Anyone who refers to David Brooks as "the insightful New York Times columnist" has lost me as a reader. I can't remember the last time he had an original, or even accurate, thought. http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-i... Here are two good books: * The Korean War: A History - Little known fact: The US took the wrong side in the Korean War by putting the former officers of the Japanese imperial…
> Question to Language Log: Is it correct that if you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing, while if you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim?
> Answer: In principle, yes. But first of all, it wasn't a representative sample of Americans, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at the University of Michigan; and second, it wasn't Chinese, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at Kyoto University in Japan; and third, it wasn't a fish tank, it was 10 20-second animated vignettes of underwater scenes; and fourth, the Americans didn't mention the "focal fish" more often than the Japanese, they mentioned them less often.
From: Reality v. Brooks - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19531