You're aware of the perhaps apocryphal Wal Mart stampede over the 30 dollar DVD.

They put them into a brain scan machine this is apocryphal by the way, but I don't care and they had them watch a horror movie, and then they had them describe their feelings toward their wives.

ITHACA, NEW YORK An apocryphal story sometimes heard among physicists concerns a toast, proposed by his Cambridge University colleagues, to J. J. Thomson s discovery of the electron in 1897 To the electron may it never be of use to anyone!

Newton had given the world a theory of gravity in the late 1600s that works well, describes the motion of planets, the motion of the moon and so forth, the motion of apocryphal of apples falling from trees, hitting people on the head.

In the Muslim world, there is a significant, important flow of pornography. According to one story, possibly apocryphal, in the 1970 s, the Islamic insurgency in Iran was initially planned using material delivered through porn related channels because the mosques were so tightly controlled.

It is reported that one Tokyo department store marked the time of year for shoppers by hanging a huge crucified Father Christmas in its entrance hall. Apocryphal or not, the story gives us some idea of the cultural confusion that this midwinter religious feast can cause.

Italy has long had a large Communist Party, and the left may be in power again but there is no gut antagonism to the freedoms that capitalism encourages. Poland is another country in which individual initiative flourishes to the point that the apocryphal Polish plumber came to epitomize the threats posed by globalization in France.

MADRID US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when asked about American support for the notorious Nicaraguan despot Anastasio Somoza, purportedly replied, He may be a son of a bitch, but he s our son of a bitch. Whether or not the quip is apocryphal, it sums up a longstanding Western approach to much of the world and one that underpinned US foreign policy throughout the Cold War.