QoD - August 21, 2008

[megaaddict]

Spoiler

1. Mexico City was the site of what capital city of the Aztec Empire?
(I'll be as generous as possible with the spelling.)
Tutaxachutatllan ??

2. In November, 1968, The Beatles released an LP known by what "colorful" name?
White

3. Mole poblano is a sauce used in Mexican cuisine, made from dried chile peppers and what other, signature ingredient?
molasses

4. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were banned for life by the IOC after making what gesture during the 200 m. medal award ceremony?
Raised fists

[plasticene]

Spoiler

1. Mexico City was the site of what capital city of the Aztec Empire?
(I'll be as generous as possible with the spelling.)
Tutaxachutatllan ??

Ooh, sorry!

Spoiler

Tutaxachutatllan was the judicial capital of the Aztec Empire!

[MarleysGh0st]

ANSWERS


1. Mexico City was the site of what capital city of the Aztec Empire?
(I'll be as generous as possible with the spelling.)

Tenochtitlan. Try as I might, I couldn't accept "Xatapiciaixia" or "RJUJNBTYYFGHBYUYKG" as alternate spellings of that! Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec sky god, not a city. And since there were a number of Aztec cities beginning with 'T', "T????????????????" was slightly insufficient.

2. In November, 1968, The Beatles released an LP known by what "colorful" name?

The White Album. Wikipedia says Yellow Submarine was not released until January 17, 1969, but it was recorded in 1968 and the movie was released in 1968. Since you know, through my pitiful knowledge of pop music, that I didn't intend to have such a wicked distractor, I'm giving credit for this answer, too.

3. Mole poblano is a sauce used in Mexican cuisine, made from dried chile peppers and what other, signature ingredient?

Chocolate was the signature ingredient I was looking for, but the recipe also includes various nuts and seeds, including peanuts, so points for them, too.

4. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were banned for life by the IOC after making what gesture during the 200 m. medal award ceremony?

They raised their black-gloved fists in a "Black Power" salute.


POINTS


Nine perfect scores today. Good bye, again, bell curve!


wintergreen48 = 10
themanintheseersuckersuit = 10
andrewjackson = 10
plasticene = 10
NellyLunatic1980 = 10
jsuchard = 10
SportsFan68 = 10
Rexer25 = 10
TheConfessor = 10
Here's Fanny! = 6
AnnieCamaro = 6
ulysses5019 = 6
tanstaafl2 = 6
Hambone = 6
kroxquo = 6
T_Bone0806 = 6
Catfish = 6
megaaddict = 6
frogman042 = 6
LookingForHumorPoints = 5 (A solid point for each answer, plus a bonus point for avoiding temptation.)
jarnon = 4
elwoodblues = 4
tlynn78 = 4

[ulysses5019]

And since there were a number of Aztec cities beginning with 'T', "T????????????????" was slightly insufficient.

There are???? Name one. Ok, name another. I don't think Tijuana counts.

[plasticene]

I'm giving credit for this answer, too.

¡Muchas gracias!

[MarleysGh0st]

And since there were a number of Aztec cities beginning with 'T', "T????????????????" was slightly insufficient.

There are???? Name one. Ok, name another. I don't think Tijuana counts.

Teotihuacan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Tlacopan, Tzintzuntzen, Tula, Tamuin, Teayo, Tlalmanalco, Tepexpan, Tepetlaoxtoc, Tequixquiac, Tlapanaloya, Tultitlan...

Granted, I couldn't tell you anything particular about these place, except that they were used as Aztec city names in Sid Meier's Civilization III. I presume they did some research on that.

[andrewjackson]

And since there were a number of Aztec cities beginning with 'T', "T????????????????" was slightly insufficient.

There are???? Name one. Ok, name another. I don't think Tijuana counts.

Teotihuacan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Tlacopan, Tzintzuntzen, Tula, Tamuin, Teayo, Tlalmanalco, Tepexpan, Tepetlaoxtoc, Tequixquiac, Tlapanaloya, Tultitlan...

