Photo of the Week - 20 June 2010

Photo of the Week - 20 June 2010

A Night of Turkish Delight

A Night of Turkish Delight:
President Barron attends “A Turkish Evening” at the Center for Global Engagement

The Center for Global Engagement held “A Turkish Evening” during its fifth annual Cultural Dinner Series on Thursday, April 15.

“The Cultural Dinner Series serves as a fundraiser toward establishing an endowment for international student scholarships,” said Cynthia Green, the director of the CGE. “At the same time, it provides an opportunity for many community and campus people to learn more about different cultures through food, music, and art featured at each of the dinners.”

Turkish hors d’oeuvres were served at the reception, and Atlanta-based chef Erdogan Uduk prepared an authentic four-course Turkish dinner. Turkish artwork by Pamir Thompson was on display, while live Turkish music performed by Mukhammed Tairov and Raim Tairov contributed to the event’s lively ambiance.

Students from the Dedman School of Hospitality earned internship credit by assisting Uduk in the kitchen and serving guests. “Their help has been invaluable,” said Green, noting that they have been on a rotating schedule since 8 o’clock in the morning.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was also held to celebrate the opening of the CGE’s new Turkish-themed conference room. The room’s furnishings were donated by the Istanbul Center in Atlanta, a not-for-profit nongovernmental organization that seeks to promote intercultural dialog for peaceful living in the Southeastern United States.

Florida State University President Eric J. Barron was in attendance and shared the ribbon-cutting honors with the Istanbul Center’s Director of Educational Programs Gurkan Ekicikol.

For the past five years, the CGE has held its Cultural Dinner Series to celebrate FSU’s diversity. Previous Cultural Dinner Series countries include China, India, France and Germany.
During the dinner, guests voted for next year’s Cultural Dinner Series country. Thailand, Korea, Peru and Spain were on the ballot.

“The Center enriches the FSU community [by] providing a variety of intercultural programs that bring together and connect international and U.S. students, scholars, faculty and staff,” said Green.

To further this mission on a regular basis, the CGE also hosts the popular International Coffee Hour every Friday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. with free beverages and snacks.

For more information, contact Cynthia Green at cgreen2@admin.fsu.edu.

--originally published in the FSView, April 19, 2010.

New Images: Bokeh & Organic Matter

This is test to make sure Lightbox 2 works when integrated with Blogspot. Click on a picture below. After it loads, hover the mouse over the image to make the "next" or "previous" buttons to appear.

Sevillian summertime temps: a comparison

Temps swing wildly in less than a week's time:

BP Protest

In the wake of the oil rig fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico, I had the pleasure to cover a BP protest in Tallahassee, Florida. While the protest platform "Seize BP" uses rhetoric that leans a little too left for my taste, protesting drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a worthy cause as it endangers Florida's ecological/economic foundation: the beaches.

Below are a few pictures from the event:

Messing with the bull (again)

Like in the beginning of the eighteenth-century, Spain is in bad economic shape. Then, however, a surge in monetary production and imports contributed to a marked “price revolution” (a.k.a. inflation) in Spain and, to a lesser extent, with its trading partners. While no longer the world’s primary producer of money, the topography has little changed. Some features of Spain’s economic ‘backwardness’ are historically recurrent, and seemingly extend into Spain’s horizon.

Credit issues: Spain’s credit rating has been downgraded. What does this mean? Countries have credit ratings to illustrate how likely they will be able to repay government debt obligations. Spain will appear more “risky” to foreign debt (bonds) investors. With a history of bankruptcies extending into the centuries, this is nothing new to Spain really. Even after Spain declared bankruptcy in the seventeenth-century, for example, investors continued to lend to Spain (buy bonds/debt). But, naturally, they asked for higher returns from Spain to balance the risk. This prolonged, to a certain degree, Spain’s fiscal ineptitude. We can assume a similar situation now.

