We have a lot of suspicion of robots in the West. But if you look cross-culturally, that isn't true. In Japan, in their science fiction, robots are seen as good. They have Astro Boy, this character they've fallen in love with and he's fundamentally g...
Being a pop star is something I don't think I'm very good at. I'm worried it's making me too paranoid, because all of a sudden, life has become this constant assessment. When you put something out there and people get to hear it, then those people re...
As a governor, I've signed virtually every kind of pro-life legislation that we can sign under existing federal law, none of which have been harsh or punitive, but I think they've been important to really point out a pro-life culture in Arkansas. Tha...
If creators of Christian culture hope to produce work that will bear good fruit, we must draw our life from the true source - our living Savior. He is real. He is present. But all too often we reduce him to an abstraction, giving him intellectual ass...
If you read a lot of Chinese literature, there has always been very strong women figures - warriors, swordswomen - who defended honor and loyalty with the men. So, it's not new to our culture - it's always been very much a part of it. It's good that ...
Because revenge is a very known feeling in American culture, there's a certain element of an eye for an eye. There's the saying, 'Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.' When you wish for revenge, and you think you've gotten it, what happens...
I think there are universal principles that we should want to understand, but that are not necessarily good for us. We could recognise universal propensities which current cultures can't fully eradicate, which we would want to eradicate if we could. ...
'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences -...
Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency t...
My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a...
Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them. Parenting can pose unique challenges for introverted parents, who fear ...
I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which wa...
We must teach our people the greatness of China's historical culture. In our educational program we must stress Chinese history and geography so that all may know and appreciate China's civilization of five thousand years and the far-flung boundaries...
Between France and Senegal there's a history. There's a language that we both speak. There's a culture that we share and to which both of our peoples have contributed. But beyond our history, beyond our language, beyond the links that have united us ...
'Upstream Color' in particular, it's got to infect culture at some level in order to have a life of its own. Then it'll be judged, and it'll either live or it won't by its own merit, and history will decide whether it's relevant however long into the...
Cultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine j...
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Ju...
It's easy to see why dog rescue is a mushrooming culture. Turning a troubled person's life around is difficult, but rescuers with commitment and time and a few dollars can radically alter the fate of a dog. And there are millions of dogs - nearly 10 ...
Part of me wanted to disappear into a cave in India, and I did end up going on retreats there, but, don't ask me why, I always felt very strongly that the point for me was to find a way to live a truly spiritual life in the modern day world and be ab...
Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accum...
On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it's easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there. When they smile - right, you've seen people stop - all of a s...
