It’s always good to scan the news headlines, become acquainted with what’s going on in the world around you without necessarily judging it; rather, to consume the headlines, consider them and keep your own counsel, without too much unnecessary rushes to frothy opinion and outrage, indignation, aggrievement…yet we shall do our best!<\/p>\n
For example, Alan Alda wants less jargon and verbiage in technological, scientific discourse. You can see the story here…<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/05\/01\/alan_alda_isnt_interested_in_your_scientific_mumbo_jumbo_ap\/<\/a><\/p>\n Uh-oh. Lots of handicapping-information purveyors are not gonna like that<\/em>. We’ll still be here, though. After all, we are too small to fail. And that’s pretty plain-spoken, huh? Sometimes you can try too hard, try to bend the Unbendable Universe. And then you see the other guy over there, hardly trying, not even lifting a finger, really, and he has had more luck (grace?) than is humanly possible, and he has led an interesting existence filled with moments that are monuments. How do you get some of that! Sometimes, you want to go with the humanist savant and the humanist oracle instead of the overbearing, micromanaging, hyperspecific randroid. But we leave it to yourself to decide. Up to you. We’ll play either side.<\/p>\n Back to the gist of the story, it’s like how Einstein put it: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”<\/p>\n His theories (theories!) may yet be disproved, but for now we can trust that guy, Einstein. But it will be a blast (literally) when time-space goes full-bore empirical!<\/p>\n Here’s a story about the bloat and socialism that have crept into the U.S. professional sports world…<\/p>\n http:\/\/nbcsports.msnbc.com\/id\/51727826\/ns\/sports-baseball\/<\/a><\/p>\n The consistent, the everyday, the free<\/a> page, this here web log. It is supremely ironical that we over here in the U.S. scoff at Europe for its Centralization and Planning, yet their football leagues are the exact opposite. In America, there is franchising, and once you buy into the League, you’re pretty much there forever. In Europe, there is no protection enforced by The League. If you do not perform sufficiently, you get demoted from the top-flight. If you do perform well enough, you get promoted, go to big tournaments. Americans should be able to understand that. <\/p>\n Yet in North American baseball and football and hockey, it’s the whole phony self-esteem movement: you get in the playoffs just for showing up, unless you have been wholly incompetent. As well, you stay in the League — even if you have failed to win a single game (admittedly hard in baseball or basketball or hockey, but it has happened in U.S. Gridiron Throwball).<\/p>\n The regular season in European football has supreme meaning. It is serious, every game matters. If you are not fighting for survival in the Bottom Three (just like on Amerika’s Idle<\/em>!), you are pushing for the title or at least a Champions League placement. <\/p>\n The specialized tournaments, the Cups, UEFA Cup, Champions League, are where the dice-roll comes in. That’s like the playoffs over here. More chances for silverware.<\/p>\n It is a thrilling blend of competitions: the day-in, day-out consistency of the regular-season, 38-match championship, plus the (mainly) win-or-go-home competitions. All facets of competitive drive come into play. It’s not merely scratching by for six months to get into the tournament and then turning on the style for two months to win it. Nope. <\/p>\n Even the World Serious is a crapshoot. We’ve seen the results bear this out. But the contrarian will, hopefully, see through the marketing and singled-out glory and know better. <\/p>\n (Of course, despite all this lofty, high-minded talk, it was still supremely satisfying to see the Tejas (Tejas!) Rancherosz get beat up the past several seasons. That’s probably why they were not invited to The Bush43 Library Opening Day. Sorry! We’re human too!)<\/p>\n Next…<\/p>\n http:\/\/nbcsports.msnbc.com\/id\/51712135\/ns\/sports-horse_racing\/<\/a><\/p>\n Now, we don’t really pay attention to the larger horseracing media; it might rub off on us and we might start talking like them. Inded, we did not even read the above story, really. Because in this moment, it is not our charter to be (penny-ante?) Woodward & Bernstein of daily big-story horseracing. There are plenty of others who put out the press releases, regurgitate the press releases, rehash the obvious plotlines and human-interest stories. They have their place. These are all ennobling and gratifying, but we are too black-hearted (yes, admittedly! BLACK-HEARTED!) to be able to do it. That’s just how it is. Truly, sometimes a vacuum is needed so you can find some reasonable sanctuary away from the Echo Chamber of Your Own Industry; or, as Jesus Christ once put it in a volume many people call The Bible (New Testament), “Amen I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country.” Two-thousand years later, Jesus remains correct. Echo & the Bunnymen also said it nicely: “Too many seekers, too few beacons”.