Granted, I couldn't tell you anything particular about these place, except that they were used as Aztec city names in Sid Meier's Civilization III. I presume they did some research on that.

It depends on how you define "Aztec". It is a really vague descriptor. The people living in Tenochtitlan at the time of the Spanish conquest called themselves Mexica people and they spoke Nahuatl. "Aztec" is a term sometimes used to describe the residents specifically of Tenochtitlan. Others use it for peoples that were part of the Aztec Empire specifically the cities of Texcoco and Tlacopan. Other people use it to mean all the Nahuatl speaking peoples of Central Mexico at the time.

No group ever called itself Aztec.

Teotihuacan was not an Aztec city. It collapsed 500 years before the rise of the Mexica in Tenochtitlan. Teotihuacan is, however, a Nahuatl word for the city. No one knows what the actual residents called it.

Tula was a Toltec city.

Tamuin was Mayan.

Most of those others at least look like Nahuatl place names.

[MarleysGh0st]

There are???? Name one. Ok, name another. I don't think Tijuana counts.

Teotihuacan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Tlacopan, Tzintzuntzen, Tula, Tamuin, Teayo, Tlalmanalco, Tepexpan, Tepetlaoxtoc, Tequixquiac, Tlapanaloya, Tultitlan...

Granted, I couldn't tell you anything particular about these place, except that they were used as Aztec city names in Sid Meier's Civilization III. I presume they did some research on that.

It depends on how you define "Aztec". It is a really vague descriptor. The people living in Tenochtitlan at the time of the Spanish conquest called themselves Mexica people and they spoke Nahuatl. "Aztec" is a term sometimes used to describe the residents specifically of Tenochtitlan. Others use it for peoples that were part of the Aztec Empire specifically the cities of Texcoco and Tlacopan. Other people use it to mean all the Nahuatl speaking peoples of Central Mexico at the time.

No group ever called itself Aztec.

Teotihuacan was not an Aztec city. It collapsed 500 years before the rise of the Mexica in Tenochtitlan. Teotihuacan is, however, a Nahuatl word for the city. No one knows what the actual residents called it.

Tula was a Toltec city.

Tamuin was Mayan.

Most of those others at least look like Nahuatl place names.

So do you think "T????????????????" was a close enough spelling?

[TheConfessor]

4. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were banned for life by the IOC after making what gesture during the 200 m. medal award ceremony?

According to an article in today's New York Times, they did not give a "Black Power" salute. So the scores may need to be recalculated.

My answer was also incorrect, since I said that they were barefooted. They actually wore black socks on the awards stand. Their shoes were also on the pedestal, but were not worn by Carlos and Smith during the ceremony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/opini ... ?th&emc=th

August 23, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Fists Raised, but Not in Anger
By ALLEN BARRA

South Orange, N.J.

“IT was a story that should have made headlines for one day,” Robert Paul, who was the United States Olympic Committee’s publicist at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, told me recently. “If they had handled the whole affair right, with some reason, tolerance and common sense, it would have been something we could now look back on with pride. Instead, it’s the Olympics’ biggest ongoing shame.”

We were discussing the most famous gesture of protest in Olympic history, the supposed black-power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medal stand of the 200 meters at the 1968 Games. And we kept coming to a paradox: While American critics are scoring points right now on the subject of Chinese civil-rights abuses and questionable athletic practices, they continue to forget that there is one big wrong that needs to be righted on the home front.

Smith and Carlos were members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which was organized by the sociologist Harry Edwards and others to draw attention to racism in sports and society. One of their priorities was pressuring the International Olympic Committee to bar South Africa for its apartheid policies, which it subsequently did. The group’s members weren’t just blacks — Peter Norman, who finished second in the 200, was one of many white athletes who wore the group’s pin.

There was talk of a boycott of the 1968 Olympics by African-American athletes; it never happened, although some stars, such as the All-America basketball player Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) staged a silent protest by refusing to try out for the Olympic team. For his part, Smith decided that if he won the 200 meters — and he did, in 19.83 seconds, a world record that stood for 11 years — he would make his own statement.

