Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Fun With Gravity

Physics can be fun. I have already recounted the events of my high school Physics course that was taught by Mr. Wood. The syllabus of the course was:
1. Read The Autobiography of J. Robert Oppenheimer aloud in class -- September 8 through May 19;
2. Review questions and answers of The Autobiography of J. Robert Oppenheimer Exam -- May 20;
3. The Autobiography of J. Robert Oppenheimer Exam -- May 21;
4. The rest of Physics -- May 24 through June 4;
5. Review Physics -- June 7;
6. Physics Open Book Final Exam and Grading with Credit for Corrections -- June 8.

I got an "A" in Physics. Everybody got an "A" in Physics. But Mr. Wood piqued my curiosity about Physics. Gravity is one of the four forces in Nature that is described by the Standard Model. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of Nature's forces, even though it seems pretty strong. After all, if it weren't for gravity, we'd fly off the Earth; but it is so easy to lift things and overcome gravity. Consider that overcoming other forces that hold atoms and the stuff of atoms together results in ... say, huge explosions, if one is not careful.

Where am I going with this? Gravity. It can be fun. Crashing and flying off a motor scooter is not a fun gravitational effect, but other gravity effects can be fun.

The other day, the big glass cake plate cover slid off a cake plate and chipped oh-so-slightly. Now, that tiny, little chip in the edge of the cake plate cover was a good excuse to prove that gravity does, indeed, still exist. Notice the technique:

Q.E.D.

Scientific Question Answered

I'm not one of those pesky scientists who try to twist things by using Math and Physics and Chemistry. When pesky scientists twist things like they are inclined to do by reason of their extensive education and their resulting superior knowledge, they actually denigrate the rest of us. That is like a very bad thing in today's society.

In today's society, we have reverted to the philosophy of yesteryear when Galileo, the father of modern science, the father of physics, the father of astronomy, was convicted of heresy for advancing human knowledge and thought. Imagine the nerve of that guy. Father of pesky scientists.

So, when my friend, Mic, asked me, "What is the human brain worth," I did not turn to a pesky scientist for the answer because I would have been the subject of certain ridicule and hatred, but to a source that provides the answers to most of the important questions of the day -- Marc's Deep Discount Store.

Answer: The human brain is worth $2.88.

See what that extensive education and resulting superior knowledge get you?

Homeless

I have noticed a definite increase in the numbers of people wandering the streets, strangers, so to speak. I recognize many of the homeless or semi-homeless people in the downtown neighborhood, who I classify as the regulars. I know which are going to hit me up for money and which are going to give me a wide berth when I am with the hellhounds.

A long-time wanderer on the streets is the limping lady with the perpetual bandage over the right side of her face with the two-wheeled wire shopping basket she pulls around behind her. She wears a ground-touching, long-sleeved, used-to-be-white dress with two cardigan sweaters, one dirty light green, the other black, over it. She usually wears a dark-colored cloche. Sometimes, she is accompanied by a man, usually a guy with high-standing, greasy hair, trailing behind her wire shopping cart, with his untied, scuffed, light-brown hiking boots, black, loose-fitting pants held up with an over-sized belt, a long leather piece hanging and swinging as he shuffles along, slightly bent over.

I haven't seen the old guy, the guy who looks like Papa Smurf.

All followers of the Smurfs know they are blue; and the old guy, the guy who looks like Papa Smurf, appears to have a blue face, perhaps from the dirt and grime. He pushes a shopping cart ahead of him, an American flag displayed on the front of the chrome basket and an orange triangular pennant on a floppy nylon pole, flying over his head, attached to the handle near his blue-ish left hand. He wears a weathered brown leather glove on his right hand. The front wheels wobble around when he pushes the cart. The cart is filled with stuff.

Most of the other homeless wander zombie-like on the streets, except for the interlopers, the new homeless, who have not been beaten down by time, and who carry their belongings behind them in rolling luggage. It's the 21st Century.

Golf in the Ohio Sun

I played golf this morning -- the early sun took the chill off the night time air. There were no clouds in the high light blue sky. The grass was covered with dew; so, the fairways shimmered in the morning sunshine.

It's disconcerting when swinging. I feel as if the muscles just below my right shoulder blade are rippling over each other and popping like cracking knuckles -- perhaps, if I had attended the "Bodies" exhibit, I would be able to describe the location so that you might understand better.

I'm sure that I will be back to normal in a week or so. One of the annoying side effects of crashing on my Vespa just over a month ago is the unfortunate increase in my golf scores in the last couple weeks over what I had been scoring prior to the crash. I was flirting with par before the crash, but I have been struggling the last couple weeks to figure out where the golf ball is going after I hit it -- it is not going to where I am aiming. I am happy to just be able to play, however.

