AMPONTAN

Japan from the inside out

一期一会

日本人が考えていることの一割も外国に伝わっていない。
ー　渡辺恒雄　（CSIS)
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In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"

In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, noticing in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.

Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS

All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke

Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann

We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan

Are you for civilization or barbarism, life or death, wealth or envy? Are you an exponent of excellence and accomplishment or of a leveling creed of troglodytic frenzy and hatred?
- George Gilder

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.
- Plutarch

One Great Cause...has persisted more or less intact throughout the past decades in the Leftist mentality: the loathing of democratic countries. Allegiances changed, but if there was something enduring in Leftist politics, it was this: in any conflict between a tyrannical and democratic country, the tyrants were right and democracy wrong.
- Leszek Kolakowski

You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra

All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009 by William Sakovich

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Links of Interest

The positive impact of McDonald’s on East Asia

Posted by ampontan on Sunday, May 11, 2008

DON BOUDREAUX at the site Cafe Hayek presents this post quoting a paper by Adrian E. Tschoegl describing the positive impact of McDonald’s restaurants in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, and The Philippines.

They didn’t cite the negative impact–terrible food–but it’s worth readng the points Mr. Tschoegel makes. (I had to laugh at the improvement cited for South Korea.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Business, finance and the economy, Food, Popular culture. Tagged: South Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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