Fu-man Shoe
As a small anecdote, I offer this experience from my visit to the UK.
I was in Portsmouth, England earlier this year, and in many ways it was
kind of eerie. For example, I was at a street corner, amongst a crowd of people waiting for the little man to turn green so they can cross the street.
There were no cars coming, but these people just stood there, waiting for
the streetlight to tell them they could cross. I thought that was just way
too creepy, so my friends and I looked both ways, just to make sure, and
then dashed across the street. No problem, right? We do that all the time
here in the US. Well, you should have seen the outright looks of horror on
some of the locals faces, and they way they began to glance around nervously, as if they expected the secret police to suddenly descend upon us or something. Just weird; totally, mindbendingly...weird to be among people who are *that* conditioned to accepting arbitrary and senseless authority.