The problem with horse racing

As a spectator sport, the appeal of horse racing mystifies me. A race lasts just a few minutes and unless one is gambling on the outcome, it is not clear why one should care about which horse wins. There does not seem to be that much skill involved as far as I can tell, apart from the way that jockeys position and pace their horses during the race. It is the horses that do most of the work. The fact that jockeys beat the horses with a crop to make them go faster bothers me since it seems so cruel. But it is clear that horse racing has great appeal for many people who will go to considerable trouble and expense to attend events in person.

My ignorance of the appeal of horse racing is irrelevant since people find engaging all manner of activities that others find mystifying. What really bothers me are the deaths of horses at these events. I knew that horses sometimes fall during a race or during practice and injure their legs and then are euthanized. But I had not known how common that was until I saw this news item that said that seven horses had to be euthanized in the last few days during the lead up to the Kentucky Derby yesterday.
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Goal keeper scores goal

I would imagine that it is extremely rare for a goal keeper in a soccer match to score a goal for their team but that is what happened in this game.

Argentine goalkeeper Leandro Requena scored one of the most outrageous goals you are ever likely to see during his Cobresal side’s 3-1 win over Colo-Colo in Chile’s top soccer league.

With his team already leading 2-0 in the 77th minute, Requena took what initially looked like a fairly innocuous goal kick.

However, with Colo-Colo goalkeeper Brayan Cortés well outside of his penalty area, the ball bounced over his head and towards goal.

To add to his embarrassment, Cortés stumbled as he tried in vain to chase the ball as it crossed the line.

According to TNT Sports Chile, the goal was scored from a distance of 101 meters which, if ratified by Guinness World Records, would break the record for the longest range goal in history.

I do not know if they keep records for the longest shout of “g-o-o-a-l” by a TV announcer but this one could be a contender. It clocked in at about 12 seconds. Do announcers train for this?

Now that’s optimism

I was struck by this news item.

The billionaire mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose conservative media empire spans the globe, is engaged to marry for the fifth time at the age of 92 years old, he told an interviewer in his own tabloid newspaper, the New York Post.

“I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love – but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy,” Murdoch said of his new fiancee, Ann Lesley Smith, 66, whose late husband was Chester Smith, a country singer as well as radio and TV executive.

The pair intend to get married in the summer. “We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together,” Murdoch said. [My italics-MS]

Good luck with that!

Can we stop ‘going forward’?


In reading and listening to news items, I find many people using the phrase ‘going forward’. It has become so overused that I find it grating to hear. It is often redundant but seems to be a more a rhetorical device, a filler, to end a sentence. For example, an analyst discussing financial news might say “It is not clear what the Fed will do going forward” when “It is not clear what the Fed will do” conveys the same sentiment. After all, ‘will do’ implies the future and besides, the Fed cannot go backwards anyway.

Other phrases that have become cliches are ‘perfect storm’ and ‘think outside the box’. Mercifully the latter seems to seems to be going out of vogue, probably because everyone is sick of hearing it so much and it is the kind of corporate jargon that managers like to inflict on their employees.

These are my personal pet peeves. My dislike of them is largely because of their overuse, not necessarily because there is something wrong with them. This article lists other ‘junk’ words and phrases that the author thinks people should try to avoid for various reasons.

Making new friends as an adult

Friendships are important to one’s well being, even for introverts like me, with quality being more important than quantity. It is easier to form friends when one is younger, during one’s school and college days, when one is thrown together with peers for extended periods of time with few responsibilities and relationships can develop organically. But once one starts working and settles into a nuclear family, it becomes more difficult to form new friends, since work place friendships can be tricky to handle. Also, when one starts working, one tends to move to different locations and lose not only the physical proximity that is conducive to maintaining existing friendships but one has fewer opportunities to make new friends.
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Dogs with seat belts

A Florida legislator has proposed a bill that would restrict dogs’ movements inside vehicles.

Lauren Book, the Democratic leader in the Florida senate, proposed the restriction in a bill, SB 932, filed last week. The measure would have made it illegal to “allow a dog to extend its head or any other body part outside a motor vehicle window while the person is operating the motor vehicle on a public roadway”.

It also would make it illegal to hold a dog in one’s lap while driving and require that any dog being transported be restrained.

Anyone who violated those provisions would be subject to a non-criminal traffic infraction, the bill says.

I approve of this.

Whenever they traveled in our car, our dogs were always put in a harness that had a loop that the center rear seat belt would pass through. The reasons for this were two-fold. In the case of a crash, it would save the dog from being flung forward and the harness would spread the impact force over their bodies to lessen the pressure. The other reason was to prevent them from wandering around the car or even coming to the front seat and distracting the driver, something that has been the cause of crashes.

Our dogs did not seem to mind. In fact, they would get all excited when we took out the harness because they knew it meant a car ride. The dogs were able to move around somewhat on the back seat to get comfortable and also sleep but not far enough to stick their heads out of the window. We were very particular that all the people in our car fastened their seat belts too.

Discreet and discrete

Any discussion about language usage tends to provoke disagreements between so-called prescriptivists (those who argue that we should try and maintain what they consider to be standard or correct usage) and descriptivists (those who argue that language just reflects current usage and is thus always evolving and that there is no timeless standard that can be appealed to.)

David Owen writes about a pet peeve of his that he claims is beyond an issue of taste and is objectively objectionable.

Here’s an example of a sentence type that I think no writer should ever use:

A former resident of Brooklyn, Mrs. Jones is survived by three daughters and five grandchildren.

The first phrase is an appositive—typically a noun or noun phrase that modifies another noun or noun phrase, which appears next to it in the sentence. (“A former resident of Brooklyn” and “Mrs. Jones” refer to the same person, so they are said to be “in apposition.”) Appositives almost always follow the noun they modify, and are set off by commas; the kind I don’t like come first.
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My problem with all such sentences is that they seem to have been turned inside out: they start in one direction, then swerve in another. The awkwardness is obvious if you imagine hearing one in conversation. No one has ever said to you, “A sophomore at Cornell, my niece is coming home for Christmas,” or “Sixty-six years old, my wife is an incredible cook.” Either sentence, if spoken, would sound almost comical, as though the speaker were struggling to learn English. (You wouldn’t use one in an e-mail or a text to a friend, either.)

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What is the appeal of long showers?

I was reading a story about a parent who was concerned that his 13 year old son was taking showers that lasted for an hour or so and that the cost involved in heating so much water was becoming considerable. Allowing for a bit of exaggeration, it still seems likely that the showers were pretty long. And I too know of people who take quite long showers.

I find the appeal of long showers baffling. For me, a shower is a way of becoming clean and that is achieved by getting completely wet, applying soap, and then rinsing off the soap. The whole process takes less than five minutes. I try to make my showers as quick as possible, not so much to not waste water (though that is a concern in the drought-ridden California) but mainly because standing in the shower is boring. I took very quick showers even when I was back in Ohio where there was plentiful water.

Even though I do not take baths in the tub (being immersed in the same water used to clean oneself is something that we did not do in Sri Lanka, preferring flowing water), I can understand that soaking in warm water can be soothing and restful and a stress reliever, though I am bemused when I see depictions in TV and films of people in the tub smoking, reading, eating, drinking, using their phones, working on their computers etc, and so on. Isn’t it easier to do all those things outside the tub, which has the added benefit of not risking them becoming wet?

But back to the original topic, I can understand showers taking longer if a person’s daily activities result in them getting covered in dirt and grime but for many people like me that reason does not hold. Clearly some people get pleasure from taking long showers for reasons that elude me.