Another illusion shattered. I wonder if the implication of the previous sentence is true: do we start life with a defined set of illusions (Santa Claus, tooth fairy, etc.) and gradually they're shattered one by one so that by the end of life we face reality with no illusions? Or is the truth that we create new illusions as we lose the old ( housing prices can go up continuously,etc.0 so that I'm now seeing the world through a whole new set of illusions?
Anyhow, the NYTimes has an obit of Barry Becher, in which it reveals the shattering truth: the ginsu knife was made in Ohio. Not only that, "ginsu" has no meaning in Japanese.
A tangent: this is interesting. I remember the first things I ever saw which were made in Japan: a couple cheap mock fighter planes with friction motors, which may not be the right word but when you pushed them along a flat surface, they made an engine like noise. This was probably 1949 or so, the time when "Japanese" meant "cheap" and "junk", at least if it didn't mean something more hateful. So from that point to 1978 the image and associations with the word changed completely. Still a bit exotic, but completely believable that Japan could export great knives, which could do miracles.
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