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First and final thoughts

Maybe Im the wrong guy to write about this topic. I dont bet on sports. Never really have. Ive led a fantasy-football-free life, and I havent played fantasy baseball since high school, back when it was called rotisserie baseball, which for me was a more appropriate term. I was too sentimental in building my rosters, loading up on my favorite players without regard for any analytics, my friends and competitors roasting me as if I were rotating above a hot grill. I stopped filling out March Madness brackets in college, back when I couldnt appreciate the wonderful randomness of the NCAA Tournament. As someone who fancied himself a college hoops quasi-expert, I was just tired of losing pools to people who based their picks on each teams mascot. The Minnesota Golden Gophers vs. the Montana State Bobcats? Im going with MSU, of course. Dont bobcats eat gophers?

READ MORE: Kyle Neptune has to make some changes to resurrect Villanova. The boosters will have to get used to them.

Now that we have that hefty disclaimer out of the way, can we acknowledge that the warm embrace in which professional and college sports now hold gambling is getting more than a little yucky? There have been plenty of concerning anecdotes and stories lately, and those anecdotes and stories are developing into a trend, and that trend doesnt look good because its revealing the potential for and possibility of corruption.

There is Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, who may or may not have wired millions of dollars to a bookmaker to pay off debts that may or may not belong to Ohtanis interpreter. There is the Temple mens basketball team, which was flagged by a gambling watchdog group based on some strange movement on the betting lines of some of the Owls games. There is Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who said last week that he has been threatened by gamblers and that he routinely hears fans shouting at him to make in-game decisions that will influence point spreads. There is ESPNs Rece Davis, who capped a gambling segment on College GameDay by saying that one bet was a risk-free investment a line that Davis said later was a joke.

Its not new, of course, to note that gambling has always been a part of sports. Whats new and disconcerting, though, is the speed with which the public stances of these institutions the leagues and the NCAA have gone from Gambling is terrible and immoral to Gambling is awesome and makes us money, but hey youd better watch it. (The same goes for plenty of media that broadcast and cover sports, too.)

Sports betting is legal in more than half the country though not in California, which is part of the alleged problem for Ohtani and Id like to think I have a healthy libertarian streak. But its worth remembering that theres a difference between something being legal and something being good or even reputable. Create an environment where sports betting is not just accepted but encouraged and promoted, and youre going to get what weve seen recently. And its not going to stop. And it will get worse. Sometimes guardrails exist not to stop a particular activity from happening but to temper it, to keep it under some control and maintain moderation, to make sure a useful and appropriate stigma is attached to its abuse. Seems like sports ought to think about rebuilding a few of those guardrails.

The Florida Panthers entered Monday tied for first place in the NHLs Atlantic Division, and they had allowed just 173 goals this season, which is tied for the fewest in the league. Their goaltenders ought to be familiar to hockey fans around here: Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz.

The Flyers signed Bobrovsky as an undrafted free agent in 2010 and picked Stolarz in the second round of the 2012 draft. Now the two of them have combined for a .919 save percentage for a team that reached the Stanley Cup Final last season and might win the Cup this season. When someone cites a general lack of patience as a reason that the Flyers have gone nearly 49 years without a championship, Bobrovsky and Stolarz are just one example of it.

John Tortorella benched his captain and initially sent one of his assistant coaches to explain why. Kim Mulkey, LSUs womens basketball coach, threatened to sue a Washington Post reporter over a story that hasnt been published yet. After the 76ers beat the Clippers on Sunday, James Harden ducked out of Crypto.com Arena before anyone could ask him a question.

Who knew us irrelevant media members could have such tough-talking coaches and athletes quaking in their boots?

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Sports gambling has gotten out of control - The Philadelphia Inquirer

On Friday, March 22, Montgomery County hosted the official ground breaking ceremony for the new Montgomery County Animal Care and Control shelter and the North Clarksville-Montgomery County Library Branch.

Both facilities will share the property in North Clarksville on the corner of Jordan Road and Purple Heart Parkway.

Many local and state dignitaries attended the ceremony with speakers Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden, County Commissioner Jeremiah Walker and Library Board Chair Dr. Quentin Hufmberd.

Remarks were made by Animal Care and Control Director Dave Kaske and Library director Christina Riedel.

Golden said the facilities will be a great addition to the countys inventory.

For the citizens who live on this side of our community, it is a blessing to have these resources, Golden said.

The new shelter will have larger kennels for the animals. It will grow from 7,000 square feet the shelter currently has to about 25,000 square feet.

Kaske spoke to Leadership Clarksville last week and gave a preview of the planned animal care and control shelter.

The current shelter has just 45 dog kennels and the new facility will have 100 full kennel runs, with indoor and outdoor access.

There will be specific stray adoption and puppy quarantine areas; a separate animal intake area with housing for ability to perform intake exams; separate entrances for adoptions and admissions; more than 95 cat kennels, with four outdoor/indoor catios, which are patios for cats. There will be four rooms that can house up to four cats with doors that allow the cats to go outdoors during daytime hours.

