I'm back from Istanbul. The wedding was happy and functional, the party afterwards was splendid, full of smiles, raki, and wonderful ottoman music.

The city itself is paradoxical: Chaotic and restful, impossible and simple, polluted and pristine. If there is one unifying concept behind Istanbul, it would have to be "negotiation" - apt for a city of traders. A few of my pictures of Istanbul are available here. Pictures from the wedding itself and the following days will follow.

Tomorrow I am off to Istanbul to witness the wedding of my good friend Morgan to his Turkish sweetheart, Nesteren. The wedding will be on Saturday somewhere in this neighborhood of Istanbul. I will bring back some good photos for you.

More news on high-tech shirts. This one can be "ironed" while you wear it with a blow-dryer and, when it gets warm, it rolls up its own sleeves.

Among the tidbits in the recently passed Foreign Aid Bill: $498 in total aid for each resident of Israel and a lot less for other countries whose needs are actually recognized internationally. Meanwhile various sanctions are approved against Palestine and aid to Peru is being withheld until we investigate the plane that was shot down last April.

20% of American wives are of the jazz or "can-opener type."
15% are of the nagging type.
20% are of the drudge type.
15% are of the "baby doll" type.
30% are of the home-maker or ideal type.

This, coming from a woman, indicating that 70% of American married women, or nearly 17,000,000 wives, are of a kind that is below an admirable standard, is certainly frank and a bit devastating.

This statistic, attributed to a former president of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs, is included in Chapter 9, Types and Classifications of Women Consumers of the book Selling Mrs. Consumer, 1929, by Mrs. Christine Frederick, America's foremost expert on Household Engineering.

Robot Wisdom delivers a timely link to this summary of what's wrong with the IMF as world government. The harsh part is the extent to which you and I are complicit in massive injustices. I feel like the "debt relief" bandwagon is probably the right one to push.

And if you doubt that this is really the way the IMF works, look at what they're requiring of Argentina and Turkey, and the debacle of privatization in countless other countries who have been forced to sell off their only assets to Western corporations. Bolivia's water system is probably a good example.

Before I fall into Timothy McVeigh's trap of referring to Thomas Jefferson for all things egalitarian and democratic, I should share with you this quote I found on interact:

Neither Spain nor Britain should be models of the German expansion, but the Nordics of North America, who had ruthlessly pushed aside an inferior race to win for themselves soil and territory for the future.

- Adolf Hitler

As promised, some discoveries from recent travels. The artists name is Willem van de Velde the Elder. He sat in a little boat and sketched a huge naval battle and then went home and drew the whole thing in minute detail with a reed pen on a huge canvas. The canvas now hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and is very nearly worth a trip. Here's a high-res scan that does it no justice whatsoever.

If you would like for the Navy to pick up your electric bill, first you should make sure that it exceeds your budget, and then make sure that you are, in fact, the vice president.

(found via Pigs and Fishes

This morning, after a full English breakfast, I walked from the Priory station in Dover down to the Hoverport where I caught a shuttle bus to the Superseacat Hovercraft. After an hour I disembarked in Calais and was transported by another shuttle to the passenger terminal. There I boarded a bus to Oostende station where I was able to catch a train to Leuven station. From the adjacent bus station. I took the number 8 bus to the end of Kapucijnenvoer and walked to my studio. A full day.