A few minutes before the medal presentation, Payton Jordan, the head coach of the track and field team, and sprint coach Stan Wright approached Robert Paul, the publicist, in the press section. Jordan told Paul that he had given Smith and Carlos permission to wear black socks. Did Paul, the coaches asked, know what was going on? Moments later, Smith, his wife, Carlos and the sportswriter Pete Axthelm walked down the press-box aisle, headed for the presentation stage. Did anyone know, Paul asked Jordan, why Mrs. Smith was holding a black glove in each hand?

Avery Brundage, the iron-fisted boss of the International Olympic Committee, must also have thought that something was up, as he did not appear to award Smith, Norman and Carlos their medals. “I really didn’t know what I was going to do with the gloves,” Tommie Smith told me in a recent telephone conversation. “I was thinking about wearing both of them but quickly realized that would make no sense.”

Walking toward the stand — his wife had by then passed the gloves along to the runners — he decided to “represent the flag with pride, but do it with a black accent.” Wearing their medals, they raised clenched, gloved fists as the national anthem was played — Smith his right, Carlos his left. It was done, Smith says, “in military style” — Smith was in the R.O.T.C. at the time. “My head was down,” he says, “because I was praying.”

“I wanted to embody my pride and love for what America is supposed to be,” he told me. “There was no hate, no hostility shown or intended.” It was not, contrary to how it has been portrayed in the media, intended as a black-power salute.

The next morning, Brundage told Douglas F. Roby, the American committee’s president, that if Smith and Carlos weren’t removed from the team then the entire United States track and field team would be banned from the rest of competition. Roby didn’t dare defy Brundage; he told the two athletes in person that they could keep their medals but they had to leave the Olympic Village.

Was there any precedent for what Smith and Carlos had done in Mexico City? In 1936, German athletes made the Nazi salute when awarded their medals. Brundage, then president of the United States Olympic Committee, made no objection, and rejected any proposals for boycotting the Berlin games.

In the years after Mexico City, both Smith and Carlos found life to be difficult. They had trouble finding work. In the late ’70s Carlos’s wife committed suicide. He blamed the pressure put on him by his Olympic protest. Smith, fired from his job at North American Pontiac upon returning from Mexico City, eventually became a professor and track coach at Santa Monica College.

Brundage died in 1975. In the 33 years since his death, Smith and Carlos say, neither has ever had so much as a feeler from either the International Olympic Committee or United Sates Olympic Committee regarding reconciliation. Neither has been voted into the American group’s hall of fame, even though Smith, by his count, once held world records in 11 different events, the most ever by a track and field athlete.

“I think their attitude is, ‘Why bring it up?’ ” Smith told me in our recent conversation. “Why rock the boat now?” But if some conscientious official was looking to right a wrong that grows larger with each passing Olympics, would Smith be conducive towards hearing them out? “I would” he said, then, after a pause, “take what they say into account. I would listen.” Would anyone at the United States Olympic Committee like Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’s phone numbers?

[MarleysGh0st]

4. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were banned for life by the IOC after making what gesture during the 200 m. medal award ceremony?

According to an article in today's New York Times, they did not give a "Black Power" salute. So the scores may need to be recalculated.

The points will stand. I don't think anyone missed that question, anyway.

I didn't grade based on any part of the answer referring to their footware or the angle of their heads. I was just looking a reference to the clenched fists and/or to the Black Power salute. Whether or not they say that was actually the intent of the gesture.

[ulysses5019]

And since there were a number of Aztec cities beginning with 'T', "T????????????????" was slightly insufficient.

There are???? Name one. Ok, name another. I don't think Tijuana counts.

Teotihuacan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Tlacopan, Tzintzuntzen, Tula, Tamuin, Teayo, Tlalmanalco, Tepexpan, Tepetlaoxtoc, Tequixquiac, Tlapanaloya, Tultitlan...

Granted, I couldn't tell you anything particular about these place, except that they were used as Aztec city names in Sid Meier's Civilization III. I presume they did some research on that.

Was there a Texaco gas station in Texcoco? Or Hersheys of Texas?