Category Archives: Golf politics

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Zombie Gunship -a review, and an explanation of why Zombie things relax me

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Zombies are definitely putting their stamp on the zeitgeist. Until recently, vampires were all the rage, but they were never my cup of tea. While vampires are about forbidden seduction -think Don Draper and your mom (didn’t know he was a vampire, did you?). The thing that people don’t get about Zombie movies and fiction is that the Zombies aren’t really the center of the action. This was illustrated in one of the finest Zombie movies to date, The Road (didn’t know it was a Zombie movie, did you?). Zombies are the Gom Jabbar of a Humanity Test (didn’t think I’d reference Dune, did you?). Like a round of golf, a person’s response to a Zombie apocalypse is all about character.

Zombie Gunship is an iOS game that puts you in an orbiting AC130 airplane equipped with mini guns, and two different kinds of cannons. In it, you are the gunnery captain whose task is to obliterate zombies marching on the entrance to a bunker complex. It’s night time, and the battle field is lit up in infrared. Uninfected humans light up the screen bright white, while the walking dead Zombies are a cold black heat sink on IR HUD. Your job is to kill the zombies, keep them from breaching the bunker entrance, but allow the humans through.
The Zombies, when not attacking the bunker, munch on the humans. The problem is that you are allowed to kill only 3 humans inadvertently before it game over -the commander orders you out of the airspace. It’s a simple game with no other characters or maps (a common complaint in the reviews) to mess things up. You gain credits for zombie kills and for each human who make it into the bunker, and you use these to upgrade the weaponry. You can also buy credits through the game (slick) so you can max out the specs on your three gun types (don’t ask me how much I’ve spent).
On an iPhone, the game is a portable addiction like a bag of jelly bellies. On the iPad, it’s engrossing and all consuming, like a really big bag of jelly bellies, and it is the way to play this game. The hook is this. You score better when you ignore the humans and just kill zombies, but then you see the poor blokes getting attacked by the zombies, albeit in tiny ant-sized distance on the infrared. You then are compelled to rescue them with a well gauged barrage from the mini gun, or a carefully distanced blast from the 40mm auto cannon. If you successfully kill the zombie and free the human, you get some points, and praise from the commander. You feel good about yourself in fact. In fact, you end up caring for the poor people running in the night for the shelter of the bunker and may get sidetracked into playing hero. Unfortunately, in this game, and as in all good Zombie movies, playing empathetic hero is not the best way to win at this game. The most efficient at clearing the approaches of zombies without killing yet not rescuing humans do best. There is no punishment for letting Zombie nature take its course.
A recent NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/books/review/the-state-of-zombie-literature-an-autopsy.html) pontificated about the Zombie phenomena, tying its popularity to the uncertainties of our times. I would add that Zombies have been with us before Romero created them as the basic fear of being consumed by anything that is not us -whether it is a great white shark, a Tyrannosaur, or an illegal immigrant.
Despite the fearsome images and terrifying drama of good Zombie films and literature, I find them a compelling and a great way to unwind and relax. A Zombie apocalypse, it turns out, does not necessarily favor the strongest or best armed. Rather, aside from a bit of luck, you need your wits. A Zombie armageddon is fair and meritocratic. A level playing field. And who doesn’t like that?
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The Turkey

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The grocery store turkey’s evolution from the wild turkey is an echo of our journey from our wilder, free-range origins.  The wild turkey, whose intelligence caused Benjamin Franklin to recommend it for our national bird, is a far cousin of the overbred, overmedicated artifice that is the plastic wrapped bird that you plunk into your grocery cart. In the passage from our free-range origins to our over-cultivated existence, are we just overbred, overstuffed turkeys? Three things confirm this: the outsourcing of our basic food functions, the reduction of work into processes, and no reduction of stress from our surrender.

Outsourcing of Basic Food Functions

The wild turkey is known to be the most cunning of birds, requiring stealth and deceit to bring it close enough for a shot. I would assume the human in the original state of nature to be no different and no less intelligent. The urban legend is that the domesticated turkey is so stupid that they can’t be left out in the rain because they look up when hit on the head with raindrops, subsequently drowning. While this is untrue of domesticated turkeys, it may be true of domesticated humans, Homo sapiens sapiens familiaris.

