random observations after returning from turkey

tomatoes just taste better in turkey. there is plenty of vegetarian food in turkey, but a lot of it is along the lines of cheese and bread, e.g. cheese on bread, cheese between two layers of bread, cheese in a deep-fried pastry with dill or parsley. menemem (tomatoes meet scrambled eggs) and just stir-friend veggies were a bit more exciting. there is also gelatinous ice cream. i kept stealing catherine's.

turkey is very pretty. there are lots of mountains and different kinds of trees and cute little farming towns.

the economy in turkey is just bizarre. the effects of the low cost of labor are very obvious. people lurk around bus stations trying to get a commission on a pension or bus. nobody can make change. bus attendants serve drinks and spray hand cleanser on people. sometimes people will tell you a bus doesn't go to your hotel or that your hotel is full or that a bus goes straight to a town that it doesn't go to, just to make you choose them. there are many, many bus lines and the bus stations feel like airports. the longest bus we took was overnight, and the heat was stuck on for 2 hours and a baby next to us was crying. the busses don't have bathrooms but stop every few hours at elaborate rest stops. shops are open very late in turkey. everybody wears suits.

in some ways, it's nice that turkey is less letigious that than the US. the standard tour of capaddocia is pretty physically involved.

in the spice market, there was a dessert called turkish viagra. the sign said, "you make love 5 times in the night."

the jfk airport has terrible food options in terminal 1. istanbul and milan airports don't seem to understand that some fliers are interested in shopping for non-luxury goods. flying out at 5:30 and waiting for a connection for 5 hours later in the trip sucks.

coke is moderately pricey in turkey. why is coke cheaper than water only in the US?

it turns out i do get sunburned. and have inopportune fevers.

touristy mosques are a pleasant departure from touristy churches.

european tourists wear skimpy bathing suits.

it's hard to find women in Turkey. the streets of towns were filled with men hawking wares or playing some sort of tile game in parlors with no women in sight. creepy.

"harem" really just means private. it's the name of the town, and of a part of a home. the way to say thank you is te-shi-kut ed-er-em. that's a lot of syllables. compare with danke, gracias, thanks, merci. odd. the g with the funny symbol on it is silent but makes the preceding vowel longer.

the turkish tea cups are very cute.

oh, and, lots of people thought i was turkish apparently since i have dark skin. confused, i guess, by my speaking english, they asked "where are you from?" if i said america, they were confused (they assume all americans are white?) and asked where i was really from. one guy wondered if i just had a bad sunburn.

pictures TK.

In Turkey!

I,m at an Internet cafe ın Pammukaleö Turkeyö where the keyboard ıs a bıt screwyç Rather than tryıng to fıght ıtö I,ll just let you decıpher thıs cryptıc blog postç Thıs country ıs gorgeous * Iill have more to say about ıt later when Iim not payıng by the mınuteç Great mountaıns and beachesç And yummy foodç Lots of tomatoes and cucumbersç And cheeseç Also a lot of people tryıng to rıp us offö thoughç Makes you hope the dıe*hard lıbertarıans never have theır way ın Amerıcaç

New country, please?

"45 percent of Americans saying they believed little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers" (actual study). sigh.

While I'm waiting for Eclipse to restart (again, sigh)...

...I figured I'd tell my dear readers about the fun night I had last night. Catherine really wanted to see this movie called After Innocence at the TriBeCa Film Festival. She started waiting in line about an hour before the movie was supposed to start, but just before we got to the front of the line, we were told there were no tickets left! Alas! Woe! But a kind old woman in the line had told us that sometimes they say that and then change their mind, so we hung out for a bit. Lo and behold, some guy came up and gave us 2 free tickets. Wow. This totally makes up for the free circus tickets I wasn't in town to use. Not only was the movie really moving, but the director and producer and all of the exonerees and Phil Donahue and the Innocence Project people were all in the audience and did a Q&A afterward. And then we rode back on the free double-decker American Express shuttle, which was cold and assailed by tree branches but otherwise entertaining.

One of the funniest parts of the evening was hearing Barry Scheck rail again Florida, which in the movie is shown to spend 3 years trying to keep an innocent man in jail on technicalities and is now apparently regressing. It's very depressing that these people receive no compensation or assistance and don't even have their records expunged. The chart of causes of wrongful convictions is pretty fascinating.

Shoe removal

So the TSA had a sign at the airport saying they would respond to comments promptly, so I decided to test it out. I was impressed by their promptness, but less impressed by their clarity.

My message (April 7):

One of the most frustrating things (apart from long security lines) about flying these days is the inconsistency of the rules. Some airports tell me to take my sneakers off, some don't, and both yell at you when you do the wrong thing. Some says it's becuase of the potential for metal in my shoes, some don't. It's all very confusing.

Just today, flying out of PDX, I was going to keep my shoes on. The woman at the gate said, "You can take off your shoes if you'd like." I'd rather not go through the trouble. It's hard enough to put on my jacket and belt and putting away my laptop and grabbing my bags without slowing down the line - why take off my shoes if I know they won't set off the metal detector? But it turns out this isn't a suggestion. After I give her a quizzical look and start walking, she says I should take my shoes off and it isn't because of the possibility of there being metal in my shoe. So I take one shoe off, but the guy manning the metal detector says I can leave them on.

