Odun Bölerken – While Choping Wood

Today, at roughly 18:00 GMT -5, in the little hamlet of Muncie, Indiana, in the small 1/4 acre backyard of a pseudo middle-class family, two boys found some stuff.

I wanted to share some pictures (below) of the cool wasp larvae we found while splitting some wood which had been left to enbugafy for a winter or more. I have seen several large 2-3 cm long wasps flitting around the yard. I conducted an “internet search” on “Google” and found that there is a whole class of wasps, called “Wood Wasps” also known as “horntails.”

This second name is given to the wasp due to the “horn” or ovipositor organ which projects from ther abdomen. Like all wasps they use this ovipositor to deposit their eggs onto (or often into) their prey.

The life cyle works as follows: an adult wasp comes and lays eggs in wood such as logs or your house (Amerikalılar, evlerini ölü ağaçlardan inşa ediyorlar). Then when the eggs hatch an ant-like grub chews a tunnel into the wood, or your house. Some of these grubs get eaten by woodpeckers who, hearing their chewing sounds, come in, bore a bigger hole and pull out the tasty larvum/grub. Eventurally, the grubs who survive grow up, become adult wasps, have sex, and then the female finds new pieces of wood, or your house and lay eggs into it, thereby starting the cycle again.

Here is a chart I made to explain the lifecyle.

As you can see from the above chart, these wasps, are bad-news bears if your house has wood siding. If your house has brick siding, or is made of concrete like in most uncivilized countries, or is a cave (the Frech do this), then your house is impervious to the Wood Wasp, but subject to attack by earthquakes.

But you clicked for the shocking images of what we found inside the log. Here, without further ado, are images from our grub/wasp discovery adventure time!

The near complete wasp

Larvum

The whole the larva make

The chambers of larva past

Here is a picture of a hole in our house made by a woodpecker, likely a Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus). My brother tells me that the woodpecker would wake him every morning with his constant, tapping, rapping at the siding outdoors. His solution? Throwing books at the wall.

Tasty grubs were had, now we have a decorative hole in our house!

 

The long road is the goal

Perfection takes practice. In the analogical noun phrase “the road to perfection” we are asked to think of perfection as a goal, attained suddenly at the end of a process. The roads we take to get from A to B are processes seen as necessary wastes of time, required by the laws of the universe and the game-theoretical truths of human existence.

However if the roads are pretty enough, if they are interesting enough the methaphorical road itself becomes a enjoyable –not just a means to an end, but a component part of that end.

Today, as I sit here rather friendless in Istanbul, listening to music, drinking a surprisingly good wine I am enjoying a new hobby –rolling cigarettes.  I am not a smoker and I do not enjoy it. In my somewhat younger days being able to roll dried leaves into smokeable cigarettes would have come in handy. I wonder what use attaining this skill will be now.

But my goal is not future gains. The process of learning how to roll cigarettes is enjoyable and relaxing. No doubt, the slowness of rolling your own cigarettes contributes to the fun of smoking cigarettes –for those who find smoking this noxious weed fun. I am sure many forced by poverty into rolling their own leaves, continue to roll when good times come, because the cheap thrill of popping a factory cancer stick fails to hold a candle to the fulfillment of rolling your own.

For me, in these difficult times, rolling the cigarette, is the means and the end. While for most people who roll cigarettes this action is a means to an end- all be it a relaxing and Zen-like road, for me it is the end. That Zen state of learning to manipulate the muscles in my forearms and fingers to roll the perfect cigarette is the long road I want to walk down.
Just like as it is on a good and painful hike, the end point is not the goal, for me, tonight rolling cigarettes I will never smoke is the goal, because inhaling caustic smoke is no goal of mine. I take my poisons liquid!

A Weekend of Nature

This weekend was mostly spent communing with nature. Istanbul, a city that has been a city for thousands of years, now is a true concrete jungle with few parks and no quiet places. The few green places inside the city are cemeteries and the occasional trash-filled park. On Saturday, I went with a friend to pet feral dogs in a little visited Adile Sultan Kasrı which is not even featured on maps as a park. There I identified a number of plants which, like most of the plants on this planet, I did not know.

I guess some of my favorites include:

• Muscari Botroides
• Veronica sp.
• Euphorbia Helisconia
• Borago officinalis

 

One of the cool surprises of the day was seeing the wild form of Rocket (Roka) otherwise known as Eruca sativa! Like so many of the foods of Europe it also belongs to the cabbage family (just like canola, mustard, and brusselsprouts).

I took my friend to this park because many of the wild dogs who live there had puppies about a month ago. She, like any decent being, loves puppies.

The next day I went to Kuş Cenneti –a poorly kept little bird reserve on the south side of the sea of Marmara. This was my second visit. As right now birds are making their way north I saw a very different set of birds from the ones I saw three weeks ago. In total I saw 42 species of birds.

