Understanding the Ottomans

When our new next-door neighbor turned out to be from Turkey, I decided I needed to learn something about Ottoman history and culture.  This book from our library was an excellent read, clear and concise and lavishly illustrated.  It covers history and geography, religion, science and medicine, literature, music, art and architecture, food, and more.  Here are some notes I jotted down while reading:

The Ottoman empire was perhaps the most cosmopolitan in the world; its 30 million subjects were from seventy ethnic groups, speaking twelve major languages. (30)

"In Aleppo in the mid-1700s, women constituted up to one-third of all commercial property buyers and investors... property laws in the Ottoman Empire were more favourable to women than in Western Europe." (49)

England became an ally of the Ottomans in the 16th century after the pope excommunicated the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.  She initiated trade relations with the Islamic world, sending exotic gifts, including clockworks.  They returned perfumes and silks.  England then exported tin and lead, which they stripped from Catholic churches and monasteries.  The Ottomans used the lead and tin for weaponry against Catholic Spain, which delighted the English. (53)

The Ottoman empire implemented a meritocracy rather than a hereditary aristocracy.  "Rustem Pasha [was] originally a Catholic Croat swineherd... he became Suleyman the Magnificent's longest-serving grand vizier and married Suleyman and Roxelana's only daughter, the Princess Mihrimah - then the richest woman in the world." (74)

"During the 1845-52 Irish Potato Famine... the Ottoman sultan declared that he was ready to send £10,000 to help Ireland's farmers.  Queen Victoria... asked that the sultan send no more than £1,000, since she herself had sent only £2,000.  He complied, to spare her embarrassment, but in secret also sent five ships laden with food." (79)

"Images of women in the Ottoman Empire have been distorted by Western fascination with the harem... In practice, however, only about 2 per cent of marriages in the empire were polygamous... usually involved the taking of only two wives... and was often used as a good way of looking after widows or orphans who would otherwise have no support and nowhere to live.  In most Christian European societies, the solution was usually the convent or the asylum for the elite, and the street for the rest." (88)

"... coexistence and compromise between different manifestations of religious belief and practice is one of the abiding themes of Ottoman history... Orhan's Christian wife... was allowed to remain a practising Christian while at the same time being given the power to endow Muslim religious establishments." (90-1)

"Christianity, as well as Islam, was a religion that originated east of Europe, and there is no reason why Islam could therefore not be considered a European religion in the same way as Christianity." (92)

"... in 1830 Sultan Mahmud II had declared: 'I distinguish among my subjects, Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church and Jews in the synagogu, but there is no difference among them in any other way.  My affection and sense of justice for all of them is strong and they are indeed my children.'" (99)

The most famous Ottoman admiral was Piri Reis, known now for his cartographic skillls, including his 1513 map - one of the oldest in the world to depict the Americas. (111)

Ottoman court music was played by several instruments "according to open-ended modal systems" and was never written down.  "This absence of notation encouraged improvisation and allowed a certain freedom in performance." (148)

The medical scholar Aksemseddin described microbe theory 200 years before van Leeuwenhoek: "It is incorrect to assume that diseases appear one by one in humans.  Disease infects by spreading from one person to another.  This infection occurs through seeds that are so small they cannot be seen but are alive." (170)

"The sultan's 'walled' tent palace was so large, according to the French traveller Antoine Galland, writing in 1673, that 600 camels were needed to carry the various parts." (259)

"The Turkish word kosk (our word "kiosk") is a natural extension of the tent culture, evolving gradually into a kind of garden pavilion.. [and tourist information booths]... The key piece of furniture in the Ottoman home was a padded upholstered seat or bench, without arms or a back, that in most Western languages is still known as an 'ottoman'." (261)

"The Seljuks are thought to have been responsible for the introduction of the tulip bulb into Anatolia from Central Asia, where the flowers grew wild... on the China-Kazakhstan border.  By the 15th century the flower was regarded as the symbol of the Ottomans.  It is still prominent in Turkish culture (stamps, coins, emblems, flags).  The word for tulip in both Persian and Turkish is lale, often used as a girl's name.  When written in Arabic script, lale has the same letters as 'Allah,' which is why the flower also became a holy symbol..." (266)

