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From: c...@aol.com (Coyu)
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
Date: 12 Dec 2002 14:42:37 GMT
References: <3DF89C23.60602@hachigamenet.ne.jp>
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Subject: Re: 10 most important Inventions between now & 2100
Message-ID: <20021212094237.00976.00000007@mb-fk.aol.com>

Mike Ralls wrote:

>Here in Japan clothes driers are pretty damn rare and not very 
>effective.  In such a dense environment that strikes me as rather odd, 
>but so does the lack of central heating in a bitterly cold group of 
>islands, so who am I to say?

On the other hand, Japan adopted the microwave oven much more
quickly than the US, and frankly comes up with more (and more bizarre)
product lines of home appliances than either the US or Europe.

And Japan still lags the rest of the First World in terms of gender
equality by a number of measures. Women earn 64% of men's earnings,
for instance, compared to 70% in Canada, 76% in the US, 80% in
Finland, 86% in Australia, and 90% in that sexist backwater, France.
(Based on weekly earnings, btw.)