A shattered bird, a wounded cheetah, incautious flame and porcelain, these are the things I have touched. Ravens, bleached hair, blended peppers, young kangaroos I have not. Reminders, crying faces behind sad masks observe the bondage of politeness, ways to keep a distance when we decide we can't meet each other's needs. Laughter at the self in old quick-take, quick-dry photographs, they have the podium to air their views, say that these things shouldn't be logical, are not efficient, and other charges they pour onto reality as if it were a street ready to be paved. Every car swerves to hit its past selves and cuts a swathe of others in flesh. "Forgive my cruelty, it comes from loyalty to those I love, not who I am"... and we reply that "you're responsible nontheless", as if they haven't already told us so. Salt in old wounds, like Poland taunts Germany... and the clock is still winding down.

Google maps has some new toys hooked up - street level maps are now visible (and slightly creepy), elevation maps are attached too. Integration between Google Earth and Google Maps is presumably a design goal. Amazon recently made what might be the first likely-to-make-it-big eBook reader -- the Kindle. This may be a success partly because they have relationships with enough publishing houses and partly because they have what looks like a good distribution system (cellphone-CDMA as the underlying transport). I expect Apple to respond to this in some way - as they're both the only two major companies that are pushing small-payments (maybe that'll become a stylish word like micropayments someday), they both are competing to become broad-scope information brokers (see Amazon's music store), and they're exploring non-computer-centric ways to handle the information age, they're set to become direct competitors in what's likely to be the next stage of the media/information markets.

Murakami's "Wild Sheep Chase": Just finished, again he captures the essential loneliness that's such a central, unwelcome theme in my life. It's quite a good book. I often spot other Murakami readers around, and wonder if they're part of that kinship. Just as Milan Kundera's book really resonates with some people...

Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis: possibly interesting if anything comes out of it. The success/failure of the Gaza experiment may be pertinent - as Hamas is opposed by virtually all players there, the Israeli pullback and aftermath may have to be viewed as a sign of a risk if further steps in that direction are made. Naturally, there are mirror-image statements made by certain people in both societies saying, almost word-for-word, "nobody has the right to give up an inch". It'd be interesting to get Hamas's Haniyya and Yesha Council's Rabbi Lior in the same place - words of "cleansing" the country of each other.. I'm sure they'd have a lot to talk about.

Um, and also it's awesome when journalists write tech stories where it's obvious they have no clue what they're talking about.