Great! A voice of reason. But I go through the metal detector and then he pulls me aside for no reason (I was not flagged, and I had not set off the metal detector) and starts going me over with the wand. As far as I can tell, he decided I was suspicious because I didn't want to take my shoes off. That's just stupid.

And of course this is just one of the many annoying and bizarre incidents I've had in my travels since the TSA took over. The least you could do is make the rules absolutely crystal clear across all airports, post clear signage, teach your employees to be less obnoxious, and provide chairs and such for people to undress and dress as your whims demand.

Frustrated and not feeling much safer for the hassle,
Kushal Dave

Their message (April 9):

Thank you for your email message.

TSA screening personnel are required to screen ALL footwear to ensure that no prohibited items are hidden inside. You are NOT required to remove your footwear prior to the walk-through metal detector; however, screening personnel may recommend removal based on SEVERAL criteria.

Screeners are required to encourage removal of footwear that may contain metal as well as many other types of footwear that DO NOT contain metal. Even if the metal detector does not alarm when you walk through it, you may still be directed to additional screening and asked to remove your footwear due to other criteria that screeners are trained to observe.

Footwear that is less likely to require additional screening includes:

· "Beach" flip flops
· Sandals
· Thin-soled athletic shoes

Footwear that is likely to require additional screening includes:

· Work boots
· Platform shoes and platform flip flops
· Any shoe or boot containing metal

Tip: Since thorough screening often includes X-Ray inspection of your footwear, wearing footwear that is easily removable will help speed you through the process.

TSA has developed standard screening practices for all of our Nation's airports, and passengers can expect essentially the same procedures. While the procedures are the same everywhere, the interpretation of those procedures results in some slight variations from airport to airport - situation to situation.

We work hard to achieve consistency in the security training process. We inspect screening operations at airports and continue to monitor the number and nature of complaints we receive from the traveling public to track trends and spot areas of concern that may require special attention. This ongoing process will enable us to ensure prompt, corrective action whenever we determine that security screening policies need modification or specific employees are the subject of repeated complaints.

TSA Contact Center

How do people use the Bible?

I've been looking at the Bible a bit as part of this little toy project I'm doing, and I ran across this line about Cush (pretty close to a common bastardization of my name), who begat Nimrod. Nimrod, it turns out, was the builder of the Tower of Babel in his career prior to being a Green Day album.

I made an offhand remark about how the Tower of Babel was used by the religious right as justification for squashing science and knowledge in areas like stem cell research, thus prolonging human suffering in the process. Catherine decided I was a condescending prick (which I often am), but on this particular point I'm still not convinced. In particular, Catherine, ever the well-studied philosophical relativist, argues that the Bible is a philosophical source like any other, say Plato, and that people who quote it are citing parables as analogies, finding eloquent statements of their own views, and finding views that have stood the test of time. She thinks the Bible has first principles no less indefensible than, say, utilitarianism, and that even arguing that my liberal views permit greater freedom by not trying to repress the behavior of others (something Lisa was recently discussing on her xanga and which I tried to convince Eric of recently) still relies on arbitrary principles. All this may be true, but I guess the real issue is the authority of the Bible. If the Bible is just plain wrong in places, then there is no real reason to believe any particular portion of the Bible unless there is specific reasoning backing it up. Unfortunately, the justification of any given idea may derive from God, of whom we have no existence proof and to whom, therefore, it is hard to ascribe any authority. Plus God is also the source of some of the wrong (slavery, subjugation of women, homosexuality) portions of the Bible. A lot of people, from what I've seen, quote the Bible not because it states something well, but because they think there is inherent authority in any precept of the Bible, even if no substantive justification is provided therein. I feel like somebody must have articulated my argument more clearly than me, but I'm way too lazy to find it.

Still loving the free WiFi

Wow, free WiFi at the airport? No sales tax? Free/cheap public transit largely run on the honor system? Lots of bookstores and coffee shops? Is Portland run by communists!?!?!?

The rest of CHI turned out to be pretty impressive. I saw many more things I liked than last time. Especially just basic interaction techniques and UI ideas for things like mousing and scrolling and zooming and focusing. I'm going to have go back over everything I saw and make sense of it. Patrick Baudisch was responsible for a lot of the things that caught my eye. Damn he's prolific.

A few other links of note:

• Andrew's thesis on online dating
  
• IBM accessibility checker
  
• Prefuse visualization toolkit (finally makes sense to me!)
  
• paper on political division of blogosphere
  
• conversation workshop wiki (includes my position paper!)
  

Sadly I missed the popular Edible User Interface and Social Networking in Fur talks. :-( But both the opening and closing sessions were very entertaining. Michel Waisvisz was really impressive, although sometimes his work verged on overly loud noise.

What else did I do? Went to Powell's. Ate lots of good and cheap food.

I'll miss you, Portland!