Your tracker happened, via the higgledy piggledy of search engine and news alert surprise, upon fodder for our first-ever post that I can recall from the press in Turkey. The first nugget is a short item without byline. I nearly scanned it (not digitally- but orbitally as in eyeball) before going on without sharing. It is on further thought unusual however in both topic and ambiguity. Hence intriguing. Thus the post.
- Huriyet Daily News - Nash shares memories of Albert Einstein in discussions ;
Intriguing indeed. In Turkey John Nash is so well-known the hed can refer to him only by last name and mean something to readers? The Huriyet paper says that it is the oldest (about 50 years) English language daily in Turkey. That it has an item from a game theory conference is impressive. The piece is science writing haiku - just enough to spur thought and questions. What does the Einstein vignette mean? How about Nash on the correlations between math and justice, mathematics and honesty? They are majestic comments that must stand on their own for we get only the barest suggestion of Nash's intended meaning. Nash tells the reporter, "There are no lies in math." That I think I get.
Bonus ambiguity: The news photo snapshot that ran with this includes a person who, depending on how one's brain is processing the pixels, either has a rather large, pale forehead, or is in fact attractive in a healthy, conventional way.
The page's links reveal a serious, vital publication. One of the page's panes goes to a current news story - from a Turkish news agency - that mentions discovery of a startling Hittite sculpture. It is more than 3000 years old, a relic of the bronze age. The story says it is of basalt, although the stone looks rather pale for that (perhaps it is of a volcanic tuff?). Most striking are the staring white eyes with black pupils, apparently inserts of other natural stone. It says it is unique and I sure never have seen anything quite like it. Not Greek, Not Roman, it says here. That sounds right. It is also huge. The story reports that on the back of the sculpture is written, presumably in Hittite script, "Suppiluliuma." That is not explained. It may be another thing that typical readers of an English language daily in Turkey know, probably from grade school onward. A series of Hittite kings, says Wikipedia, bore that name.
- Charlie Petit
