Do horses get nervous ahead of a race? Like do they realize it’s more important (to their rider) that they do particularly well on this run?
I doubt it. Dick Frances (or one of his characters) once said that good race horses usually understand that it’s good for them to come in first. Which I took to mean that many horses are just running hard because their rider tells them to, and not because they even understand they are racing.
But a horse may very well understand that it’s rider is anxious or cares a lot. So…to the extent the horse and rider are together, and the rider is anxious, maybe?
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Well, ever since cargo pants went out of style…
Also, it’s not a purse—it’s a European carry-all!
Is it you-and-I sexy?
Wouldn’t understanding “coming in first” imply that they understand that they are racing?
I think they understand that they are racing FWIW.
(Edited to include more relevant words from the quote.)
RN
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Way to clip my post…
GOOD race horses USUALLY
Yes, some of them understand they are racing. But the full statement makes the claim that many race horses, even some of the good ones, don’t understand that they are racing.
The context was that someone asked him (or his character) if horses understand that they are racing, and his answer was basically, “not as much as you’d expect, some do, but a lot don’t.”
Sorry, I didn’t mean to clip out the “good” part. I’ll edit.
Listening to someone’s experience about teaching English in China got me wondering…
Are there organizations in China that send people to the US to teach Mandarin?
Cool. Thanks!
The local school district has a Mandarin as a language option due to a program affiliated with the Confucius Institute. My own kids have opted for Spanish instead so far, but other kids I spoke to in the Mandarin program were not enthused. Some of that is probably just kids being kids (everything sucks), but my impression was the instructors weren’t perhaps the best suited for US middle schoolers.
I stopped to eat at a restaurant in coastal Georgia named Mullet Bay. I wanted to ask the question “is this named for the fish or the haircut” but thought that might be ill advised given the other patrons
@soyleche and @jraven did you read a little further in that article?
The organization has been criticized over concerns of the Chinese government’s undue overseas influence and suppression of academic freedom.
…
Officials from China have compared Confucius Institutes to language and culture promotion organizations such as Portugal’s Instituto Camões, Britain’s British Council, France’s Alliance Française, Italy’s Società Dante Alighieri, Spain’s Instituto Cervantes and Germany’s Goethe-Institut—several of them named for an iconic cultural figure identified with that country, as Confucius is identified with China. Some commentators argue, unlike these organizations, many Confucius Institutes operate directly on university campuses, thus giving rise to what they see as unique concerns related to academic freedom and political influence.Confucius Institutes are used as a form of “soft power” by China, and Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping in 2013 stated that its intentions are to “give a good Chinese narrative”. CIs and related Chinese government programs spend approximately $10 billion a year to exercise these initiatives. There has been a growing concern that the host countries of these institutions are being abused to give them access to data and research allowing them to track the movement of their citizens. Being affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, there has been great scepticism over the censorship of content taught as topics relating to individual freedoms and democracy, Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang are all avoided.
There have been a number of reports pointing to controversial incidents in the past, including a former senior Chinese Communist Party official, Li Changchun’s comment that Confucius Institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up”. On 13 August 2020, the United States Department of State designated the headquarters of the Confucius Institute in the U.S. as a “foreign mission” of China. This designation has been protested by the Center in an open letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Many colleges and universities have ended their agreements with the Confucius Institute. I read somewhere that Taiwan was trying to put something together that would be similar and could possibly help replace Confucius Institute with something not affiliated with the CCP.
Err… It’s a cultural education program run by the Chinese government — I thought that their agenda was obvious.
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Apparently, a lot of colleges saw that it was pretty much free, being mostly subsidized by the Chinese government and didn’t believe that any of the ‘teachers’ would actually be ‘spies’. But what do you expect from the liberal ivory tower people?
One might argue that colleges are about dispersing information, and there’s typically nothing to spy ON at most colleges.
(A research university that files for patents might have more concerns.)
Relevant link on surveillance:
Yeah, they are here so much to spy, other than at those research universities. They are here to recruit spies or talent that they can co-opt for their own purposes.
Plus how many colleges do you thing are doing classified research for the government/DOD? I’m guessing not just those looking to file patents.