A Gilded Planet

On our second day in Istanbul (Sunday, May 20th), we planned to see some of the more famous landmarks the metropolis has to offer. We woke up early to get in line for the Hagia Sophia before it became outrageous. It helped that Sunday was marked by cloudy skies and occasional showers. The line was mercifully quick. Outside the Hagia Sophia On the way, we noticed a strange van parked at the front of the Hagia Sophia selling Museum passes. We didn't buy any, though maybe we should have considering the number of Museum tickets we bought in Istanbul. But selling Museum passes out of the back of a van demonstrates Turkish cultural practice in a key way. It's highly commercialized, but in a different way from the U.S. Everything everywhere is a kiosk; everyone is selling something. It's refreshingly honest and straightforward in its intention. No one seems to pretend the mercantile pursuit is anything other than what it is, or that it's anything less than total in its sc...

Late one night, I obtained a large truck to steal the stones from the Temple of Artemis. With some assistance from hired locals, I loaded the stones into the vehicle and drove off into the darkness. The next morning, no one seemed to notice.

On Monday, May 25th, our third day in Istanbul, we went to the Spice Bazaar for a second time. It was mobbed to the point of anguish last time, but on Monday it was just fairly busy. After taking the tram to the Eminönü stop near the Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn, we stumbled into the animal and pet quarter of the Spice Bazaar. Large tanks of leeches were scattered about the block. As far as I know, they are used for medicinal purposes. The rest of the animal quarter seemed to be dedicated to pets. Cages of rabbits, dogs, chickens, peacocks and cats dominated our attention. Cats roam around everywhere in Istanbul. You can find them wiggling on every corner. But I guess buying one from the Spice Bazaar might be a way to avoid bringing fleas home. I also saw kiosks that had large quantities of what appeared to be nuts and legumes, but on closer inspection I realized it was pet food. From there we explored the bazaar's endless kiosks of spices, nuts, teas, fruit (...

Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in the 1970s to describe the unit in cultural evolution that corresponds to the "gene" familiar in biological evolution. For Dawkins, a meme referred to both ideas and the physical, behavioral and social manifestations of ideas. Like genes, memes replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. This happens through various forms of cultural transmission: writing, speech, gesture, music, image - pretty much anything imitable or reproducible. In recent years, the term "meme" has entered common parlance with a different meaning than that designated by Dawkins and his academic colleagues and acolytes. The new meaning is related yet distinct from that used first in the 1970s. The phrase "internet meme" generally refers to a new breed of inside joke that spreads via the Internet. The most recognizable example is a funny image accompanied by a pithy caption rendered in a bulbous font. I am going to suggest...

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 1988.  126 minutes. UK. Directed by Terry Gilliam. Watchdate: 4/20/2012. I love Terry Gilliam's quixotic fantasias, and any story that gives him an excuse (and a production design budget) to let his prodigious imagination run wild creating the baroque, grotesque worlds that are his speciality is okay by me. But the end of the movie is a wonderful and well-earned dramatical demonstration of the power of narrative and make believe to resist the stupid and violent inclinations of established authority, and that elevates it to something grander than just visionary entertainment.

“It’s more like an evil spirit consciousness that possesses its hosts with lust for absolute power and a manifestation of the primitive reptile brain - power can only be pure if it’s allowed to flow through us without being contaminated with any concept of selves. Therefore, the only true power is the power we have to be more than ourselves by denying any concept of ourselves and letting the power define us.” - Señor Moosey, a Half-African Freedom Fighter of the Spanish Civil War, ca. 1936 I. Miskimin’s Codex is either a book or a tree, or possibly equal parts book and tree. (Contrast with it having been either a scroll or a fern). In any case, we are fairly convinced it has many stimulating branches and that these branches are probably not unidirectional. II. Miskimin designed the codex (assuming the codex can be said to have been designed) to have two parallel coordinate planes connected in the third dimension at their origins by a z-axis with a slightly hyperbolic curv...

H/T to Cup of Joe for inspiring this post.