.
-Informality: The author notes how they don't care what they look like while running.

Article 3: American Television
-Time & Its Control: Television programs of all genres air at all times of the day, making it possible for us to catch our favorite shows at any time we have available.
-Directness/Openess: We are comfortable acting in front of a large audience.
-Materialism/Acquisitiveness: We have hundreds and sometimes thousands of cable television channels; most of which we don't watch regularly, or ever.

Article 4: Rules
-Equality: The author points out rules like making smokers go outside in order to make non-smokers feel comfortable inside; so it's fair.
-Practicality/Efficency: The restaurant gives a time limit for you to stay at the table.

Article 5: Language
-Change: We are constantly making new words and phrases to go with new cultural phenomenons.
-Individualism/Privacy: Many of our new words come from celebrities who try to diversify themselves, or from unique movies.
-Informality: We have over double the amount of words in the German dictionary, probably due to slang.