Disorientation

On the way to Istanbul, Matthew and I had a seven-hour layover in London, so we left the airport and took the tube to Westminster. The train robot said at each stop, "mind the gap," this phrase is, evidently, a cultural icon in London. English humor is such that I don't know if we're so frequently told to "mind the gap" ironically or seriously.
Also, I don't know why there is a gap--the floors of the train cars are often half a foot above the platform.

So, we got off the Tube at Westminster. There were security cameras everywhere. As we walked out of the station, I asked Matthew, "Where's Westminster Abbey?" "You're looking at it," said Matthew of the old building right in front of us. I felt a little silly, until we rounded the corner to enter, only to discover that the building is actually the Parliament building--the Abbey was next door. We went to enter it, but it's £9 to get in for students, and I didn't feel like paying that much to see a church, even such an important one.
Driving to church on Christmas Eve, I mentioned to my family the forthcoming long London layover. Eddie asked me if I could get something for him while I'm there. What? A necklace. The entire family laughed at him, poor chap. Secilee asked for a picture of Big Ben.

I saw a clock tower, but it was pretty small. I said, "Let me take a picture of this; I'll tell Secilee it's Big Ben." Matthew said, "Um, yeah, that is Big Ben."
(Later, on the phone, Secilee told me that she thought Big Ben was a double-decker bus.)

We went to the British museum, but it was closed. Instead, we got pasties and postcards, then popped in at the Museum Tavern, which is a couple of hundred years old. We each had a pint of Old Peculiar, which I would recommend.

After landing in Istanbul, late that night, we tried to find a pay phone in the airport. Everyone here is very friendly--one person told us to look outside. After going outside, and seeing no pay phone, we tried to get back in, but a police officer blew his whistle at us. We crossed the street to the parking garage and back again. We asked for directions from another police officer, and he told us to enter the airport through another door. We did, but we would have had to have our luggage x-rayed to proceed. We tried to go back, but the door was one-way. We slipped around the next slew of people entering and we escaped. We found the stairs leading down to the metro station; we figured a pay phone might be there.

We did, indeed, find a pay phone, but it only took credit cards or calling cards. I picked up the phone, Matthew handed me his card, and I slid it into the slot, and dialed our host, Elizabeth. I could only type two digits before the machine reset. I tried again.
The payphone didn't look like the payphones in the US. Those, you just drop coins through a slot and dial the number. The phones here in Turkey have a little LCD screen with two buttons on either side of it. We tried pushing buttons that we recognized, or, rather, avoided buttons that we knew wouldn't be helpful, like the one of the police or the one for pre-paid phonecards. Matthew suggested that we ask for help, but I told him that we'd probably have an easier time getting the machine to work than we would finding someone who spoke enough English well enough to help us. Repeatedly, I would push a different button, slide the card, and start dialing. Each time, I could only type two digits before the phone reset. There were other buttons, off to the left, one that I didn't recognize, one with a picture of a telephone, one with the letter L and one with the letter R. I tried those, too.

A half an hour later, I tapped the L button, but this time, the text on the screen turned to English. I swiped the card. The screen said that the card should be swiped with the magnetic stripe up.

Pointing and Smiling

I'm surprised at how quickly I'm picking up on Turkish, but more surprised at how much milage I can get out of only a few words.

Today, Paul and I tried to take the bus from the Middle Eastern Technical University to Kızılay, the city center, but missed the stop entirely. The bus dumped us on the north-west edge of town.

I'm realizing that gesturing and using very few works effectively, right now, is a more important skill than learning proper Turkish. I hear that Turks are more likely to help confused foreigners than other Turks, so looking disoriented is a survival skill here. When we got on the bus this time to go to Kızılay, I asked the driver, "Kızılay?" to make sure we were going the right way, and he nodded. If I'd tried to phrasebook it and use something resembling proper grammer, or even if I'd tried to say, "Otobüs Kızılay'a gitir?" (The bus goes to Kizilay?) that probably would have been less effective. I don't know what I would have done if I had used a fancy phrase and he responded saying something I wouldn't understand.