An animal clinic, with a surgery suite, will also be on the premises. It will have x-ray capabilities and full-service clinical exam areas. A full-time veterinarian and support staff will also be located at the shelter.

The new library branch will offer community space and be built next to the animal shelter, according to Riedel who spoke to her fellow 2024 Leadership Clarksville classmates last week.

The library will have outside space for kids to have messy, fun STEM-based programs; some reading collaborations with reading to dogs and story times; for the older children, the new library branch will have an outdoor area for book clubs and reading areas.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, Riedel said the new library will have services developed that are unique to the northern portion of the community.

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Montgomery County breaks ground on library, animal control facility - Main Street Media of Tennessee

Andrew Huberman in one of his own YouTube videos. Photo: Devin Oktar Yalkin

New Yorks latest cover story is a deep dive on Andrew Huberman, one of the biggest podcasters on the planet and a tenured Stanford professor who has attracted millions of acolytes by preaching self-discipline and healthy lifestyle habits. Features writer Kerry Howley finds in his Huberman Lab podcast a world in which the soft art of self-care is made concrete, in which Goop-adjacent platitudes find solidity in peer review, dubious product endorsements alongside genuinely helpful lifestyle advice that she and her family benefited from. Howley also finds a wide gap between Hubermans public persona, presented on his own podcast and as a guest on others, and how he conducts his private life. In private, he could sometimes seem less concerned about patriarchy [than he did on his podcast], Howley writes. Multiple women recall him saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous but the man was not. From the story he tells about his childhood to the state of his lab at Stanford, theres a distance between his podcast persona and what Howleys reporting shows.

We talk a lot about parasocial relationships from the perspective of an adoring audience and less about the relationship in the other direction, says Howley. A giant platform is an opportunity to craft and control a narrow persona; how does that affect relationships outside of the performance?

Howley has written for New York since 2015 and been on staff since 2021; her features on Marjorie Dannenfelser, January 6 insurrectionists, and Larry Nassar were finalists for National Magazine Awards. She is the screenwriter of Winner, a film starring Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, and Zach Galifianakis that debuted at Sundance in 2024.

Elsewhere in the issue, David Freedlander profiles Frank Carone, former chief of staff to Mayor Eric Adams and master practitioner of a brazenly transactional era of government in New York City; Michael Wolff looks at former CNN and NBCUniversal leader Jeff Zuckers Fleet Street misadventure; and the Cut premieres the Fashion Pages, a new occasional feature with the inaugural edition highlighting the women who run Harlems major cultural institutions.

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On the Cover: Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of Control - New York Magazine

The petition to save the mixed choir is supported by the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams

St Johns College Cambridge now have control over the social media accounts of its mixed choir following a petition against the colleges decision to abolish the group.

The petition to save St Johns Voices (SJV) has gained a lot of traction, with over 9,000 signatures and numerous high-profile supporters such as the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the conductor, Sir Simon Rattle.

However, in the wake of the petitions popularity, St Johns asked the SJV to hand over access to its social media, which it was using to campaign against the disbandment.

A source has informed The Cambridge Tab that the SJV were instructed to hand over its social media account details, after which the passwords were changed and the choir lost access.

We feel unnecessarily silenced when all we wanted to do was raise awareness about a decision the college made, a choir member has told The Cambridge Tab.

On Monday last week, the college announced that its mixed gender choir, St Johns Voices, will be disbanded at the end of next term, along with the redundancy of its musical director, Graham Walker.

The abolishment was justified with the reasoning that, since the SJV was founded to give choral opportunities to women, it is no longer a necessary addition now that female choristers and altos can be admitted into the colleges main choir, The Choir of St Johns College Cambridge.

The decision, however, has faced backlash due to the implication that female sopranos will no longer be able to sing in college chapel services, since the main choir only admits female altos, with younger boys and girls singing the treble line.

The mixed choir and its supporters have since set up a campaign to Save St Johns Voices. In an open letter, they asked St Johns to Stop cutting opportunities for female singers in Cambridge, pointing out that the colleges main choir has only one student member who identifies as female.

Since the SJV lost access to its social media, choir alumni have created a new Instagram account called @save_sjv, which they are using to promote the open letter and share the experiences of past and present SJV members.

Connie Parker, a former SJV member, reflects on how the choir radically transformed her experience at St Johns and provided a much-needed space for learning, creative expression, mindfulness and worship. She argues, To disband the choir would be a devastating loss for individuals and for community life at St Johns.

In an official statement on the abolishment of the choir, St Johns College said: This decision has been taken in the context of the relative levels of support provided to different student co-curricular activities in the College and the choral opportunities already available in the university.

While St Johns College Choir is not able to offer opportunities for soprano singers, talented classical singers of all voice-types are exceptionally well provided for across the University of Cambridge.

