Archive | Novelty betting

Each smudge and patch of light is a galaxy.

An impressive statement, yet it is not exaggerated just to make the headline look good.  Edwin Hubble probably never dreamed of what was to be possible with the latest edition of the Hubble telescope.  Anyone with an imagination must find this fascinating and it has irreversibly lowered the odds of the existence of extraterrestrial life, not to mentioned an insight to the origins of existence.

Astronomers asked NASA to point the Hubble Space Telescope at an otherwise unremarkable section of the sky through a relatively unknown constellation called Fornax. Viewed from earth this patch of sky would reveal just one or two stars in our own galaxy.

It took the Hubble Telescope  10 days (a million second long exposure) to reveal something nothing short of remarkable in a section of sky no more than one tenth of the diameter of the moon.  Thousands of galaxys filled the image.  Our planet, one of eight in our solar system, orbits a rather unremarkable star.  One of 5 thousand million stars just in our own galaxy.  That’s a big number and difficult to visualise but bear with it.

Each of the ten thousand galaxy’s shown in the Hubble ultra deep field image has millions of stars.  Each star could have a solar system like our own with planets orbiting. Each planet has the possibility of a civilisation.

Looking at the image the idea that the earth may be the only planet in the entire universe that harbors life seems crazy.  Our galaxy is one of many in the night sky.  The ultra deep field image is taken from a really small patch of sky and represents a snap shot in time from billions of years ago.  Light from those galaxy’s has literally taken millions and millions of  years to get to earth.   Our galaxy is one of many many galaxys and that the universe is big.  Numbers so big that it really becomes irrelevant.  From earth we can see about three thousand stars on a clear night and it almost seems like the universe is not that big, but, nothing could be farther from the truth.

This was to attempt to see the farthest human kind has ever seen into the nigh sky.  Looking at this patch of sky from earth would show nothing.  The picture above shows the number of galaxys in nothing.  odds of life on other planets

Whitney Houston was found unconscious in her hotel room in Beverley hills. The death of the 6 Grammy award winning singer came as a shock to those close to her, especially as she was planning a ‘come back’ record. Why is it that so many celebrities decide to spend so much time in hotels and battling with drug addictions? There is a list as long as your arm… the cocktail of drugs and fame is obviously very hard to overcome.

Some celebs are natural hell raisers and revel in the media frenzy that living this type of lifestyle creates. Recent headlines like ‘Katie Perry reveals she had a drink problem’ are obviously a vain attempt at generating news interest. Others, Whitney Houston, and Micheal Jackson included, let things spiral out of control. It’s possible that the same media outlets that celebrities covet are the ones that help cause their decline, and worsens the slippery slope of drink and drug dependency. All this generates many headlines and stories for the gossip hungry public.

Could celebrity betting ‘suck in’ as contentious a prediction as celebrity death? Who would be next? Demi Moore, or Courtney Love? Let’s hope not, but, as distasteful as it sounds it’s a possibility. Bloggers already write posts like ‘top 10 celebrity drug users’ and ‘who’s the next celeb to go bankrupt?’ No surprise that Whitney Houston was number 2 on the ‘top 10 celebrity drug users’ list.

Entertainment betting is a novelty and falls under the banner of novelty betting. It’s really just a bit of fun that no one really takes it seriously. Perhaps celebrity death betting will be allowed. Those looking for a bit of morbid fun might one to seek out a celebrity death race. It only takes a couple of minutes of surfing the web to stumble upon the gory details.
Death betting or Oscars specialty betting?

Youtube is a wonderful thing. It’s not so great for betting resources, horse racing, football, tennis and the like, but it’s great for killing time :). Check out this video, I for one, bet he can’t freeze a bottle of beer in seconds. No… void that bet. If he couldn’t freeze a bottle of beer in seconds then this video [below] wouldn’t have been watched, wait for it, almost 1 and a half million times. Yikes.

The beers aren’t on us, it’s all frozen.

Here’s another. What are the odds that a squirrel would survive getting run over by a Lamborghini going over 100 MPH? Here is a video of a squirrel getting squashed by a sports car 🙂

That little critter is on form. Next he’ll be taking on a Lewis Hamilton. That really would have cleared out the bookmakers.