When a brick is not a brick

Sorry - no existential jokes here.

One of my favourite blogs is BAGnewsNotes - especially where a powerful image in the media is shown and then disected to find the story within. See the June 6th entry - Punching Up The Orange - it is a picture, from the NY Times of a masked Iraqi soldier posing for a picture in a house he raided. The analysis of the context of the picture is excellent - followed by a fascinating discussion which includes input from the photographer - read it here - and the following comments - one of the rare oportunies of real insite on the Interent - not to be missed.

Anyway - a recent post interested me. The Bubble Bubble. The picture is of a brick falling from a recent cover of The Economist magazine. The BAG analysed the context spot on - there is a real fear of the housing price bubble bursting, but he misunderstood the picture completly and failed to recognise the brick was drawn as some in the UK sees a brick. And here is the problem - we are surrounded by images that we recognise at home but will not translate abroad yet the problems that we face are now truly global. The housing price bubble is a real fear for people in the UK and the US the underlying econimic reasons are the same - but as local people we do not have the common images to communicate this accross the world. The same is for the situation in Iraq. As an Iraqi living in the UK I see the problem from both sides - and the failure of US policy in Iraq will have truly global consequences. But how do I draw the picture of this falling brick so that others across the world can understand it?