Highlights include:

• Common Moorhen
• Flamingo
• Spoonbil
• Black-tailed Gotwit
• Black-winged Stilt
• Lapwing
• Syrian Woodpecker
• Night Heron

I also got to see two species of turtle and one species of tortoise.

Walking back from the park to the highway, I saw the carcass of what was probably a Scops Owl. I suspect it was it by a car and later mauled by the three Kangal dogs that also harassed me as I walked by. After seeing the owl, I walked into the cemetery across the road. I thought it would be a good place to look for woodpeckers and possible sleeping owls. I didn’t hear any woodpeckers and so I decided to rest for a while. Cemeteries are great places to rest. I put my gear down by a nice shady tree and rolled up my coat to use as a cushion. As I looked down to clear the ground of pine cones, I saw a familiar shape: an owl pellet.

I didn’t get to see a living owl this trip – just the carcass of one and the balled up indigestible parts of the voles and mice that some owl, perhaps even the deceased one, ate.

Back in Bandırma, the town closest to Kuş Cenneti, I had some of the best tavuk şiş that I have ever had. The soup was good too. The veggie plate came with two pieces of Çiğ Köfte which was made very differently from what I am used, yet very delicious. It reminded me of Mercimek Köftesi as it had parsley in it and the bulgur was coarse. I also treated my waist-line to a portion of Kadayıf.

I took a long walk out the jetty into the Marmara and enjoyed watching the Yellow-legged Gulls having their supper.

Flowers of Istanbul

Spring has come to Istanbul. It came several weeks ago because like so many entities and organizations in Turkey, spring does not subcribe to Western imperialism. This includes not abiding by the Gregorian calendar and the absurdity of specifing the beginning and end of four seasons based on careful calculations of the Earth’s spiral trip around the sun.

I live in the remains of European medieval society. This means I live human community which spread and grew in a time when walking was the way most people got to work and went back home. How far can you walk in an hour? Therefore there are not vast unpopulated green spaces like you find in the USA.

Worse yet, since the Turks conquered these ancient lands, less importance was given to open squares. In more “Western” parts of Europe -say to the East in Russia, or to the South in Crete, the city square has served as an important place for society to carry out some of its most important practices, such as electing public servants and decapitating  public servants. In Ottoman society, however, covered or enclosed spaces such as mosques, the gardens of mosques, tea houses and the home were where people met to discuss policy. Executions can be carried out anywhere, such as in teh street and in front of peoples houses. As many a concubine learned briefly, the Bosforus is great place to execute people.

For this reason (the lack of open space, not the executions), Istanbul lacks in green space. The only green spaces accesible by walking are empty pieces of ground that sometimes remain between two concrete structures, hills sides of more than 400 degrees angle, and cementaries.

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A brief history of toys

Seeing this store in Palo Alto’s main strip got me thinking about toys. What are toys? When were they invented and what exactly does this store sell?

I have decided that toys are manufactured items that either represent tools of adults or creatures (real or imaginary) that serve the purpose of helping children in their very natural activity of play.

It is worth noting that, unrefined –non-manufactured– items could also be considered toys. Since the invention of the spear and before, young children have undoubtedly emulated the adult hunt using raw, naturally sourced sticks.

Toys are rare in the archaeological record in great part because they are not critical tools which their manufacturers intend to last long. Toys are secondary or tertiary to all manufactured goods –tools, clothing, religious objects, dildos and even shiny stones are more important.

Children playing with sticks. Source

Spirits of the ancestors: the evolution of spurges

Some new spurge discoveries this week:  a species new to me, and some insights into where these weird weeds came from.   There’s a reconstruction of the supposed ancestral spurge,  and a draft fami…

Source: Spirits of the ancestors: the evolution of spurges

Why drive a Mustang? Prius is better.

While I was walking in San Francisco with my brother this week, I saw this.

It got me thinking. Why would someone (a man) buy and drive a Ford Mustang? Do they “just like the lines”? or are they trying to find a way to keep the sheets warm on cold, foggy Bay Area nights?

Both a  2017 Toyota Prius and a 2017 Ford Mustang cost about $30,000 USD to buy new in the United States. While one could argue that the Ford Mustang is a pretty sexy car (and by sexy I mean accident inducing) I think I would choose the Prius instead. Sure, the having a Mustang would help me date 22 year-old college students, but I also imagine that the Prius would help me keep enough cash around to buy drinks for my questionably dates.

According to Edmunds.com, while the Mustang gets about 21 miles per gallon in city driving, the Toyota Prius gets 51 mpg in the city. That’s just about 2.5 times less gas burned for the same distance. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, then at the current price of gas of $2.70USD per gallon, the driving the Prius means you will spend $726USD less per year.

Put another way, that’s a week’s vacation in Mexico!

