Entries from June 2006 ↓

After Eszter Hargittai gave me a nice formal welcome to the blogosphere yesterday and also commented on the blogging legacy of 129 Wallace Hall at Princeton (Kieran Healy, Eszter and I have all shared the same office), I thought it was quite a coincidence that I was able to meet up with another former 129′er [...]

I was chatting with the owner of a shop and his Azerbaijani friend last night when a young guy came in wearing a black shirt with gold lettering that said “L.A. Cocaine Business” on the front and “Tony Montana Scarfarce” on the back (want one? I’ve seen them for sale all over the net).  He [...]

I’ve been blown away this morning by a new tool for displaying world development data called Gapminder.  If you want a spicy way to show off statistical data, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling software program.  There is a great video demonstration of Gapminder being used in what is possibly one of the best [...]

Yesterday I finished a project that I’d been putting off for a month.  What was this monumental endeavor, this Sisyphean task that I’d been avoiding for weeks?  Gluing all my receipts into a notebook.
I came to Berlin knowing that I’d have to track all my expenses to account for how I’m spending my grant.  From [...]

During our discussion on Thursday, Hüseyin made no effort to hide his frustration with the German education system.  After all, how can you put kids through 10 years of school and not have them speaking decent German by the time they finish?  Germans, he says, are quick to blame it on Turks themselves, arguing that [...]

My name sounds a lot like the Turkish name Cem, pronounced “Gem” as in stone or “Jem” as in truly outrageous.  Several times in the US and Turkey people have mistaken me for a Turk because of my name and my ability to speak Turkish (certainly not because of my freckles and pasty white skin).  [...]

So now I’ve come across the English version of the sticker I wrote about earlier.  This one has a nice mug of beer being thrown on a guy.  As for my translation, I think I did pretty good.  It’s interesting to note that the authors wrote “punched in the face” in English and used the [...]