title, what title?

Democracy is the mother of all buzzwords. From totalitarian regimes calling themselves the real democrats (German Democratic Republic, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) to the so called advanced democracies such as US, where the wealthy are simply rewriting rules for themselves (1), or Germany, where the state recklessly lets the police attack peaceful protesters who are protesting the construction in their own city(2), the word democracy is used to whitewash practices that are directly contrary to what the democracy supposed to mean. Add to this the dangerous Western (mostly American) international relations rhetoric, that democracy is a panacea that would magically cure all the worlds problems. Although it is not logical, and perhaps not ethical, to choose any other form of government over democracy, it is certainly not realistic to believe democracy is a solution to any problem. In my humble opinion, it is only a tool, or a mere set of practices, that lets people solve probl...

Adına yaraşır bir hareket yapmış Deli İbrahim. 40 Yaşına değin oynar derken, bir maç sonrası ikinci kez İbrahim Toraman ile didiştiği, kavgaya giriştiği için erken veda etti sol kanatta terlettiği o güzelim formaya. Yolu açık olsun, ve şu naçizane dizeler kendini bana sonradan sevdiren bu büyük Beşiktaş'lıya gelsin: Padisah Deli Ibrahim Dün gece siir gibiydin Ibrahim, Birak biz seni yine de DELI bilelim.   Barcelona, Cimbom ve Fener, Bu uc mac bize yetsin. Cünkü ben seni basini kaldirmadan, Sol kanatta kosarken sevdim. actoker - 23 Kasım 2009

Milton Babbit would have been a perfect hate figure for the Tee Party supporters in USA, had he published his famous essay "Who cares if you listen?" today. He was arguing that the lack of laymen listeners appreciation of advanced music which was -quoting Babbitt- "made by/for/to specialists," something inevitable, even welcome. He refuted the populistic call for truce between popular and specialist music "There is no such thing as 'serious' and 'popular' music." There is only 'good' and 'bad' music." with this: As a public service, let me offer those who still patiently await the revelation of the criteria of Absolute Good an alternative criterion which possesses, at least, the virtue of immediate and irrefutable applicability: "There is no such thing as 'serious' and 'popular' music. There is only music whose title begins with the letter 'X,' and music whose title does not." He wa...

Katillerin ve azmettiricilerin aramizda dolastigi bu acili günde izleyin, izlettirin:

I am a late comer to the hip hop music. I am not talking about the over-commercialized, and in some sense travesty of a music modern hip hop. I am talking about hip hop back in the days when music was used to carry a message and the aesthetic understanding of a culture. My favorite these days is "A Tribe Called Quest". Just like I expect from a true classic, their debut album "People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm" sounds as if was made a few years back. This is IMHO due to its timeless qualities. Here are two of my favorites: The Luck of Lucien (The Frenchman) Youthful Expression

Okan Bayülgen son programinda Afrika'li futbol emekcisi Emenike'yi deri rengi yüzünden daha iyi bir hayat bulmak icin göcmek zorunda kalan diger Afrika'li kardeslerine benzeterek, bununla da yetinmeyerek Emenike'ye bir esya gibi "bu" diyerek hem Emenike'ye hem Afrikali göcmenlere igrenc irkci bir saldirida bulunmus. Olayin videosunu en asagidaki baglantidan seyredebilirsiniz. Her iki ucu da bildiginiz maddeye batmis bir soz etmis Okan Bayülgen. Deri rengi yüzünden isini yapan bir insani yaftalayip asagilamak degnegin bir yani. Yaftalarken kullandigi terim ise esasinda kafasindaki irkciligi  aciga cikaran diger bir diskili yani. Insan'in dogdugu kenti, topraklari, arkadaslarini, ailesini, evini, sevgilisini, cocuklarini onlara daha iyi bir hayat verebilmek icin terk etmesinde asagilanacak birsey olmadigi gibi, bu insanlari asagilamak goc yollarinda cok cileler ceken insanlarin acilarina duyarsizligi gösteriyor. Umarim biran önce bu saygisizliginin far...

It is a terrible and wrong cliché to wrap up the entire German cuisine within the combination of "sauerkraut, potatoes and bratwurst". It is as accurate as the idea that all that Italians eat are pizza and pasta. After spending 5 years in the gastronomic capital of Germany, I'll try to write about some German delicacies when I find the time. First I will start by attacking the cliché itself. "Leber- und Blutwurst mit Rotkohl und Bratkartoffeln" is a dish that demonstrates how good the wurst-kraut-potato combination can be. !!WARNING: Otto von Bismarck famously likened sausage-making to law-making. If you like sausages or the laws, you better stay away from the actual making process. Skip to the end of the WARNING if you like sausages. Leberwurst is a cooked sausage of bacon-liver-pork, flavored with spices. The one pictured above has other offal parts as well. German blood sausage - Blutwurst-  is made out of blood and pork skin. Spanish blood sausage...

