Seen in a Tokyo supermarket:

Yummy for little tummies! Flatfish with vegetable puree!

Also on the shelf: bottles of sardines and chopped liver for babies. It’s a far cry from American carrots and sweet potatoes, although possibly a better start to healthier life-long dietary habits. (No, I didn’t buy any for my own little one.)

On the meaning of small messages, oft repeated:

Apple’s Mail, Blackberry OS and surely most other enterprise applications always put the “work” number preferentially at the top of the stack if you have multiple phone numbers for a contact. “Home” gets pushed down towards the bottom. The (reasonable) assumption is that if you have a work number for somebody, you probably do business with them, and are most likely seek the work number.

The subliminal message? Work matters more than home.

Goebbels (and Hitler) are both quoted as saying that you can get people to believe anything if you repeat it often enough. What is the impact of the constant reinforcement of the Work Over Home message? How does it affect our relationships at work and at home?