An ongoing discussion we have at our house, is the American vs Japanese attitude in regards to technology. The Japanese have a particulary voluble relationship to robots -  59 metre mecha angels of soulless kickass vs pneumatic strawberry packing robots for the tedious household chore of moving sushi from the to-go box onto the dinner plate.  Part of the love/hate, I'm sure, is that Japan is the foremost leader of robot technology in the world and hyping the industry is surely a civic duty, yet Japan also boasts an indivisible labor union that unites all workers against non-human job outsourcing.  On the other hand, America tends to vilify aliens over monsters, outerspace over inner ghosts, Mexicans over machines.  What that means, I have no idea.  But while the Japanese unkink cars that provide aerial views of rush hour traffic and mechanize kindergarten teacher efficiency factors, American hobbyists exercise their brain muscle masterminding mini mass destruction sumo warriors and nuclear waste cleanup modules.  Meanwhile, orders for robot arms are down in Detroit, and the housewife gizmo sector in Japan fares poorly.  All this! Tying vaguely into...

 "... Tuna was a subject where the national pride at the small country's technological strides was tempered with reactionary concerns about tradition and natural simplicity.  Nothing short of full human cloning could trigger as devastating a crisis of Japanese conscience about the value of science as the sight of a bluefin tuna artificially birthed in a lab." -- The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (Sasha Issenberg)