More media stardom for B.

[purplecat]

No idea exactly when this was shown but B. continues to win the "does cool stuff with science" game. So far I've only been able to watch it with the sound off because I'm in a shared office so I've not gleaned much except that he's acquired a new job title "Computational Primatologist" which must have any interested viewers scratching their heads about why he's messing around with T. Rexes.

Comments

[purplecat]

The thing that is happening is that some lines of breeding have produced horses with horribly fragile legs

We've just watched the whole thing (B. was sent a copy of the tape sent out to international distributors) and the next section is, in fact, entirely about this point (though it omits to point out that times are rarely broken).

It then follows up with a section on human runners which rather bizarrely descends into doom-mongering, presumably in the pursuit of a good sound-bite on which to end the programme.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Luckily, it really is only a few lines of thoroughbreds and mainly in the States (their habit of feeding their horses steroids may not help much either.) As for racehorse times, the record for our Derby stood from 1936 (Mahmoud) to 1995 (Lamtarra) and only one horse has beaten Mahmoud's time since (Galileo.)

The human times will almost certainly level out too (and drugs don't help there, either.)