Be Fore Warned...

    Right off the bat (or club), I don't understand golf, which is not saying much because I don't understand a lot of things.  And if you chanced to read the last post, you already know that sports are quite low on the totem pole of my interests (no offense meant because I don'tunderstand how to read totem poles either).  Onsides, offsides, green lines, blue lines, birdies, double-eagles, black diamonds, Parkinson's...wait, what??  I'll get that to back in a minute, but have me watch a hockey or soccer game and I'll enjoy it even if not fully understanding it.  No harm, no foul.  But golf?  While most folks keep being told to tear up their sidewalk strips of grass and take shorter showers, I keep seeing bright green golf courses contrasted by players who are primarily Caucasian (and have the money to pay for the green fees).  As the late George Carlin asked, when have you regularly seen a black, brown, red, yellow (or whatever other color you wish to use for a non-white person) player on a golf course (that is, playing and not being a caddie or mowing the greens)?  But a zillion people I know absolutely love the game, and me saying these words would be blasphemy and (contrary to the rules of golf) sub-par.  But Parkinson's?  

     Before I dive into that topic, I had to ask, where the heck did "fore" come into the picture for golf?  Why not "watch out" or "incoming" or "oops, sorry."  Check most sites and the common answer seems to be that early Scots used the term "fore-caddie" to warn their ballboys that a ball was headed their way (which does little to explain anything about "fore"); and Wikipedia put an Irish spin on this by adding: A somewhat dubious alternate origin theory promulgated by the Irish states that "fore!" may have been a contraction of the Gaelic cry Faugh A Ballagh! (i.e. Clear the way!) which is still associated with the sport of road bowling which has features reminiscent of golf.  Wait, road bowling?...it may have started before golf began in Scotland, so said because golf's origins are thought to be Danish, wrote Wikipedia.  Another theory is that fore simply meant "ahead."  Hmm, so where did forehead originate?

     Just consider all the uses both old and new of these variations: foretold, forehand, forecast, foreclose (yikes), foreskin (double yikes).  Change the spelling to "four" and you have four-of-a-kind, four score and seven years ago, four-by-four, four and twenty blackbirds.  Drop a letter to get "for" and you have forgotten, for he's a jolly good fellow, for God & country, and forgive.  Think of how confusing all of that must be if you're starting to learn English.  What a long road ahead...fore!  But Parkinson's?  Using 25 years of data, a Mayo Clinic study found that the heavy pesticide usage by golf courses may be filtering down to water tables and increasing the risk of getting Parkinson's.  Wrote the Parkinson's Foundation: Overall, the analysis revealed that people who lived within one mile of a golf course were 126% (or 2.26 times) more likely to receive a Parkinson’s diagnosis than those whose homes were six or more miles away.  Being farther from the fairway seemed to help; risk steadily tapered off beyond one mile, with the odds of PD diagnoses decreasing by 9% for each mile of distance from a golf course.  Distance is only part of the story.  When researchers looked at households served by a public water system that contained at least one golf course, Parkinson’s risk was 96% higher in households whose water systems did not have a golf course within their boundaries, and about 50% higher than people who use private wells.  Additionally, when a golf course was in an area with groundwater vulnerable to contamination, the risk of Parkinson’s was 82% higher than in less vulnerable areas with a golf course.

    But forget golf since there are so many other things I don't understand besides golf...like privacy.  A recent issue of Motor Trend told of the 20-year history of Chrysler (now a subsidiary of Stellantis) and its OnStar satellite system (once years ahead of Google maps for navigation) which also enabled drivers to call for help and partially diagnose their engines if something was acting up.  What apparently wasn't evident to drivers was that all of their add-on Smart Driver "service" was also collecting and storing that data to sell to insurance companies and others (General Motors settled a lawsuit against their Smart Driver service but recently appealed the decision: ...arguing that the company's acts were not an invasion of privacy as drivers on public roads have "no reasonable expectation of privacy.")  Then came the New Yorker piece on Spotify which has blossomed into an industry now worth more than Universal and Warner combined (said the piece, streaming now accounts for nearly 80% of the US recording industry's revenue), although it should be noted that Spotify's new rules state that if your song has fewer than 1000 plays per year they do not have to pay any royalties; this new rule covers about 2/3 of its entire catalog, or about 60 million songs.  More importantly, Spotify is also keeping track of your "moods," adjusting its recommended playlists to what you listened to throughout the day, much as Amazon and Netflix do when they record your watching habits to add to their "people also bought/watched these" lists.  Need I mention "smart watches" monitoring (and for the most part, selling to third parties) your health?...oh, and they likely have PFAs (what??).  But appliances?*  And then came this story to the Associated Press from a whistleblower about Musk's DOGE: The Trump administration exposed the Social Security data of the vast majority of Americans --more than 300 million-- when its so-called Department of Government Efficiency uploaded private information to a cloud account not subject to oversight.  The AP said personal information of most Americans now at risk of being released includes health diagnoses, income, banking information, familial relationships and personal biographic data.  “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits,” said the whistleblower complaint.