When we got to Kızılay, we weren't sure we were there. (It turned out that we were a few blocks from the bus stop we'd used this morning.) I asked someone "Do you speak English?" instead of "Ingilizce konuşuyor musunuz?" and he shook his head.

(One time, I asked a waiter, in Turkish, if he spoke English, and he looked at me like he was very confused. I don't know if that's because my pronunciation was bad, or because it doesn't make much sense to ask someone if they speak English in Turkish; either I ought to know enough Turkish to order in Turkish, or too little Turkish to ask whether the waiter knows English. I've not used the phrase since. On the other hand, it seems polite to me, though, to try one's best as the language of the person one is speaking to, and not simply assume that they'll know one's language.)

So, I asked the stranger, "Kızılay?" and pointed down, and he nodded. We went back and forth on this until I was sure we were, in fact, in Kızılay. He and his girlfriend argued about which way was right or left; they knew these words in English.

Well, they knew right and left, but got them backwards, so I had to ask, "Metro nerede?" of some other strangers.

Our first day in Istanbul, I noticed that Matthew did a better job of ordering food than I did, because he is used to being in situations where he doesn't know the language. It's very awkward, and I feel rude, but Turks are generally accommodating when I point at things and use English words they might not understand. I don't think there's much proper etiquette for when two people don't know a common language. Smiling helps patch things up, though.

Bumper Stickers

Bumper stickers are a peculiar form of communication, because there is barely enough space to introduce a new idea. Instead, normally old ideas are referenced, so I can know the stranger in the car in front of me identifies himself or herself with environmentalism or Wicca or Jesus. Unfortunately, many bumper stickers are obscure enough that I have difficulty comprehending the statement that the stranger is making.

I have, here, recorded a passel of peculiar bumper stickers. I have included explanations for the bumper stickers with obtuse meanings; some, I could not figure out for myself. I would appreciate conjectures from my readers on the meanings of these more enigmatic bumper stickers.

I saw an old car on the I-195 exit onto UMBC with a total of eight bumper stickers, six saying:

• Go Climb a Rock: Yosemite
  
• Underarmour: Run
  
• MS Marshall Street Disk Golf [Marshall Street Disk Golf is a supplier of disc golf equipment in Leicester, Massachusetts.]
  
• Disk Golfer on Board
  
• Rock me sexy Jesus [This is the name of a musical number in Hamlet 2.]
  
• Nader-Gonzales '08

The other two bumper stickers depicted:

• A flower
  
• A giant robot destroying a city

I would like to be friends with the driver of this car, if I'm not expected to be excellent at disc golf.

Driving north on I-795, to the Red Robin in Owings Mills, to hang out with Greg:

• Gwapa Inside [It looked like an Intel Inside sticker. "Gwapa" is Filipino for good-looking, declined in the feminine.]

In San Antonio, Texas, near the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center:

• In Guad we trust [This is a reference to Our Lady of Guadalupe.]

I forget where I saw all of the remaining bumper stickers.
A bumper sticker:

• I heart golfing and biking [The heart was faded out.]

I saw a vanity plate:

• GTD RNK [I like the Getting Things Done methodology; it is unlikely that this has anything to do with this vanity plate.]

One card had a fake license plate mounted above a real license plate. The fake license plate:

• A map of Africa, on a background of a green, yellow, and red tricolor of horizontal stripes.

The real license plate:

• Romans 8

I imagine that the driver of this car is an Afro-centric Presbyterian. I would like to be friends with this person.

A bumper sticker:

• An icon of a fist with lightning bolts, next to the words, "BEW for Obama/Biden"

Sharon and Wendell

One time about a month ago, I was having a bad anxiety day. I'd been cooped up in my house too much or something, I suppose. I tried all of my tricks for coping. I had a shot of Scotch before heading out to lead a lunchtime Bible study. I played violent video games. I went to the gym. I went to the grocery store and got some King's Hawaiian Sweet Bread and some terrible Knorr noodles. I really needed a shower, but, driving home, I saw my neighbors Wendell and Sharon sitting with John on his stoop, so I stopped and talked with them.

I first met Sharon as I was walking home one day at the end of the summer. Sharon has an ice shaver, so on hot days, she sells snow cones to neighbors at the corner; some people grab a lawn chair and sit in a circle with their feet in buckets of cold water.