A friend asked me during the week about where I was playing Saturday morning; and when I invited him to join us for our standard 8 a.m. tee time, he harumphed his displeasure with the course's average slope rating (a measure of the difficulty of the course) and relatively flat landscape and declined. He doesn't feel that he will be sufficiently challenged. I think that he ought to keep his mouth shut until he can beat me once in his lifetime. Then he can criticize the course at which I play every Saturday morning.

It was a nice touch this morning when the owner of the course met us at the ninth green to drive us -- we believe in walking instead of riding in golf carts -- over to the 10th tee. He had a couple large events being held on the 36-hole layout and wanted to make sure that we would get finished in our customary 3 and 1/2 hours.

That's service. And one of the reasons we come back each week.

WTF? Real? Part Two

I read that the actor, Kevin McCarthy, died the other day. If you ask me about him, I will tell you that he was the bad guy in the hilarious movie, Innerspace, which starred Martin Short and Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid.

I did not realize that he was the star of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I can't remember much of that movie, which I saw when I was in the 5th or 6th grade on Saturday afternoon on the black-and-white Philco TV in the front room.

My family didn't have a "living room" or a "dining room." There was the front room with the front door; and then there was the kitchen with the table and chairs, at which we at supper every single night. There was a bathroom between two bedrooms through a doorway without a door to the right walking from the front room to the kitchen. And to the left, directly across from the doorway without the door, was a stairway up to the attic, where my sisters slept. And the side door was through the kitchen, and down a couple steps to the right. The milk chute was next to the side door. Turning to the left after going down the two steps was the stairway to the basement.

The black-and-white Philco television set in the front room sat just to the left of the big front window and was covered with a faux wood-grained Con-tact paper. And it looked like faux wood only if you imagined it so. And why was the black-and-white Philco covered with mid-20th Century trendy Con-tact paper? It was, after all, the "invaluable decorating and arts & crafts tool" of the time, which was put to that use after my father smashed his fist through the front right corner of the top of the black-and-white Philco television set. Bad reception. That was the reason he smashed his fist down on the television set.

So, on a rainy Saturday afternoon -- I know that because if it was not raining, I was out of doors playing baseball; and if it was snowing, I was out of doors -- I sat in the front room on the room-sized braided rug and watched the scariest movie I had ever seen in my life, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The truck loaded with pods headed out of town -- and that was the end of humanity.

And from that point on, I was on the look-out. Still am, for that matter.

WTF? Real?

I was excited that the space at the corner of East 4th and Euclid was going to be renovated and rented. I heard that restaurants of a couple various types and names were moving in to compliment the restaurants in the area. The space had been vacant since well before we had moved to live downtown. We passed on moving into the building next door because that space was vacant.

Finally, on one day in March or April, while walking the dogs, I saw a sign on the space: Coming Soon. BODIES – The Exhibition. Celebrate the Wonder of the Human Form.

That’s cool, I thought. I recalled the school trips to the Cleveland Museum of Health to learn about the magical mysteries of the human body, where I encountered Juno, the Transparent Talking Woman, who explained all there was to know about her body parts, which lighted up when she spoke about them.

I was looking forward to checking out BODIES – The Exhibition, getting dinner at Lola or Zocalo Mexican Grill or Greenhouse Tavern or one of the other restaurants on East 4th, maybe a light lunch beforehand. It seemed like a place that would take more than once to wander through, just like the Health Museum. I was excited about it, looking forward to see BODIES – The Exhibition.

It didn’t work out. I discovered something after BODIES – The Exhibition opened its doors. I didn’t actually look in the doors, but discovered it, I suppose, by chance because I said something to my daughter-in-law about riding our motor scooters there, catching some lunch, taking in the exhibition, and getting dinner. She thought that was an awesome idea and said something, it almost got by me, about how cool these real bodies were when she saw the exhibition in Pittsburgh. Real bodies? Is that what she said? Real bodies?

“Yes. Really cool! Let me know what you think!” That’s what she said.

Real bodies. That would be real dead bodies. With the skin stripped off. Some were split in two. Or whatever. People from Africa or China or wherever they were from, dead people, preserved by some secret process. And it costs money to see the real dead bodies with the skin stripped off.

It would be just my luck that on the day I went there, if I happened to be in the mood to see real dead bodies entirely de-gloved posed like a golfer, which I cannot imagine, that I would say, “Gunga galunga, gunga, gunga galunga,” and these real dead bodies, preserved with a secret process, would re-animate.

So, I haven’t gone to see the exhibition. I don’t discourage tourists, like Joakim Noah, who stop me and ask about what to do from going to see the real dead bodies. I don’t tell them that there are real bodies; I just tell them, "Oh, yeah, it’s pretty cool."

But I’m not going.