It's always possible to tell when I have been playing golf during the week as there are inevitably a number of stories that present themselves, and then there are the weeks when life makes impossible to get out, and I have to fumble about for what to waffle about. This week was one of the latter. School holidays, work and yesterday, my good lady wife volunteering at the microchip-inject-a-thon meant that I saved myself the embarrassment of another hack round the course. I have been to the course, but only to do battle the F**!@#!! phone systems (for the fourth time) and am pleased to finally report that I have got the answerphone message sorted out. After much swearing at the automated service that defies human logic or initiative, anyone now calling the club and failing to get an answer will now instead get my dulcet tones reaming off a host of alternative numbers to call instead - technology is indeed, grand. I am obliged to report a minor response to last weeks emails, not so much a complaint as a somewhat limp claim of innocence from the Flax-Bush-Flogger, Fred; claiming that all that was printed was not necessarily "true", a claim somewhat undermined by the use of a winking emoji. Now, while it is true that I have not visited the scene of the crime, the fact that I did witness his three playing partners chugging back shots of liquid burnished gold hints that he might be being ever so slightly disingenuous. Normally, in a situation like this I fall back on the weather (changeable and dull), an oddity in the news, or the family, and it is to the latter that I will turn this week, as my two kids have discovered the "Hey Siri" part of my phone, and now demand that I ask Siri any question that they can think of with regular monotony. The latest (after asking Siri if she fancied Alexa) was how long it would take to count to 1 billion (we were talking about population size by country, continent and planet), and the answer was a surprisingly long thirty-one years, assuming each number would take one second to say, which is being generous if you take say: "seven-hundred-and eighty-six-million, one-hundred-and-twenty-seven-thousand, four-hundred-and-forty-two". All of which goes to show that one billion is a very big number indeed (Jimmy gave up counting at twelve). Then there was a conversation I was having with my niece and we came up with the idea of odd world records. This stemmed from her never having heard of the former "sport" of dwarf-tossing. She hadn't believed the human race could be quite so insensitive (she has a lot to learn) but it did make me wonder aloud whether or not there had ever been a world record for this? Naturally I asked Siri, and after much misunderstanding (twelve vs dwarf) I found no official record, but discovered that it is believed to have originated in Australia in the 1980's (somehow, I'm not surprised). On another note, it occurred to me that getting hold of that information was really easy, and for that I am indeed grateful. Looking at the storage of human knowledge through the ages, we started with the oral tradition of story-telling, where knowledge was passed between generations verbally, and disseminated to assembled groups. Then other methods developed, paintings on cave walls, strings of tales with knots used as reminders or the twists and turns of life; symbols then words etched into stone; then writing onto various types of paper (including cured animal skins). All of which took a long time to process and produce. Only with the advent of the printing press was the written word able to be spread far and wide at any sort of pace, although the actual writing itself might take a while to do. We used to be a society where our world was small and intimate, we used to know all the goings on at a local level, but now we are able to get hold of news from the other side of the planet just as easily as we are from down the road. We have become information rich and time poor, a complete reversal of how things used to be. Which is better? I am not in a position to say, while I can remember a time before the internet when I had to go to the local library to look at micro-fiches of local papers to do research for a school project; my daughter doesn't even know what cassette tape is (she saw one on TV and was disappointed when I didn't have to ask Siri what it was). Suffice to say, there is an old adage that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and there is an inclination to think that too much knowledge might be even worse. Personally I believe that you can't have too much knowledge, but only if you are happy to recognise that even then, we actually know very little when all is said and done, and understand even less. Finally, I realised that I have recently passed the end of my first year as Club Secretary, and that I have, therefore, been spouting nonsense for the corresponding time period. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you who read this, and to all of you who have been kind enough to comment positively to me on it. I started this as a bit of fun, and I am constantly, genuinely amazed that anyone reads it all, and am beyond delighted that you seem to enjoy it. Stay safe, play well, and I hope to escape the confines of life soon and see you out there soon Steve |