Open letter sent to President Biden by a coalition of young voters

Dear President Biden -

We are a diverse group of leaders, spanning race, class, and geography from youth organizations who mobilize our generations and build political power for young people. We mobilized the record youth turnout in 2020 that pushed your ticket over the finish line in key swing states. Many of us worked to provide the critical source of support for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections that prevented the Red Wave. We have been preparing to mobilize the youth vote again as you face your re-election. We are experts in youth voting behavior who have worked tirelessly across the years to generate Generation Z and Millennial enthusiasm for civic action under a variety of circumstances. We share your conviction that the 2024 election will be one of the most important in American history. We write to you to issue a very stark and unmistakable warning: you and your Administration’s stance on Gaza risks millions of young voters staying home or voting third party next year. We are pleading with you to use every tool available to you to broker a ceasefire, now, and to revive the peace process. 

As we write this, over 1,400 Israelis, 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and 100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed. We came of age during two decades of endless war that cost thousands of American lives and millions of lives around the world. We know that the longer you allow the siege of Gaza to continue, the greater the risk of this spiraling into a broader regional conflict, potentially pulling U.S. troops into combat or occupation. This would be both a moral and political disaster.

There is no way for a Democratic presidential nominee to win without significant youth voter enthusiasm and mobilization. Young people are a cornerstone of a winning Democratic coalition, and the vast majority of young people in this country are rightfully horrified by the atrocities committed with our tax dollars, with your support, and our nation’s military backing. We did not spend hours upon hours knocking doors and making calls to turn out the vote so that you could support indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and violations of international law. We fear that it will not be possible for those committed to turning out the youth vote this election to recruit the volunteers, organizers, staff, and donors needed to deliver the margins for Democratic victory down the ballot. Young people across the country are terrified, we are grieving, and we need to see the Biden administration stand up against all human rights violations.

The polls reflect what we are seeing in our communities and organizations over the last month:

*According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, young voters are deeply disturbed by your position on the war. Amongst voters under 35, 65% oppose “sending more military aid to Israel and only 22% approve of your handling of the Israel/Hamas war”. 

*The same poll found your favorability rating among voters under 35 has fallen to just 25%. While young people are particularly opposed to handing the Israeli military a blank check, 80% of Democrats and 66% of all likely voters support a ceasefire. 

*In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin the number of Muslim and Arab voters exceeds the margins you won by; your pollster Lake Research Partners found that support for your administration has “cratered among Muslim, Arab, and young Democrats in Michigan”, a state you won by only 150,000 votes in 2020.  Now, just 61% of Michigan Democrats under 30 support your re-election, with 21% opting to vote third party. 

*A New York Times poll shows you trailing Trump in 5 out of the 6 critical swing states by an average of 48-44%, which is in huge part driven by the fact that you currently are favored by voters under 30 by only 1 percentage point. 

*You are “bleeding support” among young Black and Brown voters in particular, who powered your victories in the key swing states that delivered you the electoral college.

You cannot win this election by only telling our generation that you are the lesser of two evils. The position of your administration is badly out of step with young people and the positions of Democratic voters, who have been shown to support a ceasefire by supermajorities in multiple polls. This is already becoming an issue we are hearing about from thousands of young people across the country. We cannot explain your position to the people of our generation.

For the sake of Palestinians, Israelis, morality, humanity, your own political future, and American democracy itself: we urge you to do everything in your power to stop the current cycle of violence and move from the path of war towards the path of peace and justice. Call for a ceasefire and a safe return for all hostages. Stand up for humanity on the international stage. Do not continue to enable war crimes through word, deed, or dollars.

