We love them all. Yes, we do.

It's a truism that travel--especially world travel--throws into rather stark relief the fact that one of a culture's most important tasks is to equip each of its members with a constellation of deeply held and yet ultimately contingent prejudices.

There's no accounting for taste. At least, not for that taste.

Yes, it's true. The Aussies--and the Swedes, too--just do things differently. All kinds of things. Quite differently. And they don't seem to think anything of it.

Probably the best place to find telling cultural differences is on television, where all the weirdest assumptions and most scatterbrained entertainment ideas go to die. The only thing that makes any kind of TV programming seem normal is that we're used to it. Take one look at TV programming produced under the auspices of a different scheme of presuppositions and you'll see what I mean. As an example, just stop for a moment and really think about the presuppositions which must underlie this TV spot from Japan.

I don't know about you, but this spot lies way off the track my thoughts usually travel.

After TV, though, the next best place to find cultural cleavages (all puns intended) is in advertising. Which things people want--and often more interestingly, how advertisers try to get people to want them--reveals a great deal about a culture's underlying presuppositions about human nature and the way the world works. It also sometimes startles the unsuspecting visitor.

OK, you've got my attention, but I still don't know what you want me to buy.