Noon Rush Hour Tweets: Does God Decide if Tom Brady Throws Interceptions?

Greetings to our beloved blog readers in Wales, Dubai, and South Korea.....

We imagine folks are quite happy in Tunisia today as the national soccer team defeated Zambia 2-1 in the African Cup of Nations yesterday. Today, in Turkish soccer play, Trabzonspor defeated its fellow eastern Turkish side Sivasspor 3-1, thanks to two goals from Paraguay international Oscar Cardozo.

Our images above are of: 1) The Buffalo Bills, an American football team in Buffalo, NY; 2) The Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn.; and 3) Cong. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who is the speaker of the house..........yes, we are surprised to be posting a tweet from him as well (this blog has a center-left bias, but then again, so does the truth).........

Here are tweets taken from the noon rush hour on the east coast of America:

1) The Hill (a newspaper that covers Congress): Sen. Lindsey Graham (D-SC) says...........'I'm well-qualified to be president'.....

2) UberFacts: One in four Americans believe that God decides who wins the Super Bowl (that is our reason for using the Bills, they are 0-4 in Super Bowls)

3) Chris Eliopolous (a cartoonist....yeah, we got his name spelled right, we think!): Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between a mentally disturbed man and a guy on his Bluetooth headset.

4) Politico: Bill and Hillary Clinton praise King Abdullah's 'humanitarian efforts.'

5) WNYC (New York's NPR station): "On March 22, the fare of a New York City bus or subway ride will increase by a quarter.........*sigh*....)

6) Speaker John Boehner: This pen is used to sign common sense job bills before sending them to the president's desk (hashtag: National Handwriting Day)

7) Peter Sciretta (tweeting from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah): The Bronze is a filthy R-rated SNL sketch at feature-film length. If that sounds like something fun, go see it. If not, avoid it (hashtag: Sundance)

8) Mike Reiss (Boston-based sports reporter): Darelle Revis of the Pats relayed how Tom Brady addressed players Thursday and talked about not letting deflate football story to be a distraction.

9) Sherine Tadros (Middle East-based tv journalist): Calling the late King Abdullah (of Saudi Arabia) a 'reformer' shows how far low the bar is in the region.

10) WXII 12 News (TV station in Winston-Salem, NC): At 12:40 p.m. (we have) icy mountain spots, glazing on trees, sleet now rain in the Triad, upper 30s.

11) Hartford Courant: Exodus of tens of thousands of residents to other states has lead to Connecticut's first population drop since 2008.

http://www.thehill.com

http://www.desperatetimes.com/ (a comic strip by Chris E.)

http://chriseliopoulos.com/

http://www.wnyc.org/

http://www.politico.com

https://twitter.com/johnboehner (Definitely not an endorsement)

http://www.hartford.com/ (Hartford, Ct, tourism site)

http://www.courant.com/

https://www.marktwainhouse.org/

Last Ten Films We've Seen (as of Oct. 9th): Imports; Lots of Imports

A verse from "The Holy Koran," a bus-stop shaped like a school bus in Athens, Georgia, and a Slovenian folk dance are our three images here in reference to: 1) The Reluctant Fundamentalist; 2) I Am Waiting; and 3) Spare Parts, a film from Slovenia. "Spare Parts" was released as part of the Film Movement dvd series, but it appears the company has lost copyright rights for the films as it is no longer listed as one of their selections (we found the film through a local library).

Interestingly enough, Turkish actor Haluk Bilginler is in both "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" and "Innocence."

Here is the list:

1) The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 2012. Director: Mira Nair.

2) Love Crime. France. 2010. Dir: Alain Courneau. w/Kristin Scott Thomas

3) Innocence. Turkey. 1997. Dir: Zeki Demirkubuz.

4) I Am Waiting. Japan. 1957. Dir: Koreyoshi Kurahara

5) Spare Parts. Slovenia. 2003. Damjan Kozole.

6) Wadjda. Saudi Arabia. 2012. Haifaa Al-Mansour.