The statement also claims that the college aims to offer enhanced support for sopranos from St Johns as well as students of other voice-parts who secure places in other College Choirs. However, the Save SJV campaign is critical of the lack of detail in what this support might entail.

The open letter complains that the students were only consulted two weeks ago about the decision which will cut the number of female students who sing in the chapel from 15 to one. Although the college appeared to listen to the thoughts of students at a meeting which the Johnian members of the SJV had to request themselves, it was learnt afterwards that the College had already decided to disband the choir by this date.

Co-Presidents of the SJV, Scarlett and Mary, told The Cambridge Tab how devastated they are at the colleges decision: Its incredibly disappointing to see what has been a remarkable step forward in the choral world, namely the admission of female singers into the College Choir, being weaponised against the very existence of another ensemble to ultimately reduce access to high quality music making and drastically reduce the participation of women in the life of the chapel.

Over its 11 years, St Johns Voices has achieved worldwide musical acclaim. It has completed three recordings with Naxos, a broadcast on BBC Radio 3, performed regular concerts and international tours, and has amassed over 2.3 million likes on social media.

St Johns College has been contacted for comment.

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St John's College Cambridge now has control over the SJV choir's social media - The Tab

New Delhi: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar touched upon the issues of media credibility and self-regulation, emphasising that media credibility "lies solely within its own control, by being objective and not getting involved in politics." Speaking at the NDTV 'Indian of the Year 2024' Awards event on Saturday, the Vice President said that the media will emerge as the nation's conscience keeper if it takes care of its conscience.

"As the fourth pillar of democracy, media credibility lies solely within its own control. It should be effective and there ought to be no hindrance in its way while upholding high standards. Its smooth functioning is a collective responsibility shared by the media, government, and society. The media serves its cause best by being objective and not getting involved in politics. It should take all care and precautions so as not to become a battleground for partisan politics," he said. Recognizing the role of media as the fourth pillar of democracy and its influence over social discourse, the Vice-President stressed the need for an independent and objective media. "Media should be an agent to convey the right perspectives to understand India rather than be a prey to orchestrated narratives seeking to taint and tarnish our image", he added. VP appealed to all sections of the media industry to practice economic nationalism "Media has a cutting-edge role in imbibing a spirit of economic nationalism. No fiscal gain can be the premise for compromising on our commitment to economic nationalism. We should not import items which are available in the country, will need to subscribe to Swadeshi. The media shapes public opinion, disseminates information, and wields influence over social discourse. It is one of the main pillars of a society and country," he said. Referring to the challenges of misinformation and fake news, Dhankhar underlined the responsibility of the media to be a watchdog and curb such misinformation.

"The informed public is the spinal strength of democracy. Misinformation can be ruinous. The media is a natural watchdog to contain and curb the freefall of misinformation and falsehood. If the media does not do it then who will do it? There is an urgent need for the media and media houses to reflect and have a mechanism in this direction. Fearless, informed independent media is the safest assurance to nurturing democracy," the VP said. Dhankhar also expressed his pain over the failure of some sections to realize the soothing impact of steps like CAA guided by the values of secularism, equality, and justice enshrined in our constitution. "Unfortunately, some failed to recognize the historical context and soothing impact of human rights perspectives on persecuted minorities in the neighborhood," he said. "The Citizenship Amendment Act does not deprive any Indian citizen of his or her citizenship. CAA does not entitle any man or woman presently living outside of the country to its benefit. CAA is a reprieve to those persecuted who have been in this country for more than a decade or several decades," the VP said. Cautioning against the politicization of media, the VP reflected, "Media can not be a registered, recognized or unrecognized political party," cautioning that media should take all precautions so as not to become a battleground for partisan politics.

"The media has to do its job. Decades ago, some people in the media leveraged high-caliber decision-making. It went to the extent of positioning in the cabinet in the government. The media should not be a power broker, the media has only to do its job, the fourth pillar of democracy is also accountable," he said. "I appeal to everyone in the media that we are having a Bharat today home to one-sixth of humanity. The world is looking at us looking at us with hope, confidence, and optimism that Bharat is a stabilizing force. We have a visionary Prime Minister who has been invited by both parties to conflagration. We are vindicating our age-old ethos of peace and harmony. I am sure Media will engage in self-regulation," Dhankar outlined. Acknowledging India's constitutionally structured, vibrant democracy with a robust justice system, the VP noted "democratic values optimally blossom and flourish with equality before the law; accountable and transparent governance.". "India is on the cusp of immense possibilities. It is on the rise, the rise is unstoppable and the rise is incremental. India's extraordinary growth story transcends skepticism, exemplifying visionary leadership, inclusive development, and unwavering perseverance," he added.

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"Media credibility lies solely within its own control, by being objective, not getting involved in politics": VP Dhankar - SahilOnline