While we have not always agreed, we have always appreciated your administration’s willingness to listen to our voices and include our interests as a vital component of the coalition you represent. Doing so helped to make you President, deliver a Democratic trifecta in 2020, and prevent a Red Wave in the 2022 midterms. However, we believe you are failing to hear us on this issue, and we are deeply concerned about the potential consequences. The decisions you have made thus far surrounding Gaza have made it harder for us to convince our communities to organize and get out the vote in 2024. We urge you to reverse course as quickly as possible. No more innocent people should be killed. We deeply understand that America and the world cannot afford another four years of far-right leadership. However, that is the path you are risking. Stand on the right side of history. Your legacy hangs in the balance.

Signed,

Natalie Fall, March for Our Lives, Executive Director 

Victoria Hammett, GenZ for Change, Deputy Executive Director

Elise Joshi, GenZ for Change, Executive Director 

Aidan Kohn-Murphy, Gen Z for Change, Founder and Senior Advisor

Jack Petocz, GenZ for Change,  Mobilization Coordinator

Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement, Former Executive Director

Geoff Simpson, Justice Democrats, Campaigns Director

Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement, Executive Director

United We Dream Action 

Evan Weber, Sunrise Movement, Former Political Director

Michele Weindling, Sunrise Movement, Political Director

Google Doc source (boldface added by me). Discussion at NBC News.  Comments closed.

Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky"

YouTube link.

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it – you've got to go sometime.

— Gerry O'Driscoll, Abbey Road Studios janitorial "browncoat"

I've been listening to this all week, wondering what the faint spoken words were.  The above sentiment is expressed at 0:38 and "I never said I was frightened of dying" (by Patricia 'Puddie' Watts, wife of road manager Peter Watts) at 3:33.

Fittingly, this "sky" song is the one that (coincidentally) plays during Dorothy's ride in the tornado in "The Dark Side of the Rainbow."

And, as I've always suspected, the sexual connotation of the vocals was intentional, as David Gilmour indicated in a Rolling Stone interview: "We wanted to put a girl on there, screaming orgasmically."

Reposted from 2013.  Most of the few regrets I have regarding my life are not about things I did, but about things I missed out on doing.  One of those regrets is that I never took the time to find and attend a Pink Floyd concert.  IIRC, my attitude when young was that it would be better to buy albums I could listen to many times rather than attend concerts once live.  In this case, I should have opted for the latter.

Just found the 1994 concert remastered:

I used to drive around with my windows down and this playing loudly in the car, enjoying the puzzled reactions of passers-by.

Unprecedented

A screencap from this evening's weekly weather forecast.  I've highlighted the historical seasonal norms for emphasis.  I spent most of my youth in Minnesota and the last 20 years in Wisconsin, and I cannot ever recall sustained warmth like this at the start of February.  All kinds of businesses and recreation are being devastated (snowmobiling, skiing, ice fishing, outdoor hockey, ice sculptures, winter festivals.  Some climate change skeptics are having to change their arguments from "not happening" to "nothing we can do about it."

Addendum:  Here's a graph of the ice covering Lake Superior (50-year-average blue vs. this year red).  (Other Great Lakes at the link are similar). Holy cow.

Addendum: a multifactorial (temps+snow) "winter season severity index" comparing this year to historic norms (for Minnesota):

If you are a snowshoe hare who turned white for the winter, you're in a bunch of trouble in a brown landscape.

Addendum:  A tornado was reported in Wisconsin on February 8, 2024 for the first time in recorded weather history.  Temperatures were in the 50s.

Yet another addendum (might as well keep adding these to the old post rather than start new ones):

Ocean surface heat continues to astonish seasoned observers and raises the prospect of intense storms later in the year. The hurricane specialist Michael Lowry tweeted that sea surface temperatures across the Atlantic main development region, where most of the US category 3 or stronger hurricanes form, “are as warm today in mid-February as they typically are in middle July. Incredible.”

More updates March 2024: end-of-season numbers and El Nino relationship: 

Nine consecutive record-setting months:

Revisiting the second season of Fargo

I was so impressed by this recent fifth season of Fargo that I decided to binge-watch season 2, which was previously my favorite.  I spent three delightful evenings enjoying the remarkable characters, the various twists and turns of the plot, and literally laughing-out-loud at some points.  Later this year I may redo 1&3, but not 4.

