Not really, it was common knowledge around the track that the people who worked behind the scenes had one race set aside for them. I never knew anyone that got that inside info.
I’m with you on this.
I feel strongly, I wish that this were true.
I’ve been hearing since I was a wee one that it’s just around the corner.
How did this scheme work?
There would be a race that was fixed so that insiders could pick up some guaranteed winnings from outsiders? Every day? Once a week?
Who were the insiders? The people that worked the track? The owners of the horses? The regular punters?
I can’t get you a factual answer on this but it always sounded to me like it was the horse walkers and stable cleaners on up to some of the jockeys and even owners. A lot of the owners of these race horses are not well off.
Of course it all depends if it rained last night
See the history of nineteenth century anarchism (Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower has an excellent summary). Armchair theorists called for “propaganda of the deed”; occasionally some mental defective would imagine that this had something to do with a perceived grievance of theirs and assassinate a leader. The authorities tried- hard- to make cases for criminal incitement but usually couldn’t prove a link.
Wasn’t J. Edgar Hoover (former director of the FBI) kinda famous for getting kompromat on people and then using it to strong-arm them?
I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, but cite? What I’ve heard more often is that the mob had dirt on Hoover (his gayness mainly).
Sure, easy to find.
Five decades after his death, J. Edgar Hoover still haunts the FBI. His nearly 48-year reign as its director, from 1924 to 1972, has come to symbolize the dangers of a stealth domestic police-and-intelligence agency in an open society. Hoover is widely seen today as an autocrat who used secret surveillance and other illegal means to control politicians and infiltrate and disrupt domestic political groups in the service of his conservative worldview. No operation confirms this verdict more vividly than the FBI’s wide-ranging electronic surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., which culminated in a threatening letter to King accompanied by tape recordings of romantic trysts—an effort designed to drive King from the civil-rights movement or induce him to commit suicide. - SOURCE
And/or…
But Raines told him there was a second door, blocked by a file cabinet. Forsyth returned, picked another lock and snapped off the deadbolt. Then he lay on the floor and slowly pushed the file cabinet enough to open the door. Minutes later, four of his colleagues swooped in and filled multiple suitcases with FBI files and quietly drove away, not knowing if they’d found anything of value.
What they found uncovered a nationwide program of illegal surveillance and harassment, which in turn led to the discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s invasive COINTELPRO operation, congressional hearings and ultimately oversight of the FBI after it had operated autonomously for decades and openly referred to its headquarters as “the Seat of Government.” - SOURCE
I’d heard of the FBI’s behavior towards civil rights groups of course, but I’m unfamiliar with allegations that he monitored government officials.
I am convinced that in the Star Wars movie Rogue One, there is a scene where an array of scientists are slaughtered when Jyn Erso is about to encounter her father to access the Death Star plans, just so that the UK writer of the movie, Gary Whitta, could secretly refer to those scientists as ‘boffins’ for his own amusement that the phrase “many boffins died to bring us this information” could apply.
Have you ever heard of myeloproliferative neoplasms? I know someone who suffers from that, so I heard some details about it.
It is a very rare blood condition where the different blood cells, particularly platelets, are produced in the wrong amounts, which can cause all kind of adverse effects, some of them deadly (mainly clots and strokes). The condition manifests in many very diverse forms, and when you are unlucky and it develops into one of the wrong ones, you are certain to die soon. For those cases the therapy is voluntary, because the mortality rate is about 30%: I forgot whether it was stem cell therapy or bone marrow transplant. If it works, you are cured. If it does not, you are dead.
No big ethical questions there: the patient decides. And the doctors apply the therapy as chosen, despite the horrible odds. It’s better than 50/50, so most patients try it. It is very difficult to find the right donor, specially when you have no close relatives. Still they try. I would too if I was in that situation.
I believe that applies to all therapies. As long as there is a chance, they will try. Like transplanting a pig’s heart into a terminally ill patient, so he can live two months longer (and get the physician a shot at a Nobel Price). Not so different from what Christiaan Barnard did (who did not win the Nobel Price). His patient died soon afterwards too.
ETA: Oh, yes, I forgot the subject of the thread! And I agree with about 1/5th of the believes stated so far, and could be persuaded concerning one aditional third. But I don’t believe cures are held back.
Some years ago, the salad chain Chopt introduced a menu item called the San Sebastián Cobb Salad. I remain certain that it was named after Sebastian Cobb.
Now suppose the House is tied 25-25 and cannot choose either candidate. And the senate is tied 50-50. Can Kamala break the tie in that case? Otherwise the presidency devolves on the Speaker. And what if the Speaker is not a natural born citizen; the senate cannot choose a president pro-tem and all the cabinet officers’ terms expire in 14 days? (Hakeem Jeffries is US born, despite his name.)
I wonder that too.
In the 20th century we seemed on a roll of curing so many maladies that afflict humans.
Then, it mostly stopped. I guess you could suppose we got rid of the low hanging fruit, easy to cure stuff and are left only with the really difficult ones now. But still, there have been so many advances in medicine and science and diagnostics yet I can’t think of something that has been “cured” in the last 40-years. There is so much more money in treatment than cures the conspiracy theorist in me has to wonder.
I believe there is a legal mechanism in the US for this today. I think it came out of the AIDS epidemic. If you are doomed anyway then trying an experimental treatment might be worth doing. There is little downside and, maybe, lots of upside.
When my friend was treated for breast cancer ~10 years ago, the treatment options were limited and there was no immunotherapy treatment available because it was still in clinical trials. She has a new cancer of the same type. The treatment regimen is very different and now includes immunotherapy. It might not be a cure per se, but the 5-year survival stats for the new protocol are better than they were with the first occurrence.
I have diabetes. My medications don’t cure it, but they hella keep it in check.
There are a lot of cancers that have better outcomes now than 40 years ago. Heck, no one who made it to the hospital died after the marathon bombing because of advances in trauma medicine.
This is preposterous! Utter Poppy-Cock!
It’s called The Council.