7) Gone Girl. 2014. David Fincher (excellent movie!) w/ Ben Affleck

8) The Arbor. Documentary. 2010. Clio Barnard.

9) Prisoners. 2013. Denis Villenuuve.

10) Hustling. TV Movie. 1975. Joseph Sargent w/Jill Clayburgh and Lee Remick

http://www.filmmovement.com

http://www.criterion.com

Our First Entry in Turkish

Herkese mutlu gunler. Bugun Malatya Kayisilar bizim destek oluyor (tabikii saka ediyoruz).

Ayrica, butun Sudi Arabistan, Japonya, ve Polanya'daki dostlarimiza merhabalar gondermek istiyoruz.

Bugun ABD'nin orta Atlantik bolgesinde baya cok yagmur yagmis. North Carolina devlet'i bir kac kentler'de sel olmus. Ve Bashkent Vashington'da bulutlu, yagmurlu ve ruzgarli gun gecirdigin'e duyduk.

Eger siz bana Twitter'de selam solyle'mek istersiniz, @Tilly70 benim Twitter isminimdir.

English translation abridged: "We wish everyone a nice day. Today, Malatya Apricots (a real company) is today's daily sponsor (this is a joke; we have no sponsors). We want to say hello to all our friends in Saudi Arabia, Japan and Poland.

It rained very hard in the mid-Atlantic part of the country. The state of North Carolina and Washington, DC (there is no 'W' in Turkish, though George W. Bush, who was not popular in Turkey because of the Iraq War, made everyone aware of the letter W). If you want to say hello on Twitter, my handle is @Tilly70."


http://www.malatyaapricots.com

http://www.malatyaapricots.blogspot.com

For Our International Audience-Let's Get Our Times Right

The novelist Michael Chabon recently told "Mother Jones," more known for its liberal politics that the problem with the Internet was that it has evolved into a deliberate force for wasting time, and a similar point is apparently being made with Sunday's lead story in the business section of "The Washington Post," about wasted time in the office.

With that in mind, we thought we would keep everyone updated on the current time differences with the east coast of America (Philadelphia, Orlando) and the rest of the world. We should have had this posted an hour ago, but we had to check Twitter and Facebook 'just one more time.'

12:00 a.m.

Philadelphia

Washington, DC

Charlotte, NC

2:00 a.m.

Santiago (Chile)

3:00 a.m.

Sao Paulo (Brazil)

5:00 a.m.

Reykjavik (Iceland)

Dublin (pictured, James Joyce statue)

6:00 a.m.

Frankfurt

Venice

7:00 a.m.

Bursa (Turkey)

Rhodes (Greece, pictured)

Sofia (Bulgaria)

Amman (Jordan)

8:00 a.m.

Jeddah (Saudi Arabia, map pictured)

Baghdad

Sannaa (Yemen)

Nairobi (Kenya)

http://www.visitphilly.com

http://www.motherjones.com

http://www.saudiarabiaembassy.net

http://www.visitrhodes.gr/

http://www.visitdublin.com

Monday Morning Tweets_ The Agony of Swedish Defeat

The images are of 1) Spiro Agnew- Richard Nixon's first vice president who resigned over scandal 2) The Swedish handball team and 3) A debate between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in 1992.

Here is a rundown of some eye-catching tweets we saw one hour ago:

1) @PamGrier (actress Pam Grier): "Missy Elliott Had 'No Clue' About Aaliyah album" (This is in reference to swimmer Missy Elliott of the United States who several gold medals at the Olympics).

2) @Todayszaman ("Today's Zaman" is an English-language newspaper): "Number of Syrian refugees in Turkey nears 60,000."

3) @DailyNewsEgypt: "Iranian President in significant visit to Saudi Arabia" (Iran and Saudi Arabia have ironically been political rivals).

