Maybe you consider yourself knowledgeable about foreign affairs. Or count yourself a seasoned traveler with the passport stamps to prove it. Or perhaps you pride yourself on your cultural awareness.

Put your internationally attuned wits to the test with the interactive Traveler IQ Challenge to see how well you know your world geography. (Watch where you’re clicking — I inadvertently slipped and missed accurately locating Fenway Park by 735 kilometers.)

(Hat tip to Kottke.org.)

No sooner had the virtual ink dried on my post about a new ADR health care blog than I received a delightful message about a new dispute resolution podcast — this one with a distinctly international flavor.

International Dispute Negotiation, presented by the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), explores ways professionals from different countries and backgrounds approach dispute resolution. The podcast is intended to help listeners understand the risks of disputes and shed insight on optimal ways of accepting, mitigating, and managing those risks in the real world, whether through mediation, arbitration, or litigation that arises far from home.

International Dispute Negotiation is hosted by Michael McIlwrath, Senior Counsel, Litigation for GE Infrastructure - Oil & Gas. Michael is based at his company’s headquarters in Florence, Italy, and is a long-time member of the CPR Institute and its European Advisory Committee.

Michael tells me that the podcasts are mainly recorded when he’s on the road in different countries, the editing is done in Florence, and the feed is through CPR’s website in New York.

This podcast is the latest addition to the World Directory of ADR Blogs, which tracks and catalogues blogs covering dispute resolution and negotiation. If you publish or know of a blog that should be added to the World Directory, please let me know. It’s a commercial-free site, and there is no cost to be listed. The Directory has information on submitting your blog and some simple submission guidelines.

Congratulations, Michael, and best wishes on the launch of this superb audioblog.

This week’s Blawg Review, the review of the best in legal blogging hosted each week at a different blog, marks an important milestone: it is the first Blawg Review hosted in Ireland.

Host Daithí Mac Síthigh is a graduate student at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, and publishes the blog Lex Ferenda, where he explores his interests–and demonstrates his considerable knowledge– in cyberlaw, media, and intellectual property.

Curious about the meaning of the name of Daithí’s blog? The wise and anonymous editor of Blawg Review tells us that

Lex ferenda (also called de lege ferenda) is a Latin expression that means “what the law ought to be” (as opposed to lex lata, “the law as it exists”).

(But those of you who still remember your high school Latin or have your old law school dictionary handy probably knew that already.)

Click here to enjoy Blawg Review #128–and pay a visit to Dublin. (And don’t miss the link to Banned Book Week.)

(By the way, in two weeks, Geoff Sharp and I will be sharing the hosting honors to commemorate the week in which Conflict Resolution Day is observed. Hope to see you there.)

Every once in awhile, if we are fortunate, we meet an individual that intuition tells us is destined for great things.

My friend Ashok Panikkar is one of those individuals. Ashok, who left Boston and returned to his native Bangalore two years ago, founded Meta-Culture, Bangalore’s first center for dialogue and conflict transformation. When I interviewed Ashok in July 2005, he described his goals for Meta-Culture:

Meta-Culture is in the process of creating India’s first integrated conflict management group. The vision is to help people develop skills of discourse that are non-adversarial and built around the principles of dialogue rather than debate (even though there are situations where, for instance, Socratic debate can play a very useful part in helping to clarify ideas and challenge the mind). In doing so we can change the climate and culture of discourse so that individuals, organizations and societies can respond to differences with understanding and skill instead of doing so from anger, ignorance, fear, animosity or misplaced righteousness.Our mission is to engage in or promote activities that can help advance this vision. To this end we are engaged in consulting, research and education in the areas of ADR, especially mediation; facilitation; coaching; design of conflict and dispute management systems; and consensus building. Right now our focus is to establish Meta-Culture as a sustainable consulting practice. Very soon we will be setting up a separate division that will service the NGO and governmental sectors.

Unsurprisingly, Meta-Culture today is thriving, keeping Ashok and his staff busy. One of its projects, Meta-Culture Dialogics, a non-profit trust, recently attracted the attention of India media.

The purpose of this project has been to promote dialogue among Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist groups to discuss matters of importance over the course of 10 sessions. These sessions were not designed to get people “holding hands and singing Kumbaya” in the hopes of simply sweeping differences under the rug, as Ashok told me in a recent phone call.

According to Ashok, who was interviewed by The Hindu, “We are not into preaching peace, tolerance and harmony. Instead, we provide a platform for communities to talk about what is bothering them the most about the other community” and to ask each other the hard questions to give issues the healthy airing that honest dialogue can produce.

You can read more about this “Inter-faith dialogue for conflict resolution” as reported in an online edition of The Hindu.

In an excellent article that frames culture as “the software of the mind”, attorneys Robert de By and George Mastoris explain “How to Avoid a Culture Clash in Business Mediations“.

(Via the Stark County Law Library Blog.)

For many of us in the 21st century, the map of our business and social networks has radically changed. Once local or regional, those networks have become global, thanks to digital technology, which has transformed the geography of our professional and personal lives.

With these changes come challenges: what can we do to prepare ourselves to communicate effectively with our international contacts? How can we develop cultural awareness in a global age? From Pamela Slim at Escape from Cubicle Nation (along with comments from her readers) comes invaluable advice on “How not to be a cultural knucklehead in a global business world“.

(Now if only someone out there can help me communicate with my British husband.)

(Thanks to Golden Practices for the link.)

