{"id":171,"date":"2008-10-11T13:52:10","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T17:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=171"},"modified":"2022-04-11T23:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T03:51:31","slug":"half-asleep-in-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2008\/10\/half-asleep-in-istanbul\/","title":{"rendered":"Half Asleep in Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey to begin a little more than two weeks in the Middle East. The mission: an article on science and Islam (plus the unexpected). I&#8217;m in a hostel overlooking the Bosphorus with Michael Jackson music videos playing, one after another. It was a spectacularly beautiful day to arrive at a stunning city. (In broken English, the guy who picked me up from the airport asked, &#8220;Know why this is the most beautiful city in the world?&#8221; I didn&#8217;t. &#8220;The women.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-172\" title=\"Blue Mosque\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1150-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Mosque\" width=\"341\" height=\"254\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is the Blue Mosque. It is just across the way from the Hagia Sophia, the Emperor Justinian&#8217;s monument to anti-philosophical (nevertheless wonderful) Christianity, until it became a mosque when Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453. I wonder if Holy Wisdom counts as one of the driver&#8217;s women. Anyway, here is what I mean by being half asleep by the Bosphorus:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-173\" title=\"Half asleep\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1151-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Half asleep\" width=\"352\" height=\"262\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The news is true about what Harun Yahya (I&#8217;ll be interviewing him on Monday) arranged to have done to RichardDawkins.net. This says something about a court order.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dawkinsinturkey.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-174\" title=\"RichardDawkins.net in Turkey\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dawkinsinturkey-300x225.png\" alt=\"RichardDawkins.net in Turkey\" width=\"472\" height=\"353\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More adventures to be come, without a doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey to begin a little more than two weeks in the Middle East. The mission: an article on science and Islam (plus the unexpected). I&#8217;m in a hostel overlooking the Bosphorus with Michael Jackson music videos playing, one after another. It was a spectacularly beautiful day to arrive at a stunning city. (In broken English, the guy who picked me up from the airport asked, &#8220;Know why this is the most beautiful city in the world?&#8221; I didn&#8217;t. &#8220;The women.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-172\" title=\"Blue Mosque\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1150-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Blue Mosque\" width=\"341\" height=\"254\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is the Blue Mosque. It is just across the way from the Hagia Sophia, the Emperor Justinian&#8217;s monument to anti-philosophical (nevertheless wonderful) Christianity, until it became a mosque when Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453. I wonder if Holy Wisdom counts as one of the driver&#8217;s women. Anyway, here is what I mean by being half asleep by the Bosphorus:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-173\" title=\"Half asleep\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1151-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Half asleep\" width=\"352\" height=\"262\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The news is true about what Harun Yahya (I&#8217;ll be interviewing him on Monday) arranged to have done to RichardDawkins.net. This says something about a court order.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dawkinsinturkey.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-174\" title=\"RichardDawkins.net in Turkey\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dawkinsinturkey-300x225.png\" alt=\"RichardDawkins.net in Turkey\" width=\"472\" height=\"353\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More adventures to be come, without a doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,16,75],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-orientalism","tag-religion-science","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5738,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/5738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}