4) @RadioSweden: "Sweden's not so shabby Olympic performance" (The link indicated there were some pleasant surprises for Sweden at the games, but that the men's handball team 22-21 loss to France in the gold medal game was a profound disappointment; handball is very popular in Scandinavian countries).

5) @Electionate (Nate Cohn): "Instead the Ryan plan produced movement among the 'rising American electorate and independents."  (Cohn is a writer for the center-left American magazine "The New Republic," in case you were in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia over the weekend, Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate).

6) @DavidFrum (David Frum): "Shouldn't congressional Republicans propose some pilot programs to test whether premium support will control costs effectively?" (Frum is a former speech-writer for George W. Bush who coined the term 'axis of evil.' He has been critical of the fringe Tea Partiers within the Republican Party. Ironically, he was given a seemingly friendly profile in the very liberal magazine "The Nation").

7) @KatrinaNation (Katrina vanden Heuvel): "Great that first time a woman will moderate presidental debates, but will we tough questions? That's what debates should be about." (She is the managing editor of "The Nation").

8) @LOLGOP: "Ryan is the most extreme GOP nominee in a century. The most extreme GOP VP nominee in 4 years is scary enough." (This tweet is why we chose Spiro Agnew; there were too many for Paul Ryan and most were unusable).

http://www.tnr.com

http://www.frumforum.com

http://www.thenation.com

http://www.svrigesradio.se

http://www.todayszaman.com

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com

Monday Morning (USA Time) Olympic Tweets: Shawn Johnson is Wearing Hot Pants

 

Wow! We had a real hard time loading these images! They are of: a) Misha the Bear, the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (we seem to be popular in Russia for some reason) b) Icelandic handball star Arnor Atlason;. Iceland beat the host Great Britain in men's handball today by a score of 41-24 and c) American gymnast Shawn John who won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics; she is not competing in London, but she has been watching gymnastics events in the stands at the Olympics.

As a Turkish-American, it was interesting to see one Turkish newspaper "The Daily Hurriyet" express optimism as Turkish women's sprinter Nevin Yanit, 26, who competes in hurdles finished first in her preliminary race yesterday, while another Turkish newspaper "Today's Zaman" was expressing pessimism as a tweet from the publication pointed that Turkey has yet to medal at the Olympics so far.

 

So, here are some of the things we have learned about the games on Twitter today; they do or may contain SPOILER ALERTS!

 1) @dominquedawes (Dominique Dawes): "Victoria Komova of RUS is up and ready and she definitely wants to redeem herself after the silver in AA."

2) @AlisonMitchell: "Got a feeling in my stomach like I used to before school. And, I'm not even competing! #goBeth #gymnastics" (This tweet is in reference to British gymnast Beth Tweedle, a contender for the bars event).

3) @bradplumer: "A few Olympic rule changes explain why so many gymnasts have been falling on their faces."

4) @nprnews: "Let's catch p: U.S. women's basketball Blowout, and Maroney's vault woes" (This is in reference to American gymnast Makayla Maroney falling on her second vault).

5) @ISROlympics2012: "Eran and Gideon in 11th place after 8 races" (This is talking about the Israeli men's sailing team of Gideon Kilger and Eran Sela. A later tweet from American tv reporter Christiane Amanpour said that Vojdan Shaherkan, a 16-year old female athlete from Saudi Arabia, one of Israel's main rivals had provided the first win for a female athlete for her country as she upset Melissa Mojica of Puerto Rico in judo. But, the result is not expected to change women's sporting rights in the kingdom.)

6) @shawnJohson (Shawn Johnson): "Hot pants! We're color coordinated."

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com 

http://timesofisrael.com 

http://www.todayszaman.com 

http://www.dominiquedawes.com 

http://www.shawnjohnson.net 

Saudi Arabia to Send Female Athletes to Olympics for the First Time

Saudi Arabia has answered to critics and will allow two women to compete at the 2012 London Olympics, which get underway in two weeks on July 27th.