I have written before of the power of online games as a medium for building social awareness and raising consciousness (”War games: digital technology provides medium for educating and influencing” and “USC students develop virtual game to bring real-world attention to Darfur crisis“).

According to this story reported on the blog Boing Boing, the Spanish organization, Mensajeros de la Paz (Messengers for Peace), in an effort to raise world awareness of the plight of abused and abandoned children, has created an online presence in the virtual world of Second Life in the form of a homeless teenager. A video clip is available at YouTube.

Geographic literacy is critical to our ability to understand the world we inhabit. Those who enjoyed last week’s post on the Upside Down Map which depicts the world from a whole new perspective will enjoy challenging yourselves with a game that tests your knowledge of world geography.

How geographically literate are you?

One of the talents that a mediator offers is the ability to help people see their world — and the people and problems in it — in wholly different ways.

I was therefore delighted to discover in the Boston Public Library’s online map collection a map that does exactly that–invites people to see the world anew.

For centuries now traditional maps have offered a Eurocentric view, depicting the world with the northern hemisphere on top. This map, however, literally and figuratively turns convention on its head.

To explore similar cartographic creations, also pay a visit to the The Upsidedown Map Page.

Anyone seeking to develop their cultural awareness–and to avoid embarrassing gaffes while traveling abroad–will want to read this comprehensive list of faux pas around the world.

(Via Kottke.org Remaindered Links.)

One of my favorite weekly features in the local newspaper, the Boston Globe, appears each Sunday. “The Globalist Quiz” tests readers’ knowledge of the world around them.

The Globalist Quiz comes courtesy The Globalist, a web site dedicated to increasing understanding of world politics, culture, and economics by bringing to its visitors a wealth of information, resources, and regular features, including a Global Diary, a Globalist Factsheet, and of course the Globalist Quiz. A great way to start thinking globally.

If you’ve like to explore other web sites that increase global awareness, visit “New world view order: web site promotes ‘culturosity’” and “Acting globally: the importance of intercultural awareness for the international business traveler“.

The Federation of American Scientists has created a Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator to bring home to Americans the devastating effects of a nuclear blast. Select your nearest U.S. city from the dropdown menu, choose the weapon yield (kilotons or megatons), and designate the delivery method–automobile or aircraft–to reveal in a chilling and deeply disturbing way the area of impact and the degree of destruction.

A quietly compelling case for nonproliferation if there ever was one.

(Thanks to Collision Detection.)

Regardless of one’s political views or on which side one stands in the terrible conflicts that have riven the Middle East, many of us are horrified and saddened by the death and destruction that have engulfed that part of the world.

Some have turned to the Internet to chart the geographic scale of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, or to convey the reality of death toll figures along the Israeli-Lebanese border and in Iraq.

These are tragic events that unfold before us. Just when it seems that achieving peace is impossible, particularly between groups with a lengthy history of mutual hostility, hope arrives in the form of one remarkable community that has succeeded in transcending conflict.

A unique village in Israel bears two names, in Hebrew Neve Shalom and in Arabic Wahat al-Salam. In English the name means “Oasis of Peace“. Oasis of Peace is inhabited by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who together “work for peace, equality and understanding between the two peoples”, according to its web site, exchanging culture, raising and educating their children, and co-governing.

More information about this remarkable community can be found on Neve Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam’s page of frequently asked questions.

Grasping the devastating impact of violent conflict can be difficult, particularly for Americans who have not experienced ongoing full-out war on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. It is hard as well to imagine the land where missiles and mortar fly or to understand the distances between the cities and towns named in this morning’s headlines.

One blogger, Andy Carvin, determined to map out the geography of conflict between Israel and Lebanon and to measure it against the contours of more familiar terrains, has created a short video which overlaps a map of the Middle East with a map of New England to understand better the scale of the distances between the regions. Andy observes,

For Americans who are used to countries being thousands of miles wide, it’s quite astonishing to realize what a compact area of land is affected by the fighting. For example, the distance between Haifa and Beirut isn’t much difference than the distance between Providence, Rhode Island and Lowell, Massachusetts.

You can view Andy’s video at his blog.

Technorati tag: conflict resolution

One of the best of the new conflict resolution blogs that have emerged this year is ICT for Peacebuilding, a blog based in Sri Lanka “exploring the use of technology for conflict transformation”.

Dispute resolution professionals eager to gain a glimpse into the future of the conflict resolution movement will want to follow this cutting-edge blog, particularly those seeking a global perspective.

Its author, Sanjana Hattotuwa, shares with his readers news of an extraordinary project: dropping knowledge, an international initiative for social change using the medium of the web to bring people around the globe together for what may be the world’s largest public conversation about important issues. From the dropping knowledge overview:

dropping knowledge is a global initiative to turn apathy into activity. By hosting an open conversation on the most pressing issues of our times, we will foster a worldwide exchange of viewpoints, ideas and people-powered solutions. However knowledge is defined, by dropping it freely to others, we all gain wisdom…

dropping knowledge is a way of asking and answering questions that respects other viewpoints and leads to a meaningful exchange. When you ask in order to understand, when you answer in order to share, you are already practicing dropping knowledge.

The dropping knowledge project includes a Table of Free Voices scheduled on September 9, 2006, in Berlin, for what will be a gathering of “scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, artists and activists from around the world…, renowned for their lasting creative, social or humanistic contribution” who will respond to 100 questions from the global public.

You can post your own question for these experts to answer or find other ways to support this large-scale public conversation project by visiting the dropping knowledge web site.