 

    And then there's Greenland.  Remember Greenland, a land virtually rising from the sea as the weight of its ice melts, and a land which Trump wants to buy, or (hint, hint) take it by force if it comes to that.  If that sounds confounding to you then a piece in The London Review tried to explain not only the residents' views, but also that of Denmark (which centuries earlier simply named Greenland as its own and began subsidizing its economy) and that of the current US administration...and I'll sum it up for you: it's almost comical.  Again, no offense to any peoples or nations but the final paragraph of the article captured the underlying sentiment when it wrote: It’s not absurd to imagine an overlap between the sense of loss of the hunters driven to the city and the yearning that drives city-dwellers to the wilderness.  No doubt the young Danes trickling into Greenland in the high imperial era were high on religion and romanticism, but did Europeans ever impute to native people in the countries they colonized the same wonder and awe they felt at their surroundings?  Was the transcendental climax of Tuumarsi, or the exalted Christian imagery of 19th and 20th-century Greenlandic folk tales --small epics of subsistence, manhood and murder, the Gospels overlaid on stories of guilty fugitives in icy valleys-- really about Christian belief, or was it about delight in a new medium for an expression of Greenlanders’ age-old encounter with the very thing outsiders come to seek, the ineffable sublime?

     And there was the commonality...the awe.  These efforts to trim and prune and shape us into uniformity --to tear up lands (or simply occupy them IF they have something valuable), to track us in order to raise our rents and insurance rates, to pollute aquifers and use up precious water (as in data centers consuming over a billion gallons wrote CNET: When data centers consume water, a significant amount evaporates during the cooling process.  The remaining water, which is often polluted, is put into the city's wastewater system...but to be fair, many data centers are looking into "closed loop" cooling systems which would vastly reduce their fresh water usage, partially in response to the smaller towns and cities worried about their wells drying up)-- all of it seems to point to an effort to pull us away from nature, both the world's and ours.  In The Nature Fix, writer Florence Williams wrote: Scientists are quantifying nature's effects not only on mood and well-being, but also on our ability to think --to remember things, to plan, to create, to daydream and to focus-- as well as on our social skills.  There were times when I was skeptical, and times when I believed.  I spent time with people who were trying to get well, people who were trying to get smart, people finding the best ways to educate young children (who are, by nature, exploratory, kinetic and full of wonder, all qualities enhanced by time outside) and people who were merely trying, like me, to stay sane in a frenetic world...while "well-being" may sound like vague psychospeak, its impact is real.  Enhancing it has been shown to add years to your life span.   

     But enough of that....let's jump to the lion fish.  Hear the word lion and you immediately think of that majestic-maned male, or that cunning female predator that reinforces its role as rulers of the savannah.  The roar of a lion in the wild is a sound few ever forget.  But a lionfish?  Like its terrestrial cousin, it eats virtually anything and repopulates like crazy, as in a female releasing 2 million eggs over a year.  Added a piece in Smithsonian: Lionfish spines deliver a venomous sting that can last for days and cause extreme pain.  Also sweating, respiratory distress and even paralysis.  Lionfish venom glands are located in the spines on the top and the sides and the bottom of the fish.  They can sting you even after the fish is dead.  The venom is a neurotoxin.  Once the spine punctures the skin, the venom enters the wound through grooves in the spine.  If stung, seek medical attention immediately.  The guys on the dock will tell you that the sting of a lionfish is like “getting hit hard by a hammer, then injecting the bruise with hot sauce.”  Lionfish are also considered delicious.  But a lionfish is not a "ruler" but is an invasive species.  Reported the NOAA Fisheries site: Researchers have discovered that a single lionfish residing on a coral reef can reduce recruitment of native reef fish by 79 percent.  As the early book Ishmael noted, savannah lions are "leavers" in that they take what they need and leave the rest.  We humans, like the lionfish, are "takers," wiping out species or lands until "we" are satiated, be it our bellies or our egos.  But then, it's complicated, and you wouldn't understand...

