rebecca soble

Some things absorbed from the internet.  I’m a serious political news addict at this point – I predict withdrawal systems will start Nov 6 (I’m 7 hours ahead of east coast news here, and probably won’t sleep next Tuesday night)…

1.  An opinion post from Slate.com discussing the difference between a President’s need for cool-headed thinking and judgment and a fighter pilot’s need for bravery and skill, and how the latter doesn’t necessarily qualify one for the former.  It includes a really interesting abbreviated historical look at how JFK made his decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Worth a read!

2.  Check out these photos of Obama taken by Callie Shell.  They are mostly from the primary campaigns but are very touching and give more depth to Obama’s image.  The one of him with the mother of a solider killed in Iraq brought tears to my eyes.

3. Taking advantage of the building election excitement, I’ve been discussing the topic in some of my English lessons — not just Obama/McCain bio and policy differences but also the US Presidential Election process, our Electoral College system being the only of its kind in the world, I’ve found most students are fascinated by it and eagerly discuss the pros/cons etc.  There’s a very clear video from www.commoncraft.com called “Electing a US President in Plain English” (also available here with subtitles, great for weaker students, and there’s even a transcript here).

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PS.  It occurred to me the other day after hearing the phrase “working across the aisle” for the umpteenth time that perhaps we might have more bipartisanship in the US Senate if in fact they de-segregated themselves.  Why do the Democrats and Republicans feel the need to sit apart in the Senate Chambers?  Wouldn’t there be more cross-party discussion (or at least opportunity for it) if they all intermingled?    From Wikipedia:

One hundred desks are arranged in the Chamber in a semicircular pattern and are divided by a wide central aisle. By tradition, Democrats sit on the right and Republicans to the left of the center aisle as viewed from the presiding officer’s chair. Each senator chooses a desk on the basis of seniority within his party.

During a conversation with now-famous Joe the Plumber, Obama made the following statement:

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

I’ve heard a lot of huffing and puffing lately about this statement, including McCain picking up on it during the debate/campaign trail and spinning it around to mean Obama is pushing for some underhanded socialist takeover of our country.

But I see it 180° differently, I think it would be a GOOD THING to spread the wealth around a bit.  Currently our country has huge differentials (in wealth, assets, power, income) between the wealthy and the rest of us (middle class, working poor, economically distressed) and I see absolutely no problem with trying to even it out a bit.  (Check out this page for some good visuals and explanations – but there are lots of others too, search the web for “wealth distribution” or “income distribution” and decide for yourself.)

My guess is that there are a lot more of us struggling folks out there who agree that our country can’t be purely market-driven trickle-down (a policy which clearly — to those of us who are seeing it from close up anyway — has left the bottom folks struggling more than before) and will vote Obama into office.  This election is a chance for the voice of the common people to be heard by the millions over the voices of greedy free-market capitalists.  Go vote!

(I sent in my absentee ballot on Monday – go Eric Massa!

Here is a link to my recent trip pics of Mardin, Midyat, and Diyarbakır on Flickr.  Emrah and I spent just four short days wandering in that area – still a lot of the East of Turkey that I would like to see, but yavaş yavaş…   Here’s one pic to whet your curiosity to see the rest – yes, I’m chatting with a donkey, or at least trying to.  It isn’t being very sociable.

Wordle is a new web tool that lets you take text and make a word cloud image out of it, with the most common words larger and bolder than the less common words.  Within the framework of information architecture, this is a great technique for visualizing and thus more easily absorbing the essence of a text.  Plus it’s really nifty looking.  I tried it out with my own blog’s RSS feed, but it must only pull the X most recent posts because it definitely weighted more recently used words (eg Ramadan) over other words that are used more often but more widely dispersed (eg knit)  Also, even though it allows for eliminating common words in several languages (for English: the, and, a, etc) it doesn’t seem to allow for combining words with the same root (knit/knitting, elected/election) for a clearer visual.   Here is a wordle I created based on the second presidential debate:

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/236414/Second_Presidential_Debate

I did a bit of editing on the transcript to remove some common words that were throwing off the results, including names (Brokaw, McCain, Obama, Sen (a common abbreviation for Senator), and some other common words that are just used in spoken English (going, get, got, know).  I could have also removed “think” and “make”, and perhaps would have come up with a more descriptive result, but I liked them there.  I don’t pretend this is scientific in the slightest.

In personal updates, I just came back from a short trip around Western Turkey, stopping in Troy, Bergama, and the Galipoli peninsula.  Here are some pics.  Next week Emrah and I are going to Dıyarbakır and Mardın, in Eastern Turkey, I’m really looking forward to that.  It’s a good time to go – not too hot, not too cold.

Troy has a lot of layers – civilizations have lived in this location since around 2000 BC.

This is the memorial at Abide (on the southern point of the Galipoli peninsula) that the Turks erected to honor their soldiers lost in the Galipoli battles of WWI.

A cute marina in Kılıtbahir, with an old Ottoman wall and gate in the background.

Roman Empire ruins from the Acropolis, up on the top of a big hill 5km from Bergama.

Typical carpet store, Bergama Turkey.

Ruins from the Asclepion, 2km outside Bergama.

Closeup of a column in the Bergama Archaeology Museum.