<\/p>\n So, we do not even know who is in the Derby or what’s going on with it. Regretsz! Rather, our curiosity was piqued by this journalist’s last name: “Mucciolo”. Now, everyone else in Horse Racing probably knows this, but we claim blessed ignorance: Is this guy related to the great free-agent jockey Joe Mucciolo who was a top journeyman on the Mid-Atlantic circuit in the 1970s and 1980s, that Joe Mucciolo? Just like all the other great Italian jockeys of that time and space, such as Chris Landicini Jr. and Matthew Vigliotti (the citizens always used to pronounce his name “VIG-A-LOTTI”, and we don’t think all of them were dyslexic, either!) and Stephen Pagano and Howard Lanci and Steve Caraccio and so many others whose names are too far stuck in our balky memory?<\/p>\n Thanks for any input you may be able to provide!<\/p>\n Free<\/a> ones<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Frantic City<\/strong> (closing day, sniff…) 1, 4, 5<\/em>, 6, 7<\/em> Pay-side<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n Churchill<\/strong> 2, 9<\/em><\/p>\n Today’s Stakes Pageantry<\/strong>: Sadly, today is the last day of 2013 live hoofing at Frantic City<\/strong>, and so that means the annual Tony Gatto Dream Big<\/strong> (!) Stakes<\/strong>, Race 6<\/strong>. On the free<\/a> page. W00t!<\/p>\n Sorry, but Belmont 7 has already gone. And the $15.60 winner in it, the beautiful Julie’s Love, was one of those vaunted Triple Threat Horseys. Seriously. Check it.<\/p>\n Yesterday’s Activity<\/strong>: The Start of any Pars Season is a time filled at once with excitement and dread. How will the handicapping engines run with the new (s)par(k) plugs installed? Will they hum? Will they sputter and explode? So far, so good, cruising velocity attained. Will it maintain? No snap-judgments! Hahahahaha! But we think these numbers are going to be OK. You may not enjoy them, you may disagree, but the handicapping engines (at least the way we rev them) are responding positively. Of course, the obvious disclaimer becomes: your mileage may vary. Of course. (As an aside, guys who measure performance solely by the top-pick percentage are missing the point; from our observations, it’s the Type-A guysz who are wont to do this, generally.) Praise Allah!<\/p>\n Now, we measure performance in our case by how our public and private touting services are doing. We can allow for the obvious, low-priced horseys to be selected correctly by most of the mopesz out there. We add nothing insightful or original to that favourite-heavy discussion. No problem. To our way of thinking, we want a little different texture to our product. We want to uncover live longshots (vis-à-vis the morning line, since the touting is done ahead of time). We want to uncover third- and fourth-choices (and higher) on the morning line, the ones not receiving the bulk of public scrutiny.<\/p>\n (By the way, we can pick obvious chalk OK, too, should the need arise, but it’s not really our charter. For the obvious horseys, we turn to a potent predictor called the Triple Threat Horsey. But, admittedly, not too many people are going to remember how many times you selected Zenyatta or Frankel or Black Caviar, right?)<\/p>\n All right, all right. So back to these so-called live longshots. Opener yesterday at Atlantic (a k a Frantic) City, and the free<\/a>-page tout was Barbara’s Beauty, 8-1 on the morning line. She fell to fourth on the Betting Line, with no Fair Odds assigned. But she was one of a handful of LifeLiner Speed Column qualifiers in the race, so she was worth a tout at forecast odds of 10-1.<\/p>\n She went off at 8-1 in real life and with a LifeLiner score of 71-80-84, she figured to have some decent rally-ability in her. She closed furiously to just miss the win by a dirty neck at a bet-down 8-1. <\/p>\n Oops! Bit off more than we can chew, the story of our life. As for this particular story, the one about the “Yesterday’s Activity”, it must resume somewhere down the line. More later, but suffice to say for now, good news from The WRD, SunRay, Frantic City yesterday, Tuesday…<\/p>\n WMF Report<\/strong>: <\/p>\n Early<\/em> Nocturnal Submission<\/strong>: EvD 7<\/strong> (9:10 p.m. EDT \/ 6:10 p.m. PDT) has #1 Burning Valor<\/strong> and #14 Lime Me<\/strong> looking better than their long morning-line odds. …A chance for a triumphant return to the hippodrome for #6 I’m in a Zone<\/strong> (!) in the eighth<\/strong> there (9:35 \/ 6:35). …#6 Expect Distinction<\/strong> (!), #8 Senorita’s Sorce<\/strong> have better-than-most-predict chances in Race 9<\/strong> (10 \/ 7). …Track-switch, track-switch, track-switch: let’s go to PennNat 4<\/strong> (7:22 \/ 4:22) for #4 I’’m Feelin Frisky<\/strong>. …<\/p>\n Thank you. Best wishes. Goodbye. Drive safely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s always good to scan the news headlines, become acquainted with what’s going on in the world around you without necessarily judging it; rather, to consume the headlines, consider them and keep your own counsel, without too much unnecessary rushes … Continue reading
\nBelmont<\/strong> 4<\/p>\n
\nChas. Town 6½f<\/p>\n