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!