On television, on the glossy pages of magazines, on the billboards we speed past, images fill our visual landscape.

But what effect do the images that appear in the media have on us? How do they influence our judgments, our economic choices, and our assumptions about ourselves and each other? To what extent do they hold up a mirror to cultural values about gender, race, authority, sex, or violence? How do we decode their messages to separate what’s false from what’s not? And how can we immunize ourselves against their effects?

These are questions that media critics, sociologists, psychologists, journalists, teachers, parents, and others have struggled with. But it is up to all of us to confront and examine these images for ourselves. One blog, Sociological Images: Seeing Is Believing, provides images for discussion in sociology and other classes — or for anyone interested in coming face to face with the images that bombard us daily. Visitors can browse the categories of images this blog has collected, which include violence, education, gender, race/ethnicity, and many more. A word of caution — not all images are workplace safe and some may give offense.

Seeing Is Believing offers a fascinating — and at times disturbing — foray into the world of media images. Presented with minimal text, these images at once provoke and invite us to decipher their messages about society and ourselves.

Far be it from me, a mediator, to encourage conflict, but this sounds like good, clean, wacky fun.

On Saturday, March 22, people will be gathering in cities all around the world (including my own, Boston, in Copley Square) to take part in a pillow fight in honor of International Pillow Fight Day. Instructions and rules of engagement are available for starting your own public pillow fight.

What are the benefits? According to the Pillow Fight Day web site,

people will make new friends, re-unite with old ones, meet future lovers, and revel in the blissful one-ness of a free, fun, social gathering.

And who knows? If this a sign of things to come, perhaps in the not-too-distant future there’ll be an International Food Fight Day. In anticipation, you can order yourself one of these spring-loaded catapult spoons.

(Photo credit: Gabriella Fabbri.)

(Hat tip to the Atlantic Review.)

Straight from the folks who got me wondering what would be on your mediator’s playlist comes another question suitable for a Friday: “Besides ‘Animal House’, What Pop Culture References Inspire You?”

I’d like to ask the same thing of mediators and negotiators: what pop culture references inspire you?

The haggling scene from “Life of Brian”?

The conflict resolution episode of “The Office”?

“The Wedding Crashers”? (Please, God, not that.)

To get your creative juices flowing, there are a couple of lists, one here and another here with some ideas.

Thanks to the always vigilant Geoff Sharp, I’ve just added a new mediation blog to my World Directory of ADR Blogs project, this one from across the pond.

The Mediation Times is the creation of Amanda Bucklow, a full-time commercial mediator for the past 12 years based in the U.K. Here’s what Amanda has to say about Mediation Times:

Why a blog and not a web site? There are a number of good mediation web sites but web sites don’t have quite the same level of interaction as a blog. I also like the idea of the mediation community making this blog what it can be. It fits the mediation model so much better! A weblog or blog is much more sophisticated and flexible. It offers a much higher level of interaction and it suits my preferred method of communicating: conversation. It is also very simple…

I also wanted to design something that could be international. You will find language translators powered by Google on this site for French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Greek. I will add more and if people post in those languages you will be able to translate into English using the same tools.

This is a blog that really encourages full participation in the conversation — and I like the idea of Google translators so that language is never a barrier to joining in. Not so different from what we mediators try to do with our clients, I’d say.

I hope you’ll stop by Mediation Times and join me and Geoff in wishing Amanda a warm welcome to the ADR blogosphere.