DAY NINETY EIGHT

Dialect continuums! Really interesting - a continuum of languages so that people in close geographic proximity speak mutually intelligible languages, but the dialects change so much across the whole speaking region that the languages may be considered separate languages. A prime example, of course, is Arabic. The rise of nation states is demarcating these languages to a greater extent than ever before. Or so says Wikipedia, with absolutely no citation given. Shout out to any officemates who are experts in this subject because the article says it needs an expert's advice.

Today I was awoken by the cleaning lady, which set the day off on the right foot: avoidance, hiding and shamefacedness. Perfect for a work environment. Hatece seems to have chilled out quite a bit, though, so rock. She was kind enough to point out that shortbus was repeatedly dangerously attempting to trip her due to lack of mama (food), which I chose to pretend to think was her telling me how cute the cat is. And, a word of encouragement! Yesterday, for the first time ever, I saw shortbus play! It was a strange and wonderful thing, that challenged cat chasing after a string. Then she sat and purred for a long time, lookin good, as she's wont to do.

I watched a few episodes of Wilfred again, a show so good that I was willing to re-watch the first two shows within a few days of one another. The production value is amazing - they straight up just have a dude walk around in a dog suit. Very funny and highly recommended, though I have still only seen the first two shows. Entertainment Weekly gives it two thumbs up, calling it one of the worst shows of 2011.

I learned how to call the movie Fatih 1453 fascist with a sort of sign of the horns wolf thing last night. Then was explained a very confusing story about the original Turk coming from a wolf and this being a return to it? Apparently, stories of the WOLF TURK have been used in anti-turkism for ages. The earliest anti-Turkism appeared the same year as Fatih! Coincidence?!?! And don't we really think that Fatih the conquerer should redirect people to mehmed ii's wiki page, rather than having to go to the fatih (municipality), fatih (name) and then mehmed ii's page?

And a fun map of Constantinople, as some of my greek-american friends still refer to it. Where's the river? Well, the Bosphorus (google search river istanbul hit number one) article didn't help, citing to the University of Leeds which, when searched, had no hits for river Istanbul. Digging deeper, it appears that this river isn't the fabled one on land, but is instead a river in water, which is kind of a lot lamer for me but apparently very exciting for oil companies. Is the river completely underground? That's what I think, but I'm not sure. Anyone who figures it out gets to guest post on my blog and gets major respect.

Self hatin up in heeeeeeeere where Turk was used during the Ottoman period to denote a back-woods, uncultured individual, an ignoramus, if you will. And I'm going to quote one particularly fantastic passage from within the article:
"He is no Turk, no savage, he will assure you, but an Ottoman subject of the Sultan, by no means to be confounded with certain barbarians styled Turcomans, and from whom indeed, on the male side, he may possibly be descended."(Davey 1907: 209)
Ah yes, a descendant only upon the male side. Rape and pillage, barbarian turks, rape and pillage, for as Davey rightly points out, your race was created solely of males and can yield no lady folks no matter how much you try to pretend to be acculturated now.
CITE CHECKS FOR TURK AS AN INSULT! 1. dear self-referential wiki article: not so sure you can cite to the Dutch version of the article (generally) to show that Turk is used as an insult. No, wait, I'm sure that you can't.
2. Way back machine to use an old/outdated entry from Merriam Webster's to show that Turk was archaically used to describe a cruel person? Wouldn't one assume -- well, I would at least -- that if something's marked as archaic it won't change, and therefore, if it's been taken out of the dictionary, that may not be a correct usage? Although I must say I do appreciate the "rhymes with Turk" section of the entry.
3. Ohh snap, the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies webpage brings up a 404 not found.
Suman Fernando keeping things real with the only article, but again, just using a dictionary - didn't work out too well for the cite to Merriam Websters - and just a few words on the subject. But I'm still interested to read about how THE MYTH OF THE TERRIBLE TURK LIVES ON.

And finally, for minik:
A. Gliding is not where people begin, it's a specialized sort of aviation. Most pilots taking gliding lessons are, in fact, commercial pilots. It's super specialized and not like all pilots start off in gliding. Note that this happened before with one of my favorite airline crashes, Canada flight 143 THE GIMLI GLIDER WHAT WHAT, where they actually landed on a go-cart track that was IN USE AT THE TIME. That being said apparently a lot of flights have required gliding.