I have no idea how this started, but Sharon started telling me about her cousin Rachel. According to Sharon, Rachel wore mens' size 38 pants at age four. Rachel had "a fat head." Rachel's grandmother would pre-chew her food for her until she was six years old. Rachel's teenage brothers would each drink a gallon of milk a day; it was a tough guy thing for them. Rachel drank two gallons a day. Sharon brought a bag of popcorn over one day, and Grandma tried to take it from her, swearing she'd choke. Rachel's grandmother didn't let her go to school, afraid Rachel would come home to find her dead.

One time, there was a home remedies book being passed around and Rachel's grandmother accused the owner of the book of witchcraft.

Wendell has white wisps of hair and black eyebrows and a knobby nose. He told me about some handy home remedies. If you have a boil, you can put a moist tea bag on it and that will soothe it. Mint tea aids digestion. Sassafras tea is an anti-coagulant and also aids digestion. Castor oil, everyone knows, is good for clearing out the colon.

Through all this, John didn't say much. John has a lot of tattoos and two tiny fuzzy dogs.

Wendell says that Barack Obama got elected because it's clear that OPEC chose him as president by driving up gas prices before the election to make people want a big political shift. I forget if Wendell likes Obama or not.

This was about a week after the election, and the state of Maryland had just passed legislation calling for five slot machine establishments to be opened. I asked Wendell what he thought of this. He recalled when the Bay Bridge was opened; it was supposed to be the case that the tolls would be in effect only until the construction was paid off, and then, Maryland citizens wouldn't have to pay a toll, but we still have to pay the toll now. "Where's the money going?" he asked. We talked about the lottery, and how the lottery was supposed to raise money for the schools, but it really just made rich the company that runs it. Wendell doesn't think that the legalization of slots will help all that much.

We talked about the future. Wendell wants to know why we don't have flying cars. There were amphibious cars made decades ago, but those aren't mainstream yet. He's not sure what to think of iPods.

Wendell is disappointed with cloning. Cloning is supposed to give an exact copy, so my clone should be another 23-year old, not merely an embryo that is genetically identical to me.

Wendell has a sixth-grade education, but he's not ashamed of that, because he feels like life gave him the education that he really needed. "I've got common sense," he said. "That's what you really need."

Evolution for Creationists

Darwin's finches don't ruffle creationist's feathers. They really ought not. What Darwin saw was what creationists call microevolution, adaptation due to genetic drift and natural selection. I've never met a creationist who denies this. I've never even met a creationist that doesn't know that mutation occurs, but they do say that beneficial mutations do not occur enough for macroevolution--what they call the formation of new species.

Modern biology doesn't even make the distinction between macro- and microevolution, which is appropriate, in terms of developing the science. However, this is harmful in talking with creationists, because most of the cases of evolution cited by evolutionists creationists explain in terms of microevolution. 

One time, when Matthew and I were young earth creationists, we showed up late at a talk and discussion on evolution on campus. I asked the speaker for an example of evolution; her work is in physical anthropology, so she talked about the proliferation of genes tied to schizophrenia. Never mind that schizophrenia is a bad thing, unlikely to sell evolution; when we asked her if we could tell at one point the genes for schizophrenia were not there, and then they were, we got an answer about how the genes spread, when we were really interested in knowing if new genetic information had been introduced. This just made us more convinced creationists, because she didn't even realize what we disagreed with her on. Ironically enough, Matthew and I saw this as a cop-out fueled by cognitive dissonance. Then, we talked until late at night about complementarianism, but that's another story.

A recent article in New Scientist helps refute creationism by addressing its actual claim: that helpful mutations do not occur enough to form new species. The article talks not about a whole new species, but it does talk about how, in the lab, a biologist, Richard Lenski observed a beneficial new gene occur by mutation in e. coli, where it hadn't been before--macroevolution. The ones after a certain point had a mutation that allowed them to metabolize citrate, while the ones before this point didn't have that gene. Bob Holmes, the author of the article, did an amazing job of explaining exactly what happened, so that the creationist dismissal of macroevolution does not hold.