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!)

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.

1  a newly-finished project.  it was so fun, I want to start another one right now.

I’ve heard news of a yarn store in Göztepe that might actually have some nice natural fibers (as opposed to most Turkish yarn stores, don’t get me started) so I’m thinking to wander by there this week.  The weather has cooled off enough to make random outside wandering not seem unbearable any longer.

2 I’ve been keeping an uneasy eye on US presidential election polls.  The numbers are disagreeably close, which then naturally leads to the intolerably painful consideration of a Republican win in November.  I think back to the New Hampshire Democratic primaries where Obama was polled to win rather strongly but ended up losing to Hillary Clinton.  The Washington Post assures us that wasn’t related to latent racism, but really the reason doesn’t matter, what does matter is who is the ultimate winner.  Since I’m living in a foreign country, I really don’t want to be further embarrassed by my country if Obama is not elected.  I saw a  poll on the net with a great interactive global map graphic which showed worldwide people support Obama by huge numbers (for example 70% Obama/20% McCain in Germany) so why is it so close at home?  I’ve temporarily lost that link but when I find it I’ll update this post.  BTW, 63 days until Election Day.

3 Simple food.  It may be related to the stomach bug I picked up this week, but I’m into simple foods these days. three super-easy recipes for you:

Yogurt-Wheat soup:  Ingredients - plain yogurt, water, salt, dried oregano, whole wheat grains (see pic below).  Cook the wheat like oatmeal (approx 2:1 water to wheat) until the grains are soft but still pleasantly chewy.  Let it cool.  Dollop some plain yogurt into a bowl, add in water until it’s a nice degree of soupy, not too thin, not too thick.  Sprinkle in salt liberally (basically you are making ayran).  Spoon in some of the cooled wheat grains and top with oregano.  Yum!

Cold carrot salad:  Ingredients - carrots, olive oil, sugar.  Grate the carrots and saute them in olive oil until soft and tasty.  Sprinkle a small amount of sugar over the carrots and stir in.  Serve cold.

Cheesy scrambled eggs:  Ingredients - eggs, feta cheese, vegetable oil.  Heat the vegetable oil (small amount) in a frying pan, crumble up the cheese and stir it into the pan, letting it melt into the oil.  Crack the eggs into the pan and stir until lightly scrambled.   Eat with sliced tomatoes (preferably a yummy heirloom variety).

It’s spring here, how about where you are?

People here in Istanbul like to ask me how their city compares to New York City, and in some ways they’re very similar: both the primary cultural center of their country, where the intellectuals, artists, and people with alternative lifestyles choose to live, both the most politically liberal and ethnographically diverse city in their country. In terms of geography, Istanbul is a huge sprawling city, which people might say is also true for NYC if you include the outer boroughs and the bedroom communities, but is definitely not true for the island-bound, vertically-growing borough of Manhattan. But the primary geographical feature of Istanbul is the Bosphorus, the strait that delineates the border between Europe and Asia, and splits the city in two. The Bosphorus is the reason for Istanbul’s existence, is a huge part of the beauty of this city, and is, transportationally speaking, a permanent challenge for Istanbullus needing to traverse from one side to the other. I personally choose to ride a ferry instead of a bus whenever possible. Here’s some pictures I took yesterday when Emrah and I went to Eminönü to buy an aquarium!

This pic is taken from a ferry that looks very much like the one in the picture. Seagulls follow the boats and passengers will throw scraps of bread in the air to them, watching the birds dive and swoop to catch the pieces. Yesterday was a windy day so there were some noticeable waves and I got a little damp sitting outside, but what’s the fun in sitting inside on a ferry?

Another pic from the ferry, showing the Asian side of the Bosphorus bridge in the distance with one of the typical ocean-transport ships that follow the Black Sea to Mediterranean route through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

This picture shows part of the European side of Istanbul in the background and in the foreground is some massive equipment that is currently digging a tunnel across the Bosphorus. One year ago it was a lot closer to Europe, now it’s well on its way to Asia. I like this picture because it shows Istanbul as the industrious city that it truly is. Many photos of Istanbul show just the historical parts (which are of course magnificent and definitely deserving of photos) and the business/industrial side gets overlooked. This is the real Istanbul.

Before we got on the ferry, we had to cross through Kadıköy where many of the ferries to Europe leave from (they also go from Bostancı, which is closer to my house, but the Sunday schedule from there is much more limited). Yesterday, the traffic was horrible (on Sunday!) so we got off the minibus and walked. After a little distance, we realized why the traffic was so bad: a major street had been blocked off for a demonstration. There were police everywhere and people were taking advantage of the opportunity to walk in the streets rather than on the narrow sidewalks. Down by the flag you can see the rally was put on by the TKP (Türkiye Komünist Partisi) but the main theme was people protesting against the current ruling party (AKP) and their pro-Islamic leanings. According to this news article, the slogan of the gathering was “No to headscarves, no to the AKP!”

Before we went aquarium shopping, we paused for a typical outdoor snack: I’m having cheese toast and fresh-squeezed OJ (kaşarlı tost ve sıkma portakal suyu), Emrah is having cheese and spicy meat toast with tea (karaşık sucuklu tost ve çay), and, unfortunately, his ubiquitous cigarette. Emrah told me yesterday that he wantedhis own web site, so I made him one. I have no idea why he wants it, but he seemed happy with the result. Go visit!

Finally, the newest residents of my apartment:

March 27, 2008 update: All the fish have died. I’m really sad about this and the living room feels empty when I walk in, but I don’t think I’ll get any more fish, I can’t figure out what killed them all (one by one) and it’s too hard to try to communicate about it with fish sellers.