This and That- Dr. Oz Makes the Cover of Time Magazine

Yesterday, while browsing magazines at a local Barnes and Noble, I noticed that Dr. Mehmet Oz, who the world simply knows as Dr. Oz, was on the cover of "Time" magazine.

A tweet from Namik Tan, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, said that Dr. Oz was the eighth Turkish citizen to grace the cover of the magazine. I presume Dr. Oz has dual citizenship, and that one of the other seven people was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

And, a report from the English-language version of "Hurriyet," one of Turkey's most-read newspapers, confirmed that Dr. Oz was the eighth person to be on the cover of "Time" though no mention was made of the other seven. I am curious to know if Mehmet Ali Agca, arguably one of the most infamous people from Turkey in the last fifty years, was on the cover of "Time." 30 years ago, Agca attempted to assasinate Pope John Paul in Vatican City, and I'm wondering if this is the reason why no mention is made of who the other people are.

Though I am a "Newsweek" subscriber, as a fellow Turkish-American, I am very happy for Dr. Oz. The cover story deals with his own colon cancer scare. Dr. Oz, who was born in Cleveland, will turn 51 on June 11.

Speaking of Turkey, a tweet from Marc Guillet, who I presume is an international reporter, said the following which made me home-sick for my father's country, even though like Dr. Oz, I was born in America.

The tweet reads as follows:

"I'm at Kadikoy ferry where young people from the Black Sea region are dancing traditional music. I love it."

Kadikoy is arguably the most populated section of Istanbul on the Asian side of the megalopolis. The Trabzon-Rize region in the eastern Black Sea is indeed very well-known for folk dancing as well as tea farms.

While I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday, I also saw a book entitled "The Invisible Gorilla" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons. The book is meant to show that our instincts are not always the most logical ways of resolving problems.

One part of the book deals with what chess masters and criminals have in common, and while one may think it is that both plan ahead, the answer, according to a member of the South Dakota Chess Association, is that both groups have high degreees of confidence. We wonder what Boris Spassky, the great Russian chess player, would make of this?!

Lastly, we have more details about the attack on the Paul Gauguin* painting "Two Tahitian Women" (1899) that goes for 1899 and is worth $80 million. The painting is on the display until today at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

I saw the exhibit several weeks ago, and I had blogged about the early April incident, which occured long before I went to the National Gallery, here. But, I realized that I had overlooked how the painting was attacked.

Apparently, Susan Burns, 53, from Alexandria, Va., a suburb of Washington, DC, did not attack the painting with a fork or a knife as I had presumed. I was wondering how she would have gotten past the tight security at the museum. As it turns, while yelling: "This is evil!," she tried to take the painting down before the guards restrained her. It has been reported that Burns felt the painting of two topless Tahitian women carrying mangos, which is one of Gauguin's most famous painting, was 'too homosexual.'

*-Alas, we also learned that we did not spell Paul Gauguin's name correctly in that entry!