Tag: #FOWC

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Upset! (Day 3, Tokyo 2020)

A practically unheralded no-name upset the world-ranked team. Athletes, multi-world-champions, previous-gold-medalists, who hadn’t been beaten in a long time, were outplayed and out-strategized. Cue the American excitement for our great win… excuse me, did you think this was about Team USA losing?

There’s been a ton of hand wringing at the beginning of the Tokyo Games in the American press. Headlines about being “stunned” and shocked because no U.S. medals were won on Day One, and several of our world’s best teams lost opening rounds and games. It’s especially aggravating when all this flagellation glosses over the outstanding play of everybody else. Plenty of winning has taken place. Plenty of thrilling contests and patriotic tears. Yes, there have been a few big upsets. Let’s embrace All of them.

Presume, Much?

In 1908, the first truly international Olympics in London, American team organizer James Sullivan wanted to know how the British were going to determine the “overall national winner.” Sullivan, head of the US team, devised his own system of assigning points to medals and “went so far as to claim that the British were dreaming up some dastardly counting scheme that would privilege their athletes and ensure the championship…” writes Olympic historian David Golblatt. Because, even in 1908, our obnoxious chauvinistic leaders thought we ought to win everything. That’s when the absurd medal count started.

Here are my predictions for Tokyo 2020:

Team USA will not win all the medals
Team USA will not win all the medals that the media “expects” them to win

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Mixing It Up, Olympic Style

We are a few days away from Opening Ceremonies, stumbling and bumbling our way into a Games postponed a year and now without live spectators. But the athletes have waited and trained and practiced and now it’s Their Time.

Jasmine Blocker, USA, handing the baton to teammate, Obi Igbokwe, in the 4×400 m relay. Get ready for Mixed Gender Team events! Youtube Video by NBCSPorts.

There will be some changes for Tokyo 2020, not the least of which will be boxes of face masks and gallons of hand sanitizer. It’s not even really weird that the year these contests are being held is not the year they will be named (Wha? Not Tokyo 2021? Nope).

Consider that the Games of the VI Olympiad were in Berlin, in 1916. Didn’t know about those? They were cancelled because of World War I, but the IOC kept them in the official list. Whereas the IOC didn’t include the 1906 Games in Athens, which are now called the Intercalated Games, because the IOC didn’t run them. Whenever you wonder why the IOC is doing something out-of-touch with reality, just remember the VI Olympiad.

But these changes are exciting, so let’s discuss. Let’s talk about some of the new sports, the new Mixed Teams, and the new peoples we will see competing.

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The Dino-calypse: Mexican, Ukrainian, or the Hindu God Destroyer?

The traumatized pachycephalosaurus! Photo from cdn.mos.

If you think I’m nuts about the Olympics, you should hear me talk about dinosaurs. All anyone needs to say is “antorbital fenestra,” and I swoon. Or “Chicxulub crater,” which is the impact site for the theoretical asteroid that hit 65 million years ago and wiped out most of life on earth, except for the tree shrews, from which all of us are descended. (We’ll have to save the tree shrews for another time.)

So you can imagine my excitement upon learning of the controversy between the Boltysh crater and the Chicxulub crater. Which came first? Apparently, there’s big money in being first because scientists from India are also claiming precedence.

Also, I learned the word “palynological,” which satisfies my Weird-Word-of-the-Month fetish.  It means “the study of live and fossil spores, pollen grains, and similar plant structures,” from the Greek palunein, which means “to scatter” as in dust or “pollen.”  Fern spores are very much in play here. And, for those of you with allergies, you now know that they are palynological.

Ok, so these dudes back in 2010 noticed this crater in the Ukraine called the Boltysh crater. The crater was “roughly” the same age as Chicxulub, and when we’re talking 65 million years, roughly can be mean +/- a million years, right? They were trying to be a bit more precise—in the 10,000 year range maybe—to see whether Boltysh came before or after Chicxulub.

There’s fame and fortune in the Dinosaur Demise!

Continue reading “The Dino-calypse: Mexican, Ukrainian, or the Hindu God Destroyer?”