We use to hunt for our food or gather it from the fields and forests. At a critical point, we domesticated the game and started farming the fruits and vegetables that sustained us, creating enough surplus calories to sustain larger populations that could then specialize in crafts, trades, and services, to where eventually the majority of the population could outsource food production to a minority of the people. If you’re lucky, you can buy a luscious apple out of season brought in by jet transport directly to your Costco from the Antipodes. This is not too much different from the turkey who willingly or unwillingly entered into the similar bargain with humans. In doing so, the turkey increased its population to an estimated 660 million turkeys currently in the world –technically a raging success on the chromosomal level. The outsourcing of the finding of food proved to be a Faustian bargain for the turkey whose life is rendered short and brutal. Depending on your outlook, the human bargain is no less Faustian because there are 6.8 billion humans, the majority of which now depend on this outsourced food production. If you are reading this on the internet, you are clearly benefiting from this arrangement. The recent economic downturn shows how easy it is to fall from the grace afforded by this system. If you can’t afford the fancy fruits, vegetables, and viands, you are stuck eating the processed corn and petroleum byproducts offered as stock feed for the masses.

 

Reduction of work into processes

Somewhere the idea of work, trade, and craft as virtuous activities became lost as the management professions became elevated. I remember having dinner right out of college with a bunch of young lawyers and consultants in Boston, none over the age of thirty. All were entrusted in some way with managing, valuing, judging, and giving advice on billions of dollars, thus affecting the lives of many people. None of these guys had really worked a day in their lives (including me except maybe stocking groceries throughout high school), but were clearly inside some kind of membrane that separated them from everyone else who did have to work for a wage and save a lifetime to afford a lifestyle that these young men were having straight out of college. One boasted that the yearly return on their fund outstripped the gross national product of whole countries, reaching for some kind of irony that I used to think was cool and now I think is depressing.

I have nothing against capitalism, and know second-hand through my parents and my wife’s parents the horrors of totalitarian communism, but there is a problem when theory trumps practice. Business management allows the reduction of any human activity into processes. The inputs and outputs of these processes can be tabulated, analyzed, and optimized. The logical end result is a human worker confinement pen like the factories in Shenzhen that make my gadgets –the workers live in dormitories adjacent to the factories allowing them to run 24/7. What we are witnessing is the ongoing triumph of totalitarian capitalism, and we’re going to either compete with China on their level or borrow furiously to maintain our relatively luxurious, free-range confinement pens. Neither is palatable to a country having just ended America’s Century in the dust cloud of falling towers.

 

No Reduction of Stress From Our Surrender

The majority of us don’t worry about food because it’s always there in the mega-mart, piled high and cheap. By surrendering our food production, we give up a load of stress but gain new ones. The ancestral stresses of hunger, climate, fear, and disease have been swapped for financial, social, and domestic stress. We outsourced our security functions to the local constabulary and our military, but rather than bask in security, we worry about terrorists at home and an endless war abroad. This stress is basically the same stress that the Thanksgiving turkey feels confined to a few square feet among thousands of other turkeys. That turkey fears not the fox, coyote, or bear, but it must feel something is terribly wrong with its world.

 

Taking It Back

The populist anti-elitism that elevated the dancing Palin against far more qualified, limber, and graceful competitors bears poorly for America’s continued excellence. The problem is not with the elites, but with the complicity of the turkeys in their continued confinement. Rather than cheap corn and petroleum based feed, they should demand the variety of diet that was available only two generations ago right out of small family farms and home vegetable gardens. Rather than dismiss food reform as the socialist dalliance of elitists, people should confront the source of their predicament.

The second half of this is the realization that the solution to outsourcing is In-Sourcing –which means work. It means that the service industry jobs that move quants and utils over the intertubes must be abandoned for work, trade, and craft. It means taking it down a notch as a society and lowering expectations while elevating living. It means a lot more people working in food production and repopulating small towns. It means reconnecting with community and family rather than moving every three years from Charlotte to Atlanta to Houston to Tampa to Denver. It means sweeping, hoeing, weeding, hunting, fishing, gathering.

Worse catastrophes have happened to people –go ask the Carthaginians when you’re in line in purgatory. People want a return to the past, to the golden age of the 50’s and early 60’s. What we’ll get is the 1920’s and 30’s. If you aren’t Howard Hughes, it’ll be a lot of work after work, with canning in the fall.

 

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Vote!

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If you are a citizen and you are of voting age, then it is your duty to vote. You have no basis for complaint if you do not vote. Many people around the world risk their lives to vote. Many people risked and given up their lives and are giving up their lives as we speak so that you can vote even from the comfort of your home.

There is no longer any excuse not to vote with early and absentee voting. God bless America.