**The weakest knot?  It's complicated...

     I must admit that I thoroughly dislike those sentiments that tend to make you feel as if you're being looked down upon.  I may not need intricate details on the workings of a nuclear reactor but at least give me a chance to "understand" it, some graph or a simplified version.  On a national scale, don't wipe out history or cut funding for near-complete projects; as Esquire wrote: A great deal of these cuts have come from the science sector: research programs, grants, and scholarships.  Trials of cures for cancer and AIDS have been frozen, just as those cures seem tantalizingly within reach.  And now our last research ship in Antarctica will likely be sent home, wrote Scientific American: Only one vessel --the U.S. research icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP)-- has successfully penetrated the area’s phalanx of sea ice and billion-metric-ton icebergs to reach a critical location on Thwaites, widely considered the world’s most dangerous glacier.  The NBP has made about 200 research cruises to Antarctica in the past 30 years, in many cases reaching places never before visited. But if the Trump administration has its way, this will all come to an end in October...Researchers first learned of the NBP’s situation on May 30, when the Trump administration released its full fiscal year 2026 budget request for NSF to Congress.  The termination was buried in a single sentence on page 102 of the 222-page document.  The budget request also stipulated a 70 percent funding cut for polar science research projects overall.  “None of us saw that coming,” says Patricia Yager, a polar marine biologist at the University of Georgia, who called the move “shocking.”...Amid the uncertainty, Oscar Schofield, a biological oceanographer at Rutgers University, sees a clear message.  The administration is already stripping climate data from government websites, preparing to halt EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions and quietly discussing plans to scuttle a state-of-the-art NASA satellite that monitors carbon dioxide—allowing the spacecraft to burn up in the atmosphere.  Canceling the NBP, he says, looks like “a political decision of not wanting to support climate change research.”  The reason?  It's complicated (no, it isn't)...

     Long ago, the group Yes wrote: I've seen all good people turn their heads each day, so satisfied, I'm on my way...Move me on to any black square, use me any time you want; just remember that the goal is for us all to capture all we want, anywhere.  Songfacts wrote: In a Songfacts interview with Yes frontman Jon Anderson, he explained: "The song is about initiation of yourself into the idea that there is more to life than war and fighting within religions and things like that.  So when we were singing 'see all good people,' it's like, 'we can see you all in the audience because you're good people no matter what, and when you're with music you're enlightened, you're good, you're happy, you're excited.'  And music is the kingpin of it all.  It's not just Yes, it's music that brings people together like no other energy on such a level."

Photo: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

     But then it can be complicated, in a sense.  Here was just one scenario from Rory Stewart, a historian who walked (as in actually walked) across Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and India in 2000, then walked across Afghanistan 16 months later.  The Taliban had been pushed back and both British and American forces were trying to rebuild the infrastructure, or at least how they felt it should be rebuilt.  Wrote Stewart in his book, The Places In Between: Critics have accused this new breed of administrators of neocolonialism, but in fact their approach is not that of a nineteenth-century colonial officer.  Colonial administrations may have been racist and exploitative, but they did at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing...Postconflict experts have got the prestige without the effort or stigma of imperialism.  Their implicit denial of the difference between cultures is the new mass brand of international intervention.  Their policy fails but no one notices.  There are no credible monitoring bodies and there is no one to take formal responsibility.  Individual officers are never in any one place and rarely in any one organization long enough to be adequately assessed...By avoiding any serious action or judgement they, unlike their colonial predecessors, are able to escape accusations of racism, exploitation, and oppression.  Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world.   If the policy makers know little about the Afghans, the pubic knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan.  He was referring to the simplistic approach taken by today's negotiators vs. those that took the time to learn the many facets of numerous tribal cultures.  Afghanistan alone incorporates Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, and Moghol tribal peoples (among others).  Historically, the Arab world has feuded over secular divisions centuries before our country was even created (as a side note, can you name 10 of our Native American tribes?...if so, how many of the other 564 recognized tribes here in the US can you name?)   Then-president Jimmy Carter managed to broker a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel (the Camp David Accords); but tensions and tribal divisions run deep in the Middle East and the Egyptian leader was assassinated 3 years later by one of the unhappy factions within his country.  When a friend of ours brought her military Middle East negotiator date to a dinner party, we asked for his version of what was happening "over there," only to be told, "It's complicated" (Carter tried to explain a little of this Middle East maze in his book, The Blood of Abraham...it was "complicated" reading, even back then).