... bullshit. And Susan Miller is a charlatan. Meet Susan Miller. According to the one of the most serious Turkish news portal -arguably-, she's a world famous astrologist. She visited Turkey, and made the prophecy that something incredible was to happen on 21. December 2010. Considering the rate with which big news stories are fabricated/happen in Turkey, a more interesting prophecy would have been that there would be nothing serious on that day. But lets leave this aside. This vague prophecy, that something big will happen in Turkey on 21. December made the mainstream news. Result? I guess you knew, just as I did, what the result would be on the day she made the prophecy. I still didn't want this to go unnoticed. Links to this post: http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25159026/

A Taiwanese TV station is famous for producing video animations of the top news almost instantly. This one about the Wikileaks is among the best commentaries on Wikileaks I came across:

"-You unbeliever, You, who dared to doubt the Son of God, You are sentenced, You must now feel his blood, His flesh and his gut." He, who dared to doubt the Son of God, Has his fingers in that sacred cut, And the unbeliever, the doubter, At this holy sight,he cannot look at. "-Their eyes, their eyes, Of those without the courage to doubt, Are so vicious, and are filled with doubt, My trembling fingers, It's what they are looking at, And not the Son of God " I went to the Gemäldegalerie 2 weeks ago. I was lucky to experience four more Caravaggio paintings, since there was a Caravvagio exhibition. The painting that touched me the most was "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas." The story is like this:After the resurrection of the Christ, Thomas the Apostle doubts that Christ was raised from the death. Christ makes him touch his still open crucification wounds, to convince him. For me what is shining out of this painting is not the inc...

Die deutsche Sprache hat einen schlechten Ruf unter deren, die die nicht verstehen oder sprechen können. Während Französisch als die Sprache der Liebe gilt, gilt Deutsch in der türkischen Popkultur als die Sprache der Pornofilmen. "Hans, Du bist meine Lokomotive" ist ein Witz unter den türkischen Männern, die ihre sexuelle Aufklärung den deutschen Softpornofilmen schulden. Und die, die diese Filmen nicht gesehen haben, meinen, Deutsch sei sehr schreiend. Dank meiner ziemlich vorzeitigen Begegnung mit der deutschen Sprache durch Die Toten Hosen teilte ich diese Meinungen nie. Als ich nach Deutschland kam und versuchte diese Sprache zu lernen, merkte ich wie lebendig und spielerisch ich sie fand. Ich beneidete damals die kleine Kinder um ihre rollende R's. Dann habe ich die deutsche Hörbücher entdeckt, die mich faszinierten. Aber nichts hätte mich auf das Gedicht "Lästerzungen," gelesen von Klaus Kinski, vorbereiten können... Meine Interesse an Klaus Kinski ...

Nein, dies ist nicht das Bild meines Autos. Dies ist das Bild des ersten Schneefalls in Berlin, etwas das ich jedes Jahr in großer Aufregung erwarte. Dieses Jahr kam er früh. Ich bin hoffnungsvoll auf einen weißen Dezember!

Glasgow is one of the favorite cities I've visited. Certainly it is the city with the most polite and helpful inhabitants. Another reason behind my fondness for Glasgow is its vibrant music scene. Mogwai and Belle and Sebastian are my favorites, while other Glasgowian acts include Travis, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys. I think Belle and Sebastian holds a special place in contemporary pop music, at least as far as I can follow. Their music for me represents a balanced mix of Dylanesque/Reedian song-writing and minimal pop music sensibilities. Furthermore, I get the feeling that they belong to a small group of bands who respect their fans, by respecting their music. They recently published a new album, whose live performance can be watched in its entirety in the following online video: The first song they perform in the video, "I want the world to stop" is the strongest song in the album. My first impression of the album is that it represents a mediocre album i...

Turkey lifted a 2.5 year ban on Youtube. Around the same time, NBC lifted a 6 month ban on the most funny TV personality in the states -this is a exaggeration of course.  Good things happen in the world from time to time! Of course, if one fools oneself into forgetting the fact that these good things were preceded by the bad judgement or plain stupidity of some people. I mean, its great that Conan had to promote his new show and came up with the idea of live streaming 24 hours of absurdities. But, why does it have to come after a 6 month leave. Anyway, enjoy the hilarious clip without too much philosophizing.