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The New King

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The raising of Kim Jong Un to the status of Dauphin came with pageantry and political theater that was at once Bond villain comical and apocalyptic portentous. We are at war with the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). In recent years, radioactive vapors emanating from North Korea have signaled the menacing exhalations of an slumbering dragon being awoken by misguided fanatics. It is well known that Seoul is targeted street by street with hundreds of fixed artillery guns which in the opening salvos of a reopened fratricidal war, would turn Seoul into Stalingrad in the time it takes to download the latest South Park episode.

Over six decades, countless acts of aggression has perpetuated the Simmering War. Only last year, the DPRK sank a ROK (Republic of Korea) navy ship last year with a human -guided suicide submarine. Infrequently mentioned is the fact that the DPRK has existed at the pleasure of China from the moment the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled in to shore up the collapsing DPRK army. The PLA fought the United Nations forces to a stalemate leaving Korea divided. But while the Brandenburg Gate no longer divides Germany, the 38th parallel persists even while the DPRK’s patron uses capitalism to bring prosperity to its top cadres. This is no accident.

The Chinese interest in Korea extends back millennia when Korea maintained a tributary nation status with China. Korea’s culture is heavy with Chinese elements of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and it was always the younger brother to China’s elder brother. In maintaining this stance, Korea was able to maintain its unique identity while being tightly gripped in orbit around China’s center.  It was the Ming Chinese who helped sweep away the invading samurai army in the 1590’s. In maintaining the DPRK through the 80’s and 90’s, China had a mad-dog in its back yard to buffer the perceived threat posed by the US and Japan.

The tributary nation system is being rebuilt. This is a generations-long project that is no less significant to the Chinese than the Great Wall. And the world’s nations are already slowly falling into orbit around the gravity well created by the trillions of dollars willingly given to the Celestial Kingdom. This time, though, in exchange for kow-tows and tribute, they get access to mineral wealth of China, Tibet (the Himalayas will be strip mined), South America, Australia, Central Asia (including Afghanistan when we pull out), and Africa. People worry about mosque at Ground Zero. I worry about The People’s Bank of China buying out Wall Street.

In China’s world view, Korea must return to its historic status as an appendage on China’s massive body. A reunified Korea would allow it to use the ROK’s capital in combination with the DPRK’s low cost work force, giving Korea decades of double digit growth, financial strength, and from it -independence. By simply keeping reunification from happening, China avoids creating a second country on its doorsteps that would rival or even exceed Japan in economic and military power.

The Kim family had been reliable vassals in maintaining this close relationship with China, but the recent events indicate to me that this may be changing. With the addition of Kim Jong Un, an extra level of unpredictability has been added to the equation. He was schooled in Switzerland and exposed to the wider world. I get the feeling the Chinese do not think the younger Kim is their man. First, there is Kim Jong Nam, the Kim Jong Ill’s oldest son who went into exile after “trying to visit the Tokyo Disney World on a fake Dominican Passport.” This was a defection where he was able to get away from his handlers long enough to get into Japanese custody and then reach the Chinese who saw worth in maintaining his life. Today, the news came out from Seoul that China waved off an assasination attempt on Kim Jong Nam by his youngest brother’s aides. Kim Jong Nam has obviously cut a deal where in return for cooperation and hostages in the form of his family, he would be China’s puppet if some unfortunate accident occurred to Kim Jong Un.

What happens when a Korean native gets schooled abroad? I have several friends who while born and raised to middle school age in Korea, were sent abroad to boarding school in the Northeast. All of them who started boarding school at 12 or 13, while they would probably never admit it, become westernized to a degree that sunders them from their countrymen. The Kim family chef for a time, Kenji Fujimoto, states that Kim Jong-Un pondered at 18,  “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what of the lives of the average people?”

When a Swiss runs the DPRK, will China tolerate its loss of control? It would start with food and energy. If the DPRK stopped relying on China for its food and energy needs, and turned to the ROK, I would expect Kim Jong Un to have an accident. Then Kim Jong Nam will have an accident, and China’s true hidden man in the DPRK will rise to “rescue” the nation from the political chaos. The question then is, who controls the Kim Family Atomics? It’s only a few minutes’ missile flight to send a low grade nuclear device into Beijing from the DPRK. Do not doubt for a second that Beijing hasn’t already thought of this.

