Reference no: EM133154701

1. The French claim to be a nation of rebels. In fact their heyday of revolution is over. Twenty-first century France rebels against change, not for it. What typically happens is that a French government decides to do something radical like, say enable companies to fire service-sector workers who assault their customers. The unions see this as the first step on the road to slavery and call a national strike. After a week of posturing the government backs down and waiters and sales clerks go back to insulting customers just as they have done since time immemorial.

-S. Clarke, "No Sex, Please, We're French," The New York Times, 23 March 2007

2. Hiroyuki Suzuki was formerly a member of the Sakaume gumi, an independent crime family in Japan known for its role in gambling. Mr. Suzuki's wife Mariko broke her kneecap, and when Mariko went to church the next Sunday, the minister put his hands on her broken knee and pronounced it healed. She walked away from church that day. Mr. Suzuki regarded her religion as a silly waste of time-but he was fascinated by the recovery of her knee. "In gambling," he said, "you use dice. Dice are made from bone. If God could heal her bone, I figured he could probably assist my dice and make me the best dice thrower in all of Japan." Mr. Suzuki's gambling skills did improve, enabling him to pay off his debts. He now says his allegiance is to Jesus.

-Stephanie Strom, "He Watched over His Rackets," The New York Times, 22 June 1999