Alas, Dalma Malhas*, 20, (pictured bottom), an Ohio resident with Saudi Arabian parents who was considered to be the most likely female athlete to break the gender barrier, is not among those two athletes because her horse was injured. Thus, she can not compete in women's equestrian events, in spite of her many international accomplishments in the sport.

However, Sarah Attar, 20 (pictured above), a California resident who attends Pepperdine University, will represent the kingdom nation in the 800-meter relay in track and field competition. Attar will compete while covering her head to comply with Saudi Arabia's orthodox Islamic conservatism. She told various media outlets that was thrilled to break the barrier.

The second going to the games for Saudi Arabia is Wadjan Shahrkhani, a competitor in women's judo.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar will be sending female athletes to the Olympics for the first time.

*Dalma Malhas' name was not spelled correctly in an earlier entry, hence we have two version of her name in our tags

Quote of the Day- John Quincy Adams

Dalma Malhans, the Saudi Arabian female equestrian athlete who tried to become her country's first female athlete at the Olympics is trending on Bing; alas, the same can not be said for John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), who was America's sixth president and the son of John Adams, the second president.

Before becoming president, the offspring Adams, who like his father was from Massachusetts, was ambassador to Russia and to the Netherlands, and several other countries.

Here is his quote, which is part of our series on quotes from the first eight American presidents:

"Old minds are like old horses, you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order."

The Rabbit Ears Quiz (1 of 12)_ Lolek and Bolek

Today we start our The Rabbit Ears Quiz series on both of our blogs. We begin with "Lolek and Bolek," a very popular cartoon in its native Poland, but it is very obscure here in the United States. Though I was delighted to find out that Netflix actually offered collections of the Polish cartoons, which originally aired from
1963-1966.

I actually came across "Lolek and Bolek" in 1975 when our family lived in then-communist Poland as my late father Mehmet Gokbudak, a Turkish immigrant to the United States, worked for a Polish factory for six months as part of a program with General Electric, his employer.

While researching a piece about "Lolek and Bolek" a few months ago, I was stunned to learn that one of the cartoon's main novelties is the fact that it was the only cartoon shown on television in one of the following Muslim countries. Is the answer:

A) Saudi Arabia
B) Iran
C) Iraq
D) Syria
E) Egypt

There were 150 episodes of "Lolek and Bolek," which were usually about eight and a half minutes in length. One can now watch entire episodes on Youtube.

The two boys frequently traveled to other parts of the globe, including one curious to the American West! A monument to the characters was unveiled this year in Poland. The show still ranks as the most popular cartoon in Polish television history.

SIDEBAR: In case you were wondering, the answer to our last Road Trip question is "B."

Weekend Road Trip- Maryland to Tennessee (6 of 20)

Hi kids. Be sure to tell all your friends about out blog to make it worth our time. Hmmm, yes, we are beginning to sound like a PBS station.

Today, we focus on the distance between Hagerstown, Md, home of the Hagerstown Suns (if you left off the 's,' one might think it was the town newspaper!), and Chattanooga, Tenn., home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, which is a reference to nearby Lookout Mountain. But, yes, we were wondering what exactly a 'lookout' is too; is it like some kind of TSA agent? (We hope our friends at the ACLU like the joke, or that someone does!).

Currently, the Hagerstown Suns are in Lexington, Ky., where they will be play the Lexington Legends tonight. The team's next home game is against the reigning South Atlantic League champs the Lakewood Blueclaws, who play in Lakewood, NJ.

The Chattanooga Lookouts are also on the road in Alabama as they are playing the Birmingham Barons, a team that beat them 6-2 yesterday. The next home game for the Lookouts, who are in the Southern League (so they can't play the Suns) is on Monday against the Hunstville Stars from Huntsville, Ala., which should not confused with Huntsville, Tex., where they execute more people than they do in Saudi Arabia (I guess by now, it's obvious that I'm not exactly a right-wing Tea Partier).

