Pictures of the famous travertines of Pamukkale.These small ponds are natural mineral formations. They’re only a couple inches deep, which made me wonder why they’re so darned blue, as well as why the shade of blue is a distinctive turquoise. I remember that last year in Canada we saw a number of glacier lakes that […]

You’ve probably already read a hundred reviews of the new Trek movie, and you don’t need mine. (Short form: liked the characters, winced at the baaaad science and coincidence-heavy plot.) But over at Danger Room, we find the take of a genuine military analyst.* The villainous Romulan ship pulverizes Federation vessels with volleys of torpedoes. […]

This is a street scene, sort of. It’s a view from the breakfast room of the Hotel Spectra, looking across the old Roman hippodrome to the Mosque of Sultanahmet, better known over here as the Blue Mosque. Beyond is the Sea of Marmara. I highly recommend the Spectra. It’s a small hotel with nice rooms, […]

On the tenth of April we came down from the Anatolian highlands to Bodrum, where we met the Aegean for the first time— we had seen blue water here and there, but we were never on the shore, and always en route to one place or another. Bodrum was the place where we ended up […]