The US military have recently been issued with a handout entitled the ‘Iraq Visual Language Survival Guide’. In the event they wish to speak to civilians or other personnel when there’s no translator present, they simply point to the easy-to-understand pictograms on the card. So far, so good. There are numbers, identification pictures, weapons and so on. Voila. Effective and civilised communication. However, what do you suppose the unsuspecting Iraqi might make of pictograms like this?

Official translations are: “Please get down and permit us to search you for weapons.”
“Are the explosives hidden under the dead goat?”

Many more wonderful pictograms from the guide can be found here and here.

There was a report on the evening news tonight; an injured woman lay unconscious in a gutter, half lying out on the road down in south-east London. CCTV footage saw at least 12 cars go past, actually swerving to avoid her and not stopping to help. There are mixed comments on the BBC website, some in agreement that they wouldn’t stop because you never know what could happen, and some of outrage that no-one stopped to help the woman, and queries about what the world is coming to.
Nothing has changed - the world isn’t ‘coming to’ any point. It’s human nature to shy away from conflict or possible danger. 40 years ago, the same sort of thing occured in Queens, New York. A woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed by a man who left her to die. When she didn’t die immediately, she started screaming for help. Witnesses ignored her or moved away. The man returned and stabbed her again to shut her up, and ran away. More pleading for help. More ignorance from those in the area that could have helped her. So the man returned, and stabbed her a third time, finally killing her. It wasn’t until Kitty’s screams had stopped as she died that someone called the police.
So you see, terrible as it is, it’s nothing new. Would I have stopped? I’d like to say yes, but I don’t know if I would have, to be honest. Would you?

Lovely weekend down at my parent’s, celebrating (dubiously) being one step closer to 30. Checked for wrinkles and grey hairs in a half-hearted way, breathed a sigh of relief that there’s none yet. Went out for a meal on Saturday evening with all five siblings and parents - novelty for all eight of us to be together at one time! Relaxed, read one of the books I got as a present, and caught a sweaty train back home this evening. Back to reality tomorrow after a 3-day weekend. Got an interview on Thursday, fingers crossed on that one.