Introducing the sidebar

Not long ago I realized that not all readers of TYWKIWDBI know that there is a "sidebar" on the right of the main column of posts.  Apparently some prefer to access this blog only via the small screen of a phone, and are thus unaware of other resources located beyond the phone's screen.  The top part of the sidebar has "meet and greet" stuff (thumbnail description, search box, bio, list of followers, feed links etc).  Below that...

... is an expandable archive extending back to 2007 - useful on those not infrequent days when I don't have time to post new material and you'd like to browse some TYWKIWDBI posts without scrolling backwards forever from the front page.  I recently spent part of an everning revisiting 2015 and found several items to repost.  And below that...

... is the much more useful "Categories" index.  That's where I refer newbies who are visiting for the first time.  I suggest they pick out a topic of interest to browse, rather than trying to go back sequentially through pages that are individually a mish-mash of multiple topics (most new visitors reflexly click on "humor.")  The topic list is twice as long as the embed above.

Below that is material that is generally useless - a list of my sources for material, which is way outdated and full of dead links.  I should either revise or delete it.

New information about lepidoptera

New for me, at least - and quite interesting.  The commentary by Ze Frank is occasionally hard to hear, so clicking subtitles might be helpful.  Embedded below are a couple screencaps.  You can fast-forward through the one-minute advertisement at 7:14.  Via Neatorama.

Don't eat sprinkles if they are moving

Photo credit Molly Rutten, cropped for size from the original in a gallery at Bored Panda.

"Handsaw" and "Heronsaw" explained

One of yesterday's NYT crossword clues was "the handsaw in Hamlet's 'I know a hawk from a handsaw.'" (5 letters)  I had to work around sideways to discover the answer as "heron" - which prompted a visit to some online sources.

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2:  "I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand saw."

Modern footnotes offer "A hand saw is very different from a hawk. Even in his disturbed emotional state, Hamlet can see the obvious, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are agents of the king and queen."  So I accepted that 50 years ago, assuming that a handsaw was a carpentry tool.

But the crossword clue forced me to dive more deeply: "handsaw" is the obsolete (Shakespearean) version of "heronsaw," a term applied to young herons, because it comes from Middle English heronsewe, from Old French haironcel, diminutive of heiron.

You learn something every day.  

Jim Croce's "Operator" (1972)

"Operator, well could you help me place this call? See, the number on the matchbook is old and faded.  She's living in L. A. with my best old ex-friend Ray, a guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated.

[Refrain] Isn't that the way they say it goes? But let’s forget all that. And give me the number if you can find it, so I can call just to tell them I’m fine, and to show I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well. I only wish my words could just convince myself that it just wasn't real - but that's not the way it feels.

Operator, oh, could you help me place this call? ’Cause I can’t read the number that you just gave me. There’s something in my eyes, you know it happens every time I think about the love that I thought would save me.   [Refrain]

Operator, well, let's forget about this call. There's no one there I really wanted to talk to. Thank you for your time - Oh, you've been so much more than kind - You can keep the dime."   [Refrain]

This backstory from a website about Jim Croce and his work:

"I got the idea for writing "Operator" by standing outside of the PX waiting to use one of the outdoor phones. There wasn't a phone booth; it was just stuck up on the side of the building and there were about 200 guys in each line waiting to make a phone call back home to see if their "Dear John" letter was true, and with their raincoat over their heads covering the telephone and everything, and it really seemed that so many people were going through the same experience, going through the same kind of change, and to see this happen especially on something like the telephone and talking to a long-distance operator-this kinda registered."

(reposted from 2013).  Reposted again from 2015 because I heard a familiar song in the background of Fargo season 2 about a young man agonizing on the phone, which I wanted to post, but I looked up "Operator" and then realized it was the wrong tune.  But I'll repost it anyway because it's a good one, and it's been on the back pages of the blog for almost ten years.

St. Paul (Minnesota) city council: all women, all under age 40 - updated

"Last fall, all seven city council seats were up for grabs. On 7 November, after a campaign season packed with candidates, Minnesota’s capital city elected its new city council – comprised entirely of women. Last week marked the group’s inauguration.