Unemployment: Spain’s unemployment continues to be its Achilles' heel of economic growth. While news agencies bicker over the figure, an unemployment rate nearing 20 percent bodes poorly for Spain’s future. Again, this is nothing new. While the last time it was this high was in the late 1990s, unemployment too has a historical precedent that can be measured by the centuries.  People then cited the laziness of Spain’s ever-abundant aristocracy.

With the near-simultaneous downgrade of Greece’s and Portugal’s credit rating woes, the Eurozone seems to be in bad shape. With lenders lacking the confidence to lend money to struggling economies, countries will need to take drastic measures to minimize their debt obligations by either cutting spending or increasing taxes. With a mushrooming national debt, the United States - I fear - will soon be faced with a similar conundrum.

Studying conceptions of money in eighteenth-century Spain, it’ll be interesting to observe contemporary assessments of its worsening economic climate.

Hamid Karzai and his Postcolonial Pule

A few days ago Hamid Karzai slammed the "west" for interfering in Afghanistan's domestic affairs. Now, I am aware that the "east" (and by this I mean the "non-western other," including areas like Latin America and the Far East too) has a long history of "western interference," and the war in Afghanistan is a glaring example, but when does the post-colonial blame-game end and responsibility prevail? Wasn't the former Soviet Union technically the "east?" What about China and its "imperial" agenda? How much energy is wasted on the paranoid and delusional denouncement of the "west?" Paradoxically,  post-colonial discourse has become outmoded in the age of global interconnectedness. Instead of focusing on obsolete categories,  perhaps a more constructive and cooperative (not to be confused with appeasing) approach ought to be adopted.

Smith and Spain in a Contemporary Economic Assessment

The recent video segment “Breaking the piggy bank (again),” on CNN’s business news program The Buzz, discusses American spending and saving habits during the (post-)recession. The underlying question of this brief program is whether the decrease of American saving habits is indicative of economic recovery or of our inability to mind recent economic realities. At one point during the segment, however, the host reads the following quotation by Alex Macha: “The wealth of a nation is provided not by its savings, credit, amount of money in circulation, or ability to print money; but instead, by the nation’s production capacity... Identify the cause of the de-industrialization of the US during the 1970s, 1980s, 2000s to find the cause of our problems we find ourselves in today.”

Macha’s assessment is one of Adam Smith’s most resounding dicta. Macha surely swiped this sentiment from Smith. Likewise, however, to give Smith credit for this idea would also be inappropriate. The notion that the wealth of a nation has nothing to do with the nation’s monetary capacity became popularized during the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries because of Spain’s “backward” economic relationship with its American territories. And I would caution against Macha's overly simplified and (perhaps) antiquated assessment.

As you may or may not know, I have been researching how Spanish society perceived Spain to be in decline and backward during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like then, many today perceive Spain’s current economy to be “backward.” But unlike the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of course, we have reliable measures and statistics to back these claims up. So it will be very interesting for me to study/research in Spain during this time of continuing economic turbulence. In particular, I’ll be interested in seeing what BBC’s “PIGS” survey yields (PIGS is an flattering acronym for the eurozone countries with continuing economic woes: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain).

Destination: Spain (Take Two)

In addition to the grant funded by the Junta de Andalucía, I received notice a few weeks back that I won Florida State University’s International Semester Dissertation Research Fellowship (ISDRF) for the spring 2011 and summer 2011 semesters. Needless to say, I’m quite excited about the research possibilities in Spain. My vision and hard work have been, in a way, legitimized by winning this award. While it feels good, I am not unaware that hard work is at hand. I’ll need to rummage through the annals of eighteenth-century Spain and piece the data together. Ultimately, the final product will be the measure of success.

Destination: Spain

Spring came early this year (re: previous post). I just found out that my studies will continue across the Atlantic during the 2010-2011 academic year. I will establish myself in Andalucía, Spain and will remain there for approximately 9 months. While this opportunity (essentially a grant funded by the Junta de Andalucía) requires a teaching load, it is fair and manageable. In fact, it requires anywhere from 12 to 15 hours of work per week. And considering it’ll place me near research materials, the foreign teaching experience sounds like a pretty good bargain.

Mark Rothko - Yellow Band 1956