To look at the distance between the two cities, we took the address of the Oasis Hookah Lounge in Hagerstown, Md., and the address of the City Cafe (Carter Street location) in Chattanooga, Tenn.

It should be pointed that we are using the Turkish shadow puppets of Karagoz and Hacivat, which are proudly from the city of Bursa, Turkey, instead of the image of a hookah pipe to be kid-friendly and because images of the pipes are surprisingly difficult to hot-link.

And, of course, the choo choo is because Chattanooga is famous for (I think everyone outisde of Tajikistan knows this) The Chattanooga Choo Choo.

So, what is the answer? If you know, I will give you either an eight-track tape of the Oak Ridge Boys' Greatest Hits or a vinyl record from Captain Tanille unless you are related to me, which disqualifies any siblings residing in Goteborg, Sweden (in-joke...hmmm...they may not get it either).

Is the answer:

A) 11 hours and 50 minutes

B) 12 hours even

C) 12 hours and 10 minutes

D) 12 hours and 20 minutes

The answer to last week's question was A) 12 hours and ten minutes. We have no idea which PBS station serves Chattanooga, and we are too lazy/tired to look it up. But, we do know that Maryland Public Television serves Hagerstown, and we wonder if they still show "Dr. Who" reruns on Saturday night!

Things We Learned on Twitter This Week- Southwest Airlines Thinks We Still Like to Fly

Ahh, yes, the good ole days before 9/11 when it took less time to get through the airport in Albany, New York*, than it did in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Oh well!

With the advent of the new full body scanners which has undoubtedly increased ACLU memberships, people from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, are moaning and of course, I am one of them, even though I was not on an airplane this holiday weekend.

But, Southwest Airlines tweeted on Wednesday that they were looking for some positive tweets for their passengers, and amazingly enough people seemed to be giving them just that:

"I LUV all the travel tweets coming in this morning! Let us know how we're doing on this busy travel day! Where are you headed today?"

In other airplane news, British comic actor Neil Morrissey reportedly made an ass of himself on a British Airways flight from Singapore to London Heathrow by going on a profanity-laced tirade while under the influence of alcohol.

And, according to "The Daily News," an English-language journal in Pakistan, the country's leading airline Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was completely unprepared for the massive numbers of Muslim pilgrims travel on hajj to Mecca, as there were long delays in most flights from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan last week during the Muslim Eid Mubarak holiday. The journal reported that some 100,000 pilgrims were flying out of Jeddah back to major Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Lahore.

*-Albany is one of the many airports, a surprising number of which are in smaller markets, that has started using the full body scanners.

Things We Learned From the BBC Today- Saudi Arabia to Allow Blackberrys

Yes, we are actually referring to those electronic telecommunication devices which were made famous in part by then-candidate Barack Obama during his run for the presidency. But, we couldn't resist an image of blackberries that you might find in rural West Virginia or wherever these things are grown!

But, after much dispute the Saudi Arabian government apparently will allow Black Berry service to continue in the kingdom according to the BBC.

Riyadh was apparently unhappy that Black Berry handsets automatically scrambled messages and sent them to Canada in a measure that was aimed at trying to find perspective terrorist suspects.

We are dedicating tonight's entry to students at Eastside High School in Paterson, NJ, as the Ghosts (yes, that is their actual nickname, but we think Harvey Comics would sue if they used Casper as their mascot) are our bonus High School of the Week (to make up for the fact that we forgot to name one last week).

Paterson, NJ, is believed to have the highest concentration of Turkish-Americans per capita in the country though I myself live far away in the coal-mining town of Hazard, Kentucky (that is a joke, but even though I live nowhere near there it's not much of a stretch!).

The high school was actually made famous as it was depicted in the Morgan Freeman movie "Lean on Me," which was based on a true story that happened there.

The current principal is Karen Johnson.

Eastside High is 70 percent Hispanic, and the school goes from grades nine through twelve.

The legendary beat poet Allen Gingsberg, one of my personal favorite figures of the '60s, is arguably the school's most famous alum.