     In a New Yorker review of a book on morality by the German philosopher Hanno Sauer, the reviewer wrote: It's harder to keep believing some things once you find out why you believe them...I see myself as no freer of the nexus of causes than my dog, my cactus, or my tennis ball...The history that made us into creatures capable of coöperation also gave us the capacity to hate one another in the aggregate, to draw sharp lines dividing the in-group from the out-group.  Sauer’s book may cast a gloomier light than he acknowledges.  Our capacity for endless conflict may be just as much a part of our inheritance as is our ability, every now and then, to get along.  Perhaps we are less like the lion and more like the lionfish because we can't help it, we're takers.  It is in our "nature."  Reading for pleasure is down 40% (wrote Science Alert: "This is not just a small dip -- it's a sustained, steady decline of about 3 percent per year," says Jill Sonke, director for the Center for the Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida.  "It's significant, and it's deeply concerning.")   We are seemingly returning to a Lord of the Rings scenario, facing Orcs and Golums and wondering what side we're actually part of. (as noted in Fandom: ...the One Ring was thrown in the fires of Mount Doom when Gollum and Frodo struggled and the forces of Mordor were almost completely destroyed; for without Sauron's power to sustain them...the ground under them collapses sending these structures and nearly all the Orc/Trolls deep into the middle earths depths).  

  

      But as long as a few of today's current "leaders" work to reshape and reform things into what they feel is "our" version, why not just melt the rings of Saturn.  Why have a planet that looks so different from all the others in "our" solar system?  Unfortunately, the workings of the cosmos has already beat them to it...the rings are "raining" their icy holdings, dissipating them and having them fall into Saturn's gravitational pull.  And as if to preview what Saturn will look like without its rings, its orbit will soon be at the point where its rings become aligned with our field of vision and appear as if Saturn has already lost its rings.  Perhaps that planet is telling us --just as the residents of Greenland, and the peoples of Gaza and Sudan, and as the deaf amateur sleuth in Code of Silence told us-- they just want to be heard for a change, for people to notice and to listen.

     Science News reported that there are several theories about another ending beyond just Saturn, that of our universe.  Said part of the report: ...uncertainties remain.  Dark energy, the most dominant force in the cosmos, is also the least understood.  Its true nature may alter everything we think we know about the end.  What is certain is that the cosmos is not eternal in the sense once imagined.  It evolves, it changes, and it will one day cease to resemble the vibrant universe we inhabit today.  But even as we contemplate these distant futures, we are reminded of the present wonder—the galaxies ablaze with starlight, the fragile blue world we call home, the brief but extraordinary window of time in which conscious beings can gaze at the heavens and ask these questions.  To know that the universe has a destiny is not to despair but to marvel.  In its beginning, it gave rise to stars, to life, to thought.  In its ending, it will complete the cycle of existence.  Between those two infinities lies us, fleeting yet aware, children of the cosmos daring to imagine its final chapter.  

     To marvel indeed.  Leaders, conquerors, emperors, and presidents all age and come to an end.  And whatever they've added or destroyed also comes to an end, and eventually disappears.  Each of us should take the time to step outside and just look at what surrounds us.  From above to below, it is all a marvel.  Alas, not everyone sees it that way, a fallback to our human "nature."  And perhaps that's true, that we are not capable to seeing anything other than black or white, yin or yang, plus or minus, good or evil.  And you may have read a few theories that our universe is but one of many, and that it, too, may have to fight for its existence, perhaps even becoming predatory as it seeks out and gobbles up other universes in its own cycle of life and survival.  Psychology Today once wrote: Asked what question he would most want to know the answer to if he returned to Earth in 500 years, Albert Einstein replied, “Is the universe friendly?”  This thought may have been previewed in one review of The Teachings of Don Juan which summarized: The universe is not benevolent but predatory, constantly testing the awareness of all beings. This pressure forces beings to enhance their awareness, allowing the universe to become aware of itself.  Hmm, it's a thought beyond my understanding...but then, there are so many things I don't understand.  Sigh...

Photo: Mara Elephant Project

*Here's what my power company (Rocky Mountain Power) sent me when it broke down my electric bill and detailed what each appliance in my house had used: Appliance itemization is powered by disaggregation, a process that takes the energy usage data from your meter and uses software algorithms to identify the individual appliances that are actually using the energy.  Each appliance uses electricity in a unique manner -- think of it like an appliance fingerprint.  We detect and extract these "fingerprints" and convert the data into useful insights and recommendations.  What??  Yet another thing I don't understand...

**That photo of the series of knots comes from Scientific American (since I'm not a sailor or rock climber, knots are yet another field I don't understand).  The quick read not only named each knot (yes, each has a different name) but asked which of the four was the strongest, and which was the weakest.  As the article noted: People are surprisingly bad at guessing knot strength...In both pairs, one knot is vastly stronger than the other. So take a quick moment to look at all four; can you see the differences?  If you were in a hurry, say in securing a rope to try and rescue someone whose car you saw go off an edge, would you tie the correct knot?  The answer, when you peek at the short article, may surprise you (especially with one of the knots being "...so weak you could sneeze on it and it would fall apart.")   At the very least, it may make you view such similarities in an entirely different way, maybe even when you look at the world around you...(and if you just can't wait, the knot on the right is the one that will simply fall apart when pulled).