Weakness
Weakness in electronics, auto and gas station sales dragged down overall retail sales last month, but excluding
those three categories, retailers enjoyed healthy increases across the board, according to government figures
released Wednesday. Moreover, December sales numbers were also revised higher.
Japanese tea ceremony
The Japanese tea ceremony is a ritual tour influenced by Buddhism in which green tea is prepared and served
to a small group of guests in a peaceful setting. The ceremony can take as long as four hours and there are
many traditional gestures that both the server and the guest must perform.
21st century
The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalization – a ‘flattening’ of the world. The explosion of advanced technologies
now means that suddenly knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, leveling the playing field as never before.
Orientalists
Orientalists, like many other nineteenth-century thinkers, conceive of humanity either in large collective terms
or in abstract generalities. Orientalists are neither interested in nor capable of discussing individuals; instead,
artificial entities predominate. Similarly, the age-old distinction between “Europe” and “Asia” or
“Occident” and “Orient” herds beneath very wide labels every possible variety of human plurality, reducing
it in the process to one or two terminal collective realities.
Fast food
Hundreds of millions of people buy fast food every day without giving it much thought, unaware of the subtle
and not so subtle ramifications of their purchases. They just grasp a hamburger and unwrap it and tossed the wrap into the bin. The whole experience is transitory and soon forgotten.