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August 22, 2005 Gallup Business and Industry ratings by Joseph Carroll

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's annual update on the images of various business and industry sectors in the country finds the restaurant industry, the computer industry, agriculture, and the grocery industry viewed most favorably by Americans. The oil and gas industry, typically the most negatively rated, saw its ratings decline even further this year as the prices of oil and gasoline reached new heights. Views of education, accounting, and agriculture are all up this year compared with 2004, while ratings of the oil and gas industry, the federal government, and the sports industry have declined and are now the lowest Gallup has measured for them. The image of the movie industry also took a hit this year.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=18037

Overall Rankings

Each year since 2001, Gallup has asked Americans to rate more than 20 business and industry sectors in the country on a five-point scale ranging from very positive to very negative. A net image score is calculated by subtracting the percentage saying "very negative" or "somewhat negative" from the percentage saying "very positive" or "somewhat positive." The middle rating of "neutral" is not factored into these scores.

The latest poll, conducted Aug. 8-11, finds that Americans have a net positive view (more people rating them positively than negatively) of 15 industries and a net negative view (more rating them negatively than positively) of 10.

( Read more... )

Westerners and Easterners see the world differently

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7882

“Americans break things down analytically, focusing on putting objects into categories and working out what rules they should obey,” he says.

By contrast, East Asians have a more holistic philosophy, looking at objects in relation to the whole. “Figuratively, Americans see things in black and white, while East Asians see more shades of grey,” says Nisbett. “We wanted to devise an experiment to see if that translated to a literal difference in what they actually see.”

The researchers tracked the eye-movements of two groups of students while they looked at photographs. One group contained American-born graduates of European descent and the other was comprised of Chinese-born graduate students who came to the US after their undergraduate degrees.

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a longreaching conclusion from a very small experiment. as kitya says, japanese never fail to mention that Japan is very crowded. i would add, especially in subway at 8pm.

good night

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad.