How to Shoot 65

Public Forum—Concepts in Advanced Ball Striking
261

I try so hard to be open minded and rational. Man is incredibly stupid, wasteful, and short-sighted. I am no expert on this, and while I truly believe if we followed Chief Dan George’s advice on how to treat the environment, it and we would be a lot better off…I tend agree with CC.

and 1T

Even if Al Gore quits preaching green and starts living green, I’ll not give up golf.

Jack Nicklaus…
“Keeping my life in balance was the key.”

We all need recreation, be it bowling, fishing, whittling, painting, Nascar, picking the guitar or whatever. Don’t even try to rank’um in order of cost/ benefit to society. I guess the death panel will want to do that.

As grandma used to say…“all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

262

It’s LCD’s thread to begin with so if he feels the need to get some stuff off his chest and/or vent about a few things then who am I to begrudge him that? We’re pretty much all friends here and if a brother has some “stuff” going on that he feels the need to discuss then I’m ok with it.

Thanks for asking about the situation in Dallas. It sucks. We’re officially on day 33 of 100+ temp weather with today being a nice balmy 114 if you consider the wind-chill. I have little energy anymore it seems. Haven’t seen a drop of rain in a couple of months and there’s none in sight. I’ve given up on my front and back yards… they’re browning up nicely on the way to dirt. They’ve never quite recovered from the last round of water rationing from a few years ago and my guess is that I’ll lose them totally this summer. My pecan trees are now depositing these “things” that are about a half an inch in length. I keep my AC at 84 degrees the majority of the time and it’s running constantly. I’m playing golf once a week and am now relegated to “riding” the last 9 holes of each round as I’m afraid I’ll be riding in a vehicle with lights on top and sirens if I try and walk the entire 18.

I don’t know enough about the climate-change argument to have a truly informed opinion. Times like this make me a believer, but then again we just came off a crazy cold, snowy, ice-storm filled January and February…andecdotal stuff, but that’s all I have. IMO the worst thing that could have happened to the whole global-warming thing was to have a career politician like Albert Gore champion it… thus invoking immediate skeptisicm by a majority of the poplulation.

Regardless, I need my golf and will continue to play as long as they take my green fee. I’m used to playing on very under-average conditions so I don’t have a lot of remorse as to these courses being a big drain on our natural resources.

But again, I appreciate some of the questions LCD might be wrestling with. I don’t have kids, but I’m sure as they start to leave the nest there are natural paternal instincts that lead to a lot of questions and introspection/extrospection and I suspect there are no easy answers.

robbo

263

I just can’t pass up an opportunity to repost this video…Reduce your CO2 and methane emissions by nixing the goats and work out your module muscles by mowing it yourself. Win/win!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGNsvuJpEc[/youtube]

I bet you that if you do not rabidly foam at the mouth whilst mowing a swathe like this, you are doing it wrong…

264

Wow, talk about getting really low, really flat, lots of knee flex, and using your body to pivot. (Sound familiar?)

Using just all arms, you probably wouldnt get past half of the first row…

265

Look this is hard & uncomfortable & big, if anyone is used to that it should be me. This is my trade, I’m a professional of the soft sciences, in particular anthropology. The thing is though there’s no dividing line where one area stops and the others begin. Anthropology, history, sociology, economics, political science, ecology, philosophy, theology, psychology… they all overlap, they all intertwine & they all depend on two things: faith & making the best choice available at the time. You can’t separate any of these soft sciences completely from all the others at any time. And there’s no definite right or wrong in any of it, all we have is faith of a best available option for right here right now which is constantly in flux so what the best available option is today will not be the best available option tomorrow. Just like golf nobody can master any of this, we just muddle through, try to keep up and be open to new hopefully better more complete knowledge. All this conditioning garbage that we have to fear engagement in big discussions and principles of these soft sciences is so damaging, we’re in crisis right now this minute and it’s become against the social law to even admit it. Everything is intertwined in our global society and this debate has a place in this forum.

The problem at its essence is that this planet is consuming its last 5-7% of its supply of petroleum. It is a completely unrenewable resource, every person reading these words is doing so on a petroleum derived product, it is every golf ball you hit & every golf grip you hold. It’s your transportation, your medicine & your financial records cannot be accessed without it. Your money which whatever country you live in isn’t even real money, is actually so called fractional reserve currency but is backed by nothing, is a magnetized petroleum derivative.

The problem is we are at the end of the industrial age and not one individual human being on this planet has any idea what comes next. There is no substitute for petroleum for anything and without it we’re back in the year 1885. No internet, no power grids, no cars, no trains, no planes, no ships except those military ships that are nuclear, no industrial farming and only 20% of the world’s water supply will be functional. In 1885 the planet earth had about 1,500,000,000 inhabitants. Best guess on Halloween this year we pass 7,000,000,000. That’s 5,500,000,000 more most of whom live in inhospitable environments that cannot support large populations, places like Phoenix & suddenly subsaharan Somolia. Add cities like San Francisco which is right now a ticking time bomb waiting to be leveled by a long overdue massive earthquake as the largest port on the American Pacific Rim & Mexico City with a population of over 25,000,000, rampant starvation being suppressed for now by the current regime. In a sentence as soon as the oil supply drops below 2%, the lights go out & we start eating each other. OR we grow up, look at the world and engage in real debate & decide what’s next. Everything is on the table right now, our society, our nations & if they are necessary or obsolete, our money, our education, our religious lives, our ethics & most definitely our awful technology. Or we wait to eat each other. The crisis that I find myself in is whether my son who is going off to college will live to see his 30th birthday and whether or not bringing him into a world gone mad was a mistake and a contribution to the problem. I love him more than I can express and I fear what he will have to endure. I understand this is a lot to put in a golf forum but anything less than honesty at this point feels like Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burns. I don’t ask anybody to read this, I only propose a debate which is long overdue. The decisions are ours as citizens, every single one of us has a voice in the formation of a new civilization & I cannot believe that we do not understand what the definition of a citizen is. I refuse to, we haven’t fallen that far.

266

Robbo said

and

I agree completely.

LCD, and probably most of you, have a much wider and deeper knowledge of this topic than me, so it is good to hear your views and they are respected. Maybe an answer will be some austerity when it comes to golf. But hopefully no famine or fasting…I stand by my comments on the importance of recreation!

267

Actually I switched to opossums months ago. A pleasantly “meaty” animal that is much more resilient and makes a less aggravating noise when thwacked with a 2 iron. :wink:

Captain Chaos

268

I prefer Hawaiians…a subtle sweet and sour taste to the flesh and highly marbled! :wink:

Just be thankful I didn’t go in the other direction with this! :open_mouth:

Captain Chaos

269

Austerity doesn’t even address the core problems which are systemic rather than policy based. The terms right and left are completely obsolete now gone the way of drop drills and air raid sirens. When Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders are arguing the same position you have throw the book out the window. It is a new world. And speaking of drop drills let’s play a game that doesn’t mean anything to any one of us… while everybody is doing their bag work at home let’s find out where the closest thermonuclear warhead is… there’s about 70,000 in the USA & 125,000 in the world. Where’s the closest one to you in places like Vallejo, Seattle, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, Detroit, Charleston, London, Amsterdam, Rome, etc? The Sierra Nevada is chock full of them, I’ve got 3 that I know about within 20 miles of my house, who can beat me? Now what happens to these hydrogen bombs if the power grid fails? Do they launch, do they lose containment of the plutonium, do they detonate, does anybody know? Does anybody care? It’s a different world out there, how many think the nuclear power plant still underwater in Nebraska was purposely built on that site in 1971 because it was a natural flood plain? The world has changed and part of that budget cut will have to come out of the NRC. Oh yeah how many thermonuclear missiles do you figure are targeting you right now this second? I would so love to just be crazy and off my meds and locked up forever and juiced of my gord on thorozine and a happy camper kept away from all you normals out there but it’s not that kind of world.

270

now, when i get to thinking this way, usually i decide that the best thing to do is save up to money to buy a ranch in wyoming, build a big fence around it, and stockpile firearms. i’m not sure what the solution would be if you’ve already done that, like lcdv has.

sounds like a confluence of factors have put you in this state, my friend. multifactorial etiology. looks like you are struggling to define what, exactly–if anything-- is le coeur de vie? maybe you knew it once–or thought you did–and know you are not so sure…

at risk of opening a separate can of worms, i will just note that many, if not all, of our european/western belief structures separate the human species from the rest of the biologic world, almost as though the biologic world exists or was created in the service of the human species. this is reinforced by the unique collective and individual ability of each member of the human species to embellish his otherwise infinitesimally fractionally unimportant existence with the narrative of his life.

science does not honor this distinction on a number of different levels. for example, the universe’s estimated age is 14 billion years. the earth has “only” been around for a third of this time, or 4.5 billion years. the 200,000 or so years that human or humanoid species have existed further reinforces the humility of our situation, when compared to the incomprehensible scope of existence. furthermore, neurobiologic and neuropsychologic studies have shattered the anthropocentric myth. descartes though that the ‘soul’ existed in ‘the ether’ and was transmitted via the pineal gland in the midbrain. we now know that the pineal gland serves no such function, other than to assist in regulating circadean rhythms. additionally, our understanding of how the brain works at present shows that it works more like a computer–with multiple parallel processing systems working to synthesize a coherent representation of our world–like an image on a monitor being the product of a series of binary zeroes and one–rather than by the popularly held belief that any particular person’s self or “soul” exists in a single central part of the brain.

the point of all this is to perhaps suggest that some context and perspective may make it easier to accept the biological fact that we humans, like any other species, will grow in a niche or environment to a certain size at which the biological–and in the case of humans, sociological–byproducts/waste of our existence will further limit our continued prosperity. unfortunately, we are imbued with the tragic talent of unwittingly tricking ourselves into never realising this fact.

271

For everyone’s sake this will be the last post I’m gonna make that goes psychoofftopic, the reason I’m doing this is that I just wanted to see how people who aren’t already engaged in ‘the war’ would react to the big picture. After this post I’m done because most people just can’t handle just about all of this, I’m not handling it well & wake up every morning praying it’s a bad dream but it never is. So I’ll lay reality out & then I’m done here the disengaged are consigned to slaughter anyway if not all of us.

We are at war. It has very little if anything to do with Iraq, Afghanistan & Libya, that’s just primitive occupation & diversionary tactics. We are in the middle of what history will refer to as either World War III or the Great Financial War. The stakes are the future of the human race, whether or not any of us continue to exist. Nationalism is becoming more obsolete by the minute. The battlefields are the world’s financial markets and the weapons are capital, all the fiat currencies & financial derivatives along with systemic fraud & white noise propaganda. Alliances are by the moment and no one knows what will happen from moment to moment. At it’s core the war is a game of musical chairs as the world’s supply of oil continually diminishes. There’s room for about two billion people which is five more than are already here. The war must be fought on a micro front and a macro front simultaneously. Just like WWI & the Cuban Missile Crisis the language of the war is evolving and players are being eliminated by it. If you don’t believe any of this it doesn’t matter, it’s real. Just like the last two world wars. I am a combatant in WWIII. On a micro level I own my land outright as well as my own water company, lots of people up here do too. By next yr I’ll be off the power grid completely & I’m purchasing animals, onsite fuel reserves & some other things. I have a debt load of $0.00 & my son’s education is prepaid. On a macro level I’m an active member of the Silver Liberation Army, a proponent of a return to the gold standard preferably before Zimbabwe does it first & hold a short position on T-Bills just like Eric Cantor except I’ll admit it. I love America & I don’t want to leave but I do not subscribe to the psychotic narcissism that this is the greatest place in the history of the world.

If anyone cares to enlighten themselves and learn about World War III some shit you can research would be Consolidated Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, Citizens United, AIG, Fanny & Freddie, Bloomberg, NY Federal Reserve, Ratings Fraud, PIIGS, Argentina 2001, United Fruit, S&L Bailout, Bank of Beverly Hills, Greek Sovereignty, Primitive Accumulation, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein Charlie Rose Interview, Naked Short Selling, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase, COMEX, CME, Silver Liberation Army, Fracing, market manipulation, Ron Paul Ben Bernanke Gold is not money, Timothy Geithner employment history, neoliberarism, neoconservatism, 1971, 1987, 2008, Too Big to Fail, Wage Disparity, Privatize the Profit Socialize the Loss, Climate Radicalism, the Crusades, Neofeudalism, Jon Paulson, Hank Paulson, Tony Blair JPM Consultant. This is a start just to understand the basics of the war.

All the walls are down, we as citizens of the free world are individual warriors of WWIII. By the time the oil runs out five billion souls will perish, if it goes nuclear it doesn’t even matter. At this point it’s mostly larceny & fraud to accumulate meaningless fiat currency & only semivaluable capital. It will become a Holocaust the scale of which the world has never contemplated, at least I haven’t seen jackshit to even begin to convince me otherwise. If you can’t handle it don’t believe me at all. It’s still real, it’s been a real world war for over four years and it’s still just beginning. As in The Matrix the choice is yours. Good luck.

I suppose this closes this thread.

272

I think we should keep these posts golf related to help save our sanity…
However, I will add that when I played on The Canadian Tour, we used to have a tour stop up near the top of Alberta in a place called Fort McMurray. It had a good golf course and home to the worlds largest flying insects that some would only dare call Mosquitos.

I had the good fortune of being paired in the pro am with one of the head honchos of Suncor and he invited Vic Wilk and I to take a tour of what was going on up there. All I can say is… it was an eye opening experience. What he did tell us in confidence was that the Athabasca Oil Reserve contained enough oil to supply the US and Canada for close to 1000 years though it’s publicly released estimates suggest between 150 to 200 years.
While most of the attention is focused on the middle east, Ft Mac is actually the second largest reserve known on the planet. He called it our ace in the hole.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands

So hopefully this little ABS secret can get us all back and focused on our module work so we can work toward shooting 65.

273

Golf courses are of the few grounding havens left, especially in cities. Ungrounded man is the one who makes stupid decisions. I think that desire for a connection with the earth and all things simple is a common bond many us share here, even if we don’t know it. It manifests in a dislike for anything that threatens that connection, like motorized carts, GPSs, manicured courses and commercialism.

The future you describe LCDV sounds a a great place to me. All I see now is financial and mental depression and everyone living in fear of losing what they have. Couples are working 6 days to afford an overly-indulgent home and child care because they’re working. They’re falling in love before even meeting each other and asking for divorce via SMS. A back-to-basics revolution would be bliss.

274

You mean the sky isn’t falling? Back to the bag… :sunglasses:

275

You ignorant sots. Since all of you are so coerced and so ignorant and so apathetic I’ll just say it. All of you are why I cry.

In clear concise English the United States of America has lost its sovereignty, it has been corrupted by an illegal banking clan and a multinational corporate oligarchy. This corruption was sealed into law by the Stimulus and sanctified by the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. Our government has failed us. Our Constitution is now broken and inept because it now violates the document it serves, our basic social contract.

ushistory.org/declaration/document/

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -That to secure these truths, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

This is our social contract and our declaration of our intent to act as a sovereign nation to the rest of the world. It is our most sacred document sanctified by our willingness to give our blood and our lives to defend it. It is more important than our Constitution or any other document. It has been totally violated. When we as the People of the United States were robbed of our wealth, our very homes by banks our government chose rather than to prosecute the criminals and free our land to pay them more money and make their continuing theft of America itself law. Our highest court, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 verdict gave human rights to every corporation. This again violates directly the Declaration of Independence. A corporation is an imaginary business entity, not a human being or a citizen

In our social contract We the People of the United States of America are charged with a duty to change or replace our government which has failed to maintain its independence from coercion of banks and multinational corporations. I understand my duty as a citizen, the responsibility does not belongs with me and my fellow citizens who love Liberty and are willing to sacrifice what is necessary to restore what we have all lost. The reason I have cried the entire time I’ve written this is that all of you fellow citizens don’t even understand the problem. You’re giving away every single right you have in exchange for indentured servitude to Goldman Sachs & Coca-cola. Governments break and good people fix them, that’s not the real crime here. The criminal indictment of our People is that none of you care.

What has turned this crisis into a World War is the insane stupidity of every nation on the planet abandoning real money in place of imaginary fiat currencies with the US Dollar imaginary entity as the world’s reserve. This year is the 40th anniversary of the abandoning of the gold standard. The crisis has become global systemic panic because no sane intelligent person in the world outside the United States can comprehend hy the world’s only superpower would for no reason all of the sudden give up its sovereignty to a few criminal bankers in exchange for crushing fraud ridden debt. The endgame of this weakness of the American People is being called Neofeudalism where these bankers own all the capital in the world and 99% of the world’s population are indentured serfs to the banking clan. This is REALITY and the cause of it is the ignorance and apathy of the American People to get off their ass, fix their broken archaic government and start the Second American Republic.

Or you can believe the 10%ers of which I am currently one who believe that ecology really is a soft science rather than a hard one, that none of this really matters & the nobody cares is that we really are out of oil & the world will end in nuclear Holocaust in line with the Mayan prophecy. That’s what all my training tells me but I continue to act as a 90%er because I refuse to wait to die, that’s worse.

276

long way from home here…

1 Like
277

I feel we are touching the boundaries of what is best a simple golf forum. But I certainly am sympathetic toward the ruling powers being abusive… certainly that has happened in the game of golf. If the USGA were running the US government, we might have something that looks exactly like the current situation… a disregard for common sense.

If I knew for certain the world were coming to an end according the the Mayans, I still think I would be trying to shoot as many 65’s between now and December of 2012.

I’m not sure political debate on a golf forum is going to be all that productive for any of us… at least not golf wise… regardless of how big a shadow it casts over thick rough and poorly raked sand bunkers.

278

LCD, I’m fully aware of how the banking system works, fractional reserve banking and FIAT money. I’m not an ignorant sot. However, I’m not going to allow that stuff from letting me enjoy my life. My parents had a good life despite this stuff going on, so am I, and my children too. I don’t say you should just ignore this stuff, in fact it can be a help knowing how things work, but you know, the breakdown of civilisiation, it might never happen. Just my two cents, take it or leave it. I agree with the others that this is a really good golf forum, but it’s a crap politics forum - we might all fall out over our political leanings, which would be a pity, because there would be a lot to lose. Cheers, Teddy.

279

Speak for yourself. I’m neither ignorant nor a sot. I need nobody to cry for me and still have faith in the power, charity, and good in not only these United States, but also for the positive nature of the average human being. I choose to be part of that solution or I’ll perish knowing that I did my best against evil.

Captain Chaos

280

They just did what where?!? My aunt June says they’ve been boarding up Woo Town and laying sandbags since Thurs nite & they’re playing & putting galleries outside in Jersey while 10 states have states of emergency & forced evacs & all the transportation shut down? Why should I be surprised, the ‘patron’ was just in Athens for that little estate sale & they don’t do giving paper back. If the Armageddon Asteroid hit they’d plant the flag on that too… frigging world gone mad… I been to Thailand in monsoon season but they know what they’re doing, this is insane. There’s already been deaths from driving & surfing in this storm, that’s plain old suicide.