What do you want, what do I think, how do we feel, where are we going? So many blind spots leave me wondering how we survive, crawling around in the dark. Talk it out, know thyself, reflect before thinking, think before doing, but don’t spend all your time thinking lest you forget to get to the doing. Seek not your expectations in others, but know that you’re only satisfying those of a few. We talk. We play with ideas as if slowly giving and taking parts of ourselves in a slow construction of understanding, maybe if the other fits our image we trust, maybe they disappoint us and we hate them for what we despise in ourselves. Why relate except to seek happiness, maybe only to find a mirror in the other in order to make sense of parts of ourselves. And when that mirror disagrees with our mind who’s to blame? A friend, a relation, a person, a bond, fragile, tenable. Which version is the truth, the one you built up, or the one you see once it’s all fallen down? Like busy termites we eat and tear at the constructions of misperception, misunderstanding, to reconcile what is with what we see, and hope for balance. Am I what you see, do you see what I am? What candle do we hold to this darkness of oblivion but communication? But where do we learn to communicate but by accident, by consequence of living in community? Norms, identity, expectation, perception, labels, values, these all come from the “common” experience which is entirely unique for every individual. But what if our common experience is entirely uncommon and unshared? This confusion, this stumbling of minds falling over each other. Can we not still nurture the flame and fight back the darkness together?

BBC: IRA ‘Has Destroyed All its Arms’
USA Today: Spain Convicts 24 for Terrorism, involvement in 9/11
SwissInfo: Jailing of Jazeera reporter in Spain draws ire
NY Times: Bush May Tap Oil Reserves Mulls Naming Reconstruction Czar
Independent: how multinational drug companies took liberties with African lives
IHT: Leadership battle enters 2nd week in Germany
SMH: Japan drafts plan for attack by China
Taipei Times: British troops to begin Iraq pullout next May: report
HRW: New Accounts of Torture by U.S. Troops

Thinking about the dynamics of communication technology and what it does to communication lately… it’s odd, I use my computer to trade information with the world in so many ways, e-mail, news-mail, news pages, msn, and now blogging. But I wonder how these new kinds of communication have changed the way I relate to people. I have friends that I talk to more because they’re on msn and we just happen to “run into” each other online, and I have people whose emails I’ve had for years but we rarely even say hello.
I think a part of the general confusion, or disconnect I feel has to do with how I’m actually communicating with people now. When we talk in person we can read so much: posture, facial expression, tone, tempo, inflection; and we have a unique rhythm of turn-taking that makes for dialogue. But in these new media all of those are thrown into confusion. If my friend is online and she doesn’t say hi is she ignoring me? If I’m in a hurry and can’t talk will you think I don’t want to talk?
We’ll never know, unelss we talk about the way we talk. But then it gets into this oddly uncomfortable meta-dialogue on talking about talking that seems to diminish the overall experience. But it’s exactly that kind of discussion that helps us understand why people do the things they do. Without communicating about communicating how will we ever know what’s being said?
The problem, then, is one of whether or not there are social norms, or rules, about the way certain kinds of converstion happen in certain media. But it’s all so new that these norms are all just being developed in the haphazard way that any new social convention is built. So we stumble about wondering if someone’s “brb” (be right back) on an instant message is a brush-off or a bathroom break, or a sick grandmother on the phone. And what if your mood changes from one conversation to another, not because of what you think of the person, but because your mood, or health, or level of distraction changed.
These are all things that seem somehow, at least for the time being, easier to understand in the physical presence of someone, but then again we have learning to do there, too. So how do we work these new tools into our pre-existing social structure?
-joel

CBC: Hurricane Rita is now Category 5 – US Gulf Coast Braces for Another Beating
Reuters: Oil tops $68 a Barel
BBC: EU Drops Bid to Refer Iran to Security Council
Swissinfo: Ukraine Parliament Backs New PM
IRIN: Sudanese President Swears in New Government of National Unity

Globe & Mail: Plan for Urban Reserve Divides Winnipeggers

The former Canada Packers site is being eyed for potential development as Winnipeg’s first urban reserve. The site would be used for first nations businesses which would be exempted from paying taxes due to their status. Though supported by Mayor Sam Katz, the deal leaves many winnipeggers, particularly local businesses, unsettled.

BBC: Indonesia fears bird flu epidemic

Indonesia could soon face a bird flu epidemic, the health minister has warned, after the death of a young girl suspected of having the disease. Source unclear, leading fear of an epidemic.

STL Today: U.S. deaths in Iraq top 1,900

Every day I do a crawl of the various news sites you see linked on this page. Whenever I have the time to compile it I’ll offer up a quick summary of some of the major headlines and important stories of the day.

NY Times: US-N.Korea Deal on Arms Leaves Key Points Open

Questions remain as to whether a tenable settlement has been reached, as parties to the negotiations disagree over some of the agreement’s clauses. Notably: whether or not North Korea will be allowed to keeps its peaceful nuclear power plants.

Boston Globe: As another storm looms, New Orleans halts reentry

Concerned over Hurricane Rita, about to make landfall, Mayor reverses stance on repopulation of New Orleans.

IHT: After a Nearly Tied Election, Germany’s Big Parties Meet to Discuss Coalition

AFP: Iran warns it could quit nuclear treaty, issues oil threat

Using its oil production as leverage, Iran has warned that it will withdraw from the Nuclear NPT if its case is brought before the Security Council. Iran claim its nuclear program is purely peaceful.

SwissInfo: Afghans count votes, al Qaeda rejects poll "farce"
IRIN: Voter Turnout Low, but good for a post-conflict situation

SwissInfo: World has slim chance to stop flu pandemic

SARS was easy, this could kill millions.

Kofi Annan calls UN Summit “A Glass Half Full”

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in an op-ed piece, tries to save what remains of the UN Summit’s watered-down outcome document, claiming it to be “a remarkable expression of world unity.”

Have a good one,
-joel

(A Little Hop, A Growing Wagon… But Where’s the Band?)
They say all things have a beginning, but I’d like to think that this blog has grown out of many other things. The fact that you’re reading it, however, marks a milestone. I’ve finally hopped onto this wobbly, growing bandwagon, as if I’m another weary traveller carving his name into the splinters of a tree. Steve inspired me with this thought:
“I have thoughts, and images that float around in my head with no home […] They belong to the world that created them.” (http://fuzzyscorner.blogspot.com/). In this vein I’ve decided to return my unfinished thoughts to the world to see what it does with them. And that’s where you might play a part. I think one of the most underused parts of the internet is the ability to communicate in a variety of ways. We’ve only recently started to realize the potential inherent in all this technology. And with communication comes something lost in the era of newspapers and television: DIALOGUE. Information and ideas should be shared, however unpolished and unfinished they might be, so that we may develop a richer understanding of the world around us. So I want you to comment on the things you will find here, I want you to tell me about things you think are important, and I want you to help me turn this internal dialogue inside out. Criticize me, challenge me, and maybe on occasion praise me. You can even go ahead and use me, but I’d be happiest of all if you’d just tell me, honestly, what you’re thinking… and I’ll keep trying to do the same.
-joel