Noecker’s fellow council members – Nelsie Yang, Cheniqua Johnson, Hwa Jeong Kim, Saura Jost, Anika Bowie and Mitra Jalali – are all women of color and, like her, progressive in their politics. All council members are also below the age of 40.

In 2019, Nevada became the first state with a majority-women state legislature. Today, women make up 62% of the Nevada state legislature – the largest percentage of any state.

But experts have noted that no major city has achieved the feat of electing an all-woman city council like St Paul.

Notably, St Paul has a population of roughly 300,000 people, the second most populous city in the state after fellow Twin city, Minneapolis. Around 46% identify as a race other than white, according to the US census."

More at The Guardian.  The City Council president offered these comments from the podium at the inauguration of the council:

“If you read my Twitter replies lately, the responses sure are something. They’re fighting for their lives in there,” Jalali said. “Let’s just say a whole lot of people who are comfortable with majority male, majority white institutions for nearly 170 years of city history are suddenly sharply concerned about representation.”

“My thoughts and prayers are with them in this challenging time,” she added, the crowd erupting in cheers.

Worth mentioning: The City of Asheville, North Carolina, also has an all-female city council, making state history in 2020.

Reposted from just a week ago to make readers aware of the lengthly comment thread (50+) about the subject matter of this post.  I get quite a few compliments on TYWKIWDBI, most of which boil down to "nice blog", but the one that I remember and cherish the most is from a reader who said that TYWKIWDBI was the only blog they read where they enjoyed reading the comment threads, and specifically clicked on the comments.  I do review and curate all comments before they get posted, weeding out trash, spam, and trolls, but I try to leave in opposing viewpoints, which sometimes results in long and well-thought-out exchanges from readers who are both knowledgeable, opinionated, and... civilized.  There are certainly an abundance of topics in modern news cycles on which one is not going to change one's mind, but it is still useful to hear/read well-expressed differing viewpoints.

A surprise on the underside of dresser drawers

The owner was concerned when he discovered that the bottoms of the drawers appeared to be "not original."

Map of the periodical cicada broods

Coming to our neighborhood this summer.  Via Neatorama, where note is made of the coincidence of a 13-year brood and a 17-year brood this year.

Image credit USDA Forest Service.

The middle strip is NOT a gradient

I checked it myself by selecting a segment from the left of the strip and pasting it on to the right side of the strip.  It disappeared.  Found in the opticalillusions subreddit.

"Free" annual checkups are not actually free

More in an endless stream of horror stories about the bullshit American health care delivery system:

When Kristy Uddin, 49, went in for her annual mammogram in Washington state last year, she assumed she would not incur a bill because the test is one of the many preventive measures guaranteed to be free to patients under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The ACA’s provision made medical and economic sense, encouraging Americans to use screening tools that could nip medical problems in the bud and keep patients healthy.

So when a bill for $236 arrived, Uddin — an occupational therapist familiar with the health-care industry’s workings — complained to her insurer and the hospital. She even requested an independent review.

“I’m like, ‘Tell me why am I getting this bill?’ ” Uddin recalled in an interview. The unsatisfying explanation: The mammogram itself was covered, per the ACA’s rules, but the fee for the equipment and the facility was not...

Over the past several years, the medical industry has eroded the ACA’s guarantees, finding ways to bill patients in gray zones of the law. Patients going in for preventive care, expecting that it will be fully covered by insurance, are being blindsided by bills, big and small...

Peter Opaskar, 46, of Texas, went to his primary-care doctor this year for his preventive-care visit — as he’d done before, at no cost. This time, his insurer paid $130.81 for the visit, but he also received a perplexing bill for $111.81. Opaskar learned that he had incurred the additional charge because when his doctor asked if he had any health concerns, he mentioned that he was having digestive problems but had already made an appointment with his gastroenterologist. So, the office explained, his visit was billed as both a preventive physical and a consultation. “Next year,” Opasker said in an interview, if he’s asked about health concerns, “I’ll say ‘no,’ even if I have a gunshot wound.”