The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients come in for a visit.

Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.

The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.

The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.

Scientists have established huge numbers of links between particular diseases and snippets of DNA, but in the great majority of cases, this has not yet been translated into treatments that can help cure patients. These treatments will come - tomorrow, or the day after.