Have you ever called someone up, and you're disappointed when they answer the phone?  You wanted the machine.  You know, and you're always kind of thrown off, you go "Oh, I eh, I - I didn't know you were there, I ah - just wanted to leave a message saying, sorry I missed you." So here what we have is two people who hate each other, don't really ever want to talk, but the phone machine is like this relationship respirator keeping these marginal brain dead relationships alive .And we all do it -- Why? So that when we come home, you can see that little flashing red light; You go "all right, messages." You see, people need that.  It's very important for human beings to feel they are popular and well liked amongst a large group of people that we don't care for. From legendary The Bubble Boy Episode. Just replace answering machine with Facebook. Of course there was no Facebook in the eighties. But the people were, well..., people if you know wha...

Here is what I did: Create a script with the contents: #!/bin/bash export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype Make this script executable with   chmod u+x scriptname . Go to System -> Preferences -> Main Menu . Find the launcher of Skype and press the properties. Paste the location of your script. It looks like Skype doesn't cannot find the shared object files (similar to dlls in Windows) associated with video for linux (v4l) this command pre-loads these libraries for Skype, before launching it. Links for this entry: mve-lamb's post on ubuntu forums for this solution:  http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=294787 mve-lamb's profile on ubuntu forumes:  http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=294787 .

Dear WinEdit, I really liked you when I first met you. True, I knew you were not for free, and sooner or later I would have to pay. True, you've literally made my thesis writing really easy. I would have delightedly made a contribution to you via PayPal, as I usually do to open source projects that help me. I would have, but I won't. It's all because of your outdated - in my humble opinion at least- marketing, or shall I say harassment strategy. You write it yourself in your message: "You can continue to use this unregistered shareware copy of the program.  However, as the time goes on, WinEdt will be issuing  (annoying)  registration reminders with increasing frequency ..." When I first read that, I underestimated how low you can get, to get annoying. And no, those annoying messages didn't send me the most positive messages, or created what your average marketing guru would name "brand loyalty" Especially when I was trying frantically t...

Hier sind zwei beunruhigenden Artikeln von der Süddeutsche Zeitung: Wuchernder Fremdenhass, ersehnte Diktatur  Die unbeliebten Türken Und hier ist ein passendes Lied von Die Toten Hosen: Dies ist das Land, in dem man nicht versteht, dass FREMD kein Wort für FEINDLICH ist, in dem Besucher nur geduldet sind, wenn sie versprechen, dass sie bald wieder gehen. Es ist auch mein Zuhaus, selbst wenn's ein Zufall ist und irgendwann fällt es auch auf mich zurück, wenn ein Mensch aus einem anderen Land ohne Angst hier nicht mehr leben kann. Weil täglich immer mehr passiert, weil der Hass auf Fremde eskaliert und keiner weiß, wie und wann man diesen Schwachsinn stoppen wird. ... ... Es ist auch mein Land, und ich will nicht, dass ein viertes Reich draus wird. Es ist auch dein Land, steh auf und hilf, dass blinder Hass es nicht zerstört. Es ist auch mein Land, und sein Ruf ist sowieso schon ruiniert. Es ist auch dein Land, komm wir zeigen, es leben auch andere M...

Click to enlarge. I am so glad, I recognize most of the objects from a Seinfeld episode. And I am so eager to revisit the treasures.

Almanya ve Türkiye Futbol Milli Takimlari arasindaki ilk mac 17 Haziran 1951 yilinda bugünkü gibi Berlin Olimpiyat Stadinda oynanmis. Savas sonrasi Berlin'inin belini dogrultmaya calistigi yillardaki ilk milli mac olmasindan da kaynakli 90.000 seyirciye oynanan maci Türkiye milli takimi 2-1 kazanmis. 47 yil sonra Bursa'daki zafere kadar bir daha bu sansi elde edememis Türk milli takimi. Ayni Alman milli takiminin 3 sene sonra Dünya Sampiyonu olmasi bu zaferin degerini bir kat daha arttiriyor. Alman Futbol Federasyonu'nun websitesinden aldigim gazete basligi "Büyük Hayalkirikliginin Milli Maci." Besiktas maclari ile karsilastirinca sifira yakin bir heyecan var icimde. Yine de eski maclari seyrederek biraz havaya soktum kendimi. Mac baska türlü cekilmeyecek cünkü. 1998 galibiyeti'nin videosu Ligtv.com.tr'den izlenebilir. Rustu'nün deli cikislari yine yüzümü güldürdü. Tugay, Sergen, Hakan, Oktay. Iyi takimmisiz. Bu postayla ilgili baglantilar: http:...