waiting on tehran

wowza. unprecedented turnout for the iranian presidential elections today. they've extended polling for at least four extra hours. certainly this insane turnout is a good sign for reformist challenger mousavi.

so the eyes of the world are on iran. foreign engagement with iran has been somewhat suspended as people have held their breath waiting for today. does it matter though? khamenei ain't goin' nowhere. how then, would the dynamics of a new government pan out, with a head of the executive, at least rhetorically, more willing to engage the rest of the world? how big an electoral mandate would he have to have to avoid a major whip-cracking from khamenei and the guardian council?

do i actually have enough people who read this to do an open thread?
meh, probably not. go for it, though, and i'll spin some more thoughts later when i make more progress on the annual report i'm supposed to be writing. regardless, between last week's cairo speech, the much-viewed and commented upon max blumenthal video, and iran's election, it's an interesting fortnight in debates on american mid-east policy issues.

UPDATE: no one/everyone (fp bloggers) wins so far. get ready for the whole country to be completely stabby for the next, like, three days while the votes are counted. check out the nyt liveblog here.

druze-ish

so i was recently in israel (yeah, during the gaza, er, kerfuffle), and we ended up in a town outside of haifa, with a relatively diverse, relatively non-jewish population, including baha'i and druze populations. here, we had arranged for us a "tour" of druze life. (this sort of things always brings up my internal conflict with "culture" tourism, but maybe more on that later...also maybe more about the druze faith which is really interesting in and of itself).

however, leaving aside debates about authenticity of experience, the tour ended in a really delicious meal, which i'm determined to try making some of. one of my favorites seemed to be just a cabbage leaf stuffed with nutmeg-seasoned white rice. i'm looking for insight on the following:

- does anyone know the name for these?
- also, when i experiment, i was going to try blanching the cabbage, like you would leaves for stuffed grape leaves...any other thoughts?