Bits and pieces (two weeks of ...)

A mystery punter made front page news (The Daily Telegraph 5/3/04) today by betting $1 million on a horse race. I can't imagine betting that much - I'm too cautious about losing my money - could just be that I don't have a spare million to use like that. I don't think I could even brrow that much but it would be fun telling the bank that you needed the loan to pony up for a race. As a friend of ours says "no bank will give you that" but she was referring to the return on investment if your horse comes in - which would definitely beat the approx 5% we're currently getting!
Update - Lonhro won. The punter, based in Hong Kong, collected $1,550,000 when the biggest bet on an Australian horse race in years paid off (The Daily Telegraph, 9/3/04, pg 1).

What's a billion
It appears that a billion is different, depending on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you are on. In the US it's a 1 followed by 9 zeros; in the UK it's a 1 followed by 12 zeros. I'm not sure what it is in Australia. And if I'm thinking of it in terms of my own assets, it's going to be a couple of millenia before I actually have to worry about it.

Star gazing
And Zedna has been discovered ... the coldest most distant body to have been found orbiting the Sun ... a planetoid because it's not big enough to be a planet. And who knew that Pluto is a "questionable planet" - based on its size. But it was still big enough to be in the way of the astronomical society being able to see Zedna.

Soylent Green
Dubbo is today suffering from a plague of locusts - similar to several other communities along the Australian East Coast (according to the news report I have just finished watching). It's been a while since we had a locust plague - although I remember that we've had plagues of mice, and also of bogong moths. But, as some people would say, at least you can eat bogong moths. They are something of a delicacy. I'm not sure that I could bring myself to eat one - for pleasure. If it was a matter of life and death - maybe ... probably. And what would you eat if it was a matter of life and death? Would you eat people? (Soylent Green is people.) Could you eat people? And how would you quell the demons within (assuming some ethical dilemmas might surface after the event - or perhaps that would just be me)?