CULTURAL PREFERENCES: Check out the Yahoo robots slideshow and wonder why the Japanese are the only ones building humanoid robots in the year 2002. Our American robots tend to be oversized radio-controlled cars that fight each other on television --an idea stolen from British robots, I think. But they're not consumer goods, or even luxury consumer goods as the Japanese robots seem to be. And --being radio-controlled cars-- they don't do much in the way of self-motivation, which, rudimentarily, the Japanese ASIMOs and whatnot appear to have. I guess the American love of cyberspace makes it more likely that we run our simulated lifeforms on computer screens and not with crude matter. Or else the Japanese love of conspicuous consumption creates new and cooler toys for the public.