The best outcome, terrible to say, would be a continuation of the status quo. Those in the ROK pining for a reunification don’t think about the unintended consequences of being swallowed whole by China, Inc. If the status quo continues, and Kim Jong Un, his auntie, and her husband successfully navigate the minefield, and prove to be great vassals to China, the ROK will continue to produce girly-boy bands, dramas, cool telephones, and really nifty sedans for decades to come. And hopefully a Swiss dilettante will prove merciful to my suffering brethren in the North.

For me, I’m hoping for reunification on Korea’s terms. I’m hoping that the ROK will seize the opportunity to send a Food Bomb at the right moment across the border, and they should be stockpiling it now. Offer Kim Jong Un and his crew money and protection (a few billion at most), and you’d still save compared to a catastrophic all out war.

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A Surfeit of Casual Water and Relief

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The vexing thing of late has been the torrential rain which occurs almost exlusively at night resulting in us in Iowa waking to flooded roads and basements. Some point to global warning, others to a ten year sunspot cycle. I think it’s life imitating golf -nature gives you the conditions and you play through without complaint.

These collections of casual water remind us how important it is to have balance -too much water, too little water both cause problems. Golf’s rules allow you to move the ball out of casual water, but no closer to the hole. In sand, I believe the rule is you can move the ball to relieve but no closer or take a one stroke penalty and get out of the bunker but no closer which means you can walk it back to your pitch length and get it on the green and move on with life, medicine taken. And know it, the grounds crew will repair the damage.

But can we expect such equanimity in life? We’ve had a bunch of water trouble in Iowa and some areas had turned down Federal insurance because of politics, now only to rue that decision. No one likes a bailout, financial or actual, but I believe civilized society mandates relief from casual water in real life as well. We get relief at Wakonda because of the rules of golf and because of the dues we pay. Our taxes are merely dues that we pay to be members of the society at large.

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Golf manners, and a bit about DMGCC’s Pete Dye greens

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Waiting for the faster group behind to play through

I was recently invited to play at Des Moines Golf and Country Club by my neighbor down the street. It was over the July 4th holiday, and I expected a crowded course, but rain kept everyone but the most serious golfers away. I played with JD, and we invited two other friends to join us, and the round was memorable for this.

A twosome came up to us on what had been an empty course, and we let them pass with a smile and wave. They thanked us, and played on with little delay, bothering us not at all. This little interaction speaks volumes about golf etiquette and why I’m so passionate about golf. Everyone there understood the rules and the conventions of play -the faster group is allowed to play through. When playing through, you understand that it’s a gift, and you play briskly and thank the group you’re playing through.

This is all taught, and universally understood. If only the world at large played in this way. It used to be that everyone went to the same schools and had a common civic culture that emphasized the importance of public life of the citizen. Then things became atomized and it’s difficult to find the same levels of socialization. Today, the country is split along socioeconomic class lines that make collective action for the public good difficult or in some cases impossible.

Life really is no different from golf -for a society to function well, there have to be not only laws but unwritten rules.

Addendum:

I am finally getting the Pete Dye greens. Where old line courses like Wakonda’s will have one general slope split by a secondary slope to the terrain, Dye placed topography creating miniature maps of mesas, plateaus, lowlands, and valleys so that two changes in slope will occur not within 30 feet which is typical of most courses, but within 5 to ten feet. He also emphasized the artificial organic -think avant garde white plastic furniture from the late sixties. Wakonda is art deco like the Chrysler building, while Des Moines Golf and CC’s Pete Dye layout is decidedly modernist like 2 Columbus Circle before it’s renovation.

Nothing wrong with it. The important thing was, after this epiphany, my putting improved because I looked for the giant beach ball buried in the green above the buried giant banana.

Speaking of which, putting has become the center focus of my efforts this summer, and it is beginning to pay off. I started a miserable 9 holes earlier today at Wakonda, going 10 over through the first four holes, and finished the latter 5 holes at 2 over after I turned on the putting. The key today was emphasizing the putting stroke as a stroke, with putting as a process, and focusing on seeing the line.

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Golf Transparency -the egalitarianism of golf

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My GHIN number update came back, and my handicap index is 18.4, with a course handicap of 21 for Wakonda. I have been playing poorly, but I always do better in competition. Golf takes on a different, truer aspect when its played in formal competition. Yesterday evening, I played in the Wakonda Match Play Championship, handicapped flight.

