As IF Times

link Gwyneth Paltrow Named Most Beautiful Woman by People Magazine – The Hollywood Reporter.

How sublime is that?  On top of a successful and lucrative career, Miss Paltrow is named as the world’s most beautiful woman.  Out of approximately 3.5 billion contenders on the planet, she is the pinnacle of pulchritude.   Sneering observers should note that this is no marginal feat.   The odds of being struck by lightning is reported to be 1 in 1,000,000.   The odds of winning a Powerball lottery is 1 in 175,000,000.  A web search reveals that the odds of being struck by a meteor is only at 1 in 250,000.

So to be that person who defies all mathematical odds to be the absolute most beautiful woman is truly a miracle.  And, what are the odds that she lives in the U.S.A. and is a film actress?  In fact, what are the odds that more than a handful of the last so-named people, such as Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansen, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce, Julia Roberts etc, also live and work within the same 10 square miles of real estate and are also in the film business?  People who don’t understand math cannot comprehend the truly astronomical odds of this occurrence.  Odder still, it happens every year.

We don’t know who sits on the selection committee at People magazine, the undisputed arbiter of this award, but surely they must all be bleary eyed because of having to judge the 3.5 billion possible contenders every year.   I suspect that over the years however, they  have determined that since many of the winners were right from their own backyard, they’d just refine their search to exclude 99.99% of the world’s women and just look out their windows.

According to an O.Hooge, who oddly happens to live here in B.C., the odds of anyone even being born is almost zilch, specifically:

“…If you go back 1 million years or 40 000 generations (each generation is considered 25 years), your chance of being born is at most 1 in 1.8 x 10⁴⁰³¹⁶⁷ or 18 with 403,166 zeros after the 1.

In other words your chances of existing is essentially zilch, even if we were considering this possibility only a short 250 years ago. Right now you do exist, so the actual chance is 100%, but the predicted likelihood in the past of you being born would be essentially zero…”

Be that as it may, Miss Paltrow is indeed lucky enough, at least statistically, to be immortal in terms of human history.  And we are lucky to be here when it happened.

link Tiger Finishes Fourth, as Adam Scott Becomes First Aussie to Win Masters Title | The Afro-American Newspapers | Your Community. Your History. Your News..

Nothwithstanding the expected focus of the linked news outlet, most news organizations in the world were universally hailing Adam Scott’s victory at this year’s Masters golf tournament.  The way the tournament ended pushed all of the other sub dramas surrounding the event way back into the asterisk category.

While even the casual observer can appreciate the drama that unfolded between Angel Cabrera and Adam Scott in the fading light of Augusta this past Sunday afternoon, only those that have  been tortured by the game of golf will appreciate the turbulent emotions that undoubtedly consumed the two men during the final duel.   Little of this was obvious as they both outwardly suppressed their raging emotions to remain focused to engage the task at hand.  And of course, there was the now famous mutual thumbs up gestures they exchanged in response to each other’s clutch shot making, first by Angel then by Adam, displaying sportsmanship and grace under pressure that we seldom witness anymore in the world of sports.

And there it was.  That moment forever defined for those who had never seen it, the meaning of the word sportsmanship.  Sportsmanship is not about victory.  It is not about winning at any cost by any means possible. It is not about money. It is not about puerile displays of gamesmanship.  Sportsmanship is about competing at the highest level against others who are at their highest level and dueling in the spirit of mutual respect for others’ skills.  The eventual victory will be meaningful only because it was against a worthy opponent.  The defeat, while painful, will not be devastating because it came at the hands of a superior opponent…that day.  As the old cliche goes, it’s how you play the game.

Over the generations, sports in general have moved further and further away from the concept of sportsmanship.  Marketing and culture has changed the focus of competition to the extent that winning has become the only relevant outcome.   Sport is big business.  Nevertheless, I’m sure that most who watched the final duel between Scott and Cabrera appreciated the display of sportsmanship that was so aptly demonstrated by them, a rare event in today’s commercial sporting world.  The headlines will say that Scott won the Masters, but just as significant was the victory for sportsmanship.