At the same time, using some internet car insurance rate estimator tool called nerdwallet.com I learned that driving the Mustang will probably cost me $30USD a month more than driving the Toyota Prius. That’s $360USD you get to keep in the bank, every year if you drive the Toyota.  If you invest that money in  gym membership at the Berkeley YMCA, not only will you be able to date the sort of women who go for muscle-bound Mustang drivers, but also, date more of them since you’ll live longer.

A quick look at goodyear.com reveals that on average one (1) Mustang tire costs about $250USD, while a similar quality Prius tire costs about 100USD. Assuming you change your tires every 50,000 miles, driving a Prius saves you $120USD a year or ($600 USD every five years if you drive 10,000 miles a year).

The most important point is that the Prius can also help land you dates with environmentally aware graduate school students who will be earning 6 figures in a few years. The Mustang, however, gets you a date with people who un-ironically wear Duke’s of Hazard clothing.

A great show for denim, cowboy hats, old symbols of racist nationalism and tight abs.

Rain, Ruins and Alcohol

Sohbet ettik

On a cold and rainy January morning, the four of us set out to explore the byzantine relics that are less commonly visited. Underneath Balkapanı Hanı there is a Byzantine era basement that was and is still used for the storage of foodstuffs coming into the port nearby. Unfortunately we were not allowed to see it. There is a heavy metal door and a very unfriendly man guarding the ancient basement.

 

So we went to the Theodosian walls to look for a the oldest standing church in Istanbul. It was once the Monastery of St. John the Baptist Studius, was converted into a stable, then Mosque and then converted into ruins by earthquakes and human neglect. Unlike the land walls, however, this place is well protected and surrounded by a thick wall of its own and barbed wire. I had expected it to be nearer to the water in a quarter of town that that consists of ruins of many eras, 19th century ruins, 18th century ruins, etc.. .and with the church 5th century ruins. But alas, the church/monastery, turned stable turned mosque is in the middle of a respectable neighborhood. So we could not go inside and crawl on stuff. Second plan thwarted.

We then decided to walk back up to the walls. The Theodosian land walls run from the Sea of Marmara near Zeytinburnu to the Golden horn near the post-conquest neighborhood of Eyüp for about 5.5 kilometers. Our plan was to meet with Atila in his crypt and get drunk with him.

To get there we walked along the top of the walls for about a kilometer, at times crawling over very dilapidated section, at other times just squeezing past a crumbling tower which had left us only a tiny and very rain soaked ledge to pass by. When we got to the end of the continuous surface of the walls, just a few meters from the gate that leads to the crypt and so to the last stairs we discovered that they had been closed. So we walked back to the last set of stairs we saw and retraced our path back to Silivrikapı, this time on the road below.

Before going to see Atila we had to get some booze, so we went to the nearest Tekel (liquor shop) and bought what turned out to be the cheapest alcohol we have ever found in the city of cities. Seven liras fifty is all that the bottle of red wine cost. The brand of the dionysian drink is Ottoman, as in English, literally: Ottoman. I asked the shop keepers if they knew Atila. The response was broad smile of affirmation. On a hunch, I asked if he was a regular customer and if Ottoman was his preferred drink. Indeed he was and it is.

When ideas don’t translate

No matter how many times I tell them, Be it a Murat or a Zeynep or someone named Elif or even a Yiğitcan or two, they refuse to accept it. The Sapir Whorf hypothesis suggests that, to varying degrees, each culture-language allows people to consider, discuss and understand some ideas more and better than others do. In the linguistics of today, the linguistics practiced in departments so named, the hypothesis is dismissed as either untestable or worse, wrong. But the hypothesis holds water, a lot of it. Here is a conversation vaguely related to it.

Afiyet olsun meets internet meme absurdity.

Languages have both formulas for communicating ideas and truth values and such, as well as set-phrases for doing much the same. Put another way, in English you can convey how sure you are about something with a little adverb like “certainly” as in: “Certainly a day will come when you will understand the horrors of teachehood.” But you can also say: “As sure as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow, you will one day repent for having touched my Batman action figure.” In the first, the adverb “certainly” allows the listener to infer that the speaker truly believes that such a day will come. In the second example, the same is true, but by use of a comparative sentence similar to /a is as true as b/. These phrases are very englishy, especially the adverbial one. But they are also very indo-European-y, as they are easily translated using nearly identical (often cognate) language structures and words. In English it is the case that the certainty with which a speaker makes some assertion is important and by consequence English has formidable number of adverbial evidentiality markers (adverbs which relate how sure the speaker is about something). The preceding was meant to let the reader know that there some things that are important in English.

I remember reading the article where I learned about the number of adverbial evidentiality markers. But I remember much more viscerally my early days of Turkish learning. I wanted to convert how sure I was of what I was saying, using adverbs, but not only did I not know their Turkish counterparts, but as it turns out, they are few and far between in Turkish. For sure, evidentiality is important to Turkish speakers, but it is both conveyed differently (think endless numbers of postpositions), and also sometimes it is not as important as other things.