Golf reveals its egalitarian nature in the handicapping system. I played RG, a 16 handicapper who defeated me during my run at the cup several years ago in a memorable match that taught me a lot about myself. He is an excellent player and can spin off some marvelous golf shots that exceed the level suggested by his handicap. Golf allows such unequal competitors to play on a level field with the handicap system. He gave me 5 strokes which were instrumental in keeping the match even. Through 16 holes, we were level, after RG came back from a 3 shot deficit. We were playing in a thunderstorm, barely able to see the shot beyond 20 feet. I was further handicapped by having to wear sunglasses which were prescription sunglasses. Without it, I was basically blind, but due to the waning cloudy light, the ball and target were dark. I do think that the sensory deprivation allowed me to swing better.

I was able to line up, square, square, square and swing with my head still. This allowed me to make a natural bogey, net par with a concession, followed up by a ball on green on the final hole with RG’s unfortunately lost into dark woods. This match was very close, and could only have been so with accurate handicaps.

It makes me wonder why we this concept works in golf but not in life at large. It’s written in the constitution that All Men Are Created Equal, but this is not true, is it?

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Golf Chatter and a little about Tiger

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The first true spring day arrived with temperatures in the high seventies and low eighties, and everyone else got the same idea that I did. Wakonda Club’s greenskeeper, Mr. John Temme, did something magical last fall and the results are apparent. After being covered in a blanket of 3 to 5 feet drifts as recently as two weeks ago, the greens and fairways emerged and almost instantly greened. The turf is near perfect despite it being so early in the season and everything is green. The greens haven’t been rolled to Augusta speed yet, but challenging nevertheless. It’s the fairways though that have finally come to fruition, nearly two years after the club pressed a giant reset button on the whole course and resurfaced the whole course from tee to green. Last year, the greens came into full bloom, but it is this year that the fairways are back to true form. It is fully 3 years since the project was proposed and now we are enjoying some of the best conditions I have ever played on so early in the season.

I wandered into the Lower Grill and ran into T who invited me into his group. I grabbed an Arnold Palmer and marched out and met his playing partner K and we marched along, a happy company. Blogging and operating has made me a social retard because I can no longer make polite small talk.

Me: So K, do you think any differently about Tiger when your wife is not around?

K: You have a way of asking socially awkward questions to complete strangers.

Me: It’s been stewing in my mind for a while.

K, smiling: I think that I admire him for his talents and achievements on the golf course.

Me -looking for ball: Have you ever seen those bears in the Russian circus? They get that way from conditioning -from a life of negative and positive reinforcement from the time they were cubs. I think Tiger’s pathologies only mirror the pathologies in his development. I question the place from where his golf comes from…

Let’s say we have a whole professional tour based on people who love to balance on a ball and they practice and compete out of joy of walking around on that ball, and all of a sudden this bear comes in to compete. He takes all the prizes.

From this whole sad season, it’s become clear to me that Tiger is not unlike this trained circus bear who must be a bit sad and lost when he’s not walking on his giant ball. For Tiger, golf is what he does well. Come two weeks, and we’ll see him take the trophy. I’m rooting for it.

So I shoot a 48, not too bad for a peripatetic round of a triple, bunch of bogies, and three long putts for birdie missed by a hair, missing comebackers through carelessness. It was too fun an evening to care. That is probably why I am a much better surgeon than I am a golfer.

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The right side of history

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It is the right thing to do -to get health care available to those with pre-existing conditions, to avoid the situation of modern indentured servitude for the sake of healthcare, to avoid bankruptcies in the name of healthcare, to bring order to what is a patchwork of coverage, to bring science to bear. Health care is like clean public tap water -we chose to offer the clean water to all, and those who wish to, can pay for bottled. A nation is held together by its institutions, and healthcare has always been absent as a force compared to defense, agriculture, and commerce. The promise of a healthy life is part of the bounty that we are compelled to share if we are to call ourselves a United States of America.

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Yale Is Burning

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This made the rounds a few weeks ago, including a nice article on The New Yorker. Watching it, I had to smile. As a Harvard Alum, I can tell you there is no amount of glee at 86 Brattle Street that can match this gleeful video. You either get it or you don’t. They want to select for an even creamier crème de la crème. This goes beyond being able to understand and appreciate pink polo shirts, munching on pistachios, grapes, and brie with a Gewurztraminer, or liking to sing show tunes in the shower while being completely heterosexual.

If you don’t get it, you will snigger at this video and apply to Princeton. If you really don’t get it, you’ll stop watching when the singing starts and you’ll apply to a Big Ten School. If you get it, but don’t get in, you’ll be perfectly happy at Amherst. And so on.

This inspires me to hark back to college, to the time when I hijacked the microphone at Naples Pizza in New Haven and proclaimed, “Yale Sucks!” And now, we have proof.