We've had such a bad week over the past few days that I've dropped the ball on the blog, but I'm making a renewed effort. I still don't have much time to update this area with original material, so here's a story I poached from the news. Very interesting, but I will soon be back to form providing original posts about stuff like scooters, balcony gardening, small group discussion thoughts, etc. But for now...

An old map was discovered filed under the wrong date in the British national archives. The map turned out to be a map created by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and presented to the British government as a plan for peace following WWI. After the war, the European colonial powers divided up the Middle East into geo-political units according to their own desires for natural resources (oil and minerals) and not really according to what made sense in terms of existing tribal, religious, and ethnic relationships. The western world has been embroiled in conflict ever after, trying to perserve the influence they wanted from the beginning, recreate a Jewish homeland, and cope with widespread instability in the region. Lawrence's map offered an alternative to the haphazard European arrangement and poses many historical what-ifs. Perhaps the most challenging question though--one that the map does not evoke--is what if the west had treated the people of the mid-east as equal and deserving partners in shaping the future of their own region?

Click here for the article and links to more info on Lawrence.