Whistling Straight

Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy on ESPN, has a brilliant piece today on the state of officiating in the NBA. He rails about the generally poor and inconsistent quality in the playoffs this year. 

He also provides some interesting history, such as why the NBA shot clock is 24 seconds. The reason: the NBA owner who thought of it in the 50's (partially as a result of a game in which 80 free throws were shot and another game in which the final score was 19-18) watched a lot of games and concluded that the most entertaining ones included 60 shots by each team. 120 shots spread over 48 minutes results in 1 shot every 24 seconds.

Now, if only I could find out who decided that the two slots in electrical plugs should be 5/8" apart, or why there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, or why pretty much the whole world, despite the many cultural and language differences, agrees that each minute should have 60 seconds and each hour 60 minutes.

That's all I have to contribute to today's mental flatulence.

Daily Pursuit

Pursuit is a pretty common word. Its origins trace back to the French words porsuite and porsivre and is the noun form of the verb pursue.

It is used in modern society in many contexts: police, literary, trivial, occupational. But today's context of choice is the pursuit of happiness. The Happy Guy has a lot of opinions about being happy, including quotes from a lot of famous people. Happy is just not easy to define. 

It is easy to be happy for an instant and then be not happy. It even easier to be happy with anticipation of being happy in the future, but then not be happy when the future arrives. Most of us like to believe that we want to be happy. But, most of us also don't really know how to. 

A founding principle of the US of A is the self-evident truth "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We are not guaranteed happiness, but we are in America guaranteed the right to pursue it.

For me, happiness and the pursuit of it are not only intertwined, but are often the unintentional result of trying each day to love God and my neighbor as myself. But, this is so hard to do! Happiness is pursued and found in unexpected places and the harder I try to find it, the more it eludes me. There is no list of things to acquire or to do which would result in happiness from now on. 

There are days when I am not happy. My family, my friends, my neighbors don't always behave as I wish they did. Sometimes I get sick or injured or just don't feel any passion for the day. But, I am trying to learn to respond to the events of each day and not to react. By pursuing response and not reaction, I sometimes find myself happy without even knowing how I got there. 

So, I must remind myself each day to choose to be happy, to be thankful for the many opportunities with which I can pursue happiness, and to recognize that fortune has not let me go free.

Uncle O Wants You!

Random but Equal

Words of the day:

ecdysiast: stripper

eleemosynary: charitable

ebenezer: stone of hope; from 1  Samuel 4

sycophant: toadie; as in limey lover Taras

omphaloskepsis: contemplation of one's navel

Ariadne's thread: solving a problem through exhaustive application of logic

Occam's razor: parsimonious logic; solving a problem through gut instinct

Astrology: hopeless devotion to losing baseball teams

Fore Hawk

Who is the greatest golfer of all time? How do we define greatness?

I suggest that the list of qualities that determines golf greatness includes not only athleticism and record, but also humility, focus, determination, and guts.  Tiger is maybe the only current player on the short list. Nelson, Nicklaus, and Jones also make the cut. Watson, Trevino, Palmer, Player, Snead, and Sarazen miss the cut by a stroke.

My vote for the champion golfer is Ben Hogan. In this video, his pride, devotion, honesty and work ethic are palpable. The audio is out of sync with the video, but it's still a compelling piece that I could watch many times over. He was not a Hollywood pretty boy like Jimmy Demaret, did not have the charm of Palmer or Nelson, nor the pure athletic ability of Snead. But he had more of everything than all the others. 

Nelson's 11 straight and 18 total victories in 1945 receive more homage. But after a near fatal auto accident in 1948 in which his legs were crushed, Mr. Hogan won all 5 of the tournaments he entered in 1953, including the Masters, the US Open and the British Open. He didn't play in the PGA because it was held immediately after the British Open. Plus, the PGA ended in those days with 36 holes of match play on the final day; Mr. Hogan's brittle legs could not survive such punishment.

Bobby Jones was more admired, Nelson more liked, Nicklaus more accomplished. But none were more respected than Mr. Hogan. None ever will be.

Late and Soon

I have had a complicated couple of days and for some unknown reason have sought solace in 19th century poetry. That I would do so probably reveals layers upon layers of latent psychoses. Every form of refuge has its price.

I had an English Lit professor in college who was a huge fan of Wordsworth. I've ever since liked the phrase "The World is too much with us, here and now." Except when I look up the text of the poem, I discover it is "The World is too much with us, late and soon." So, for 30+ years, I have misremembered the key phrase of a classic poem. 

I digress. Another worthy turn of words: "So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."  When depressed by shadows, one must seek all available sources of light.

Final romantic era poetry, by Longfellow:

In the great field of battle,

In the bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb driven cattle

Be a hero in the strife.

The complications of the weekend? 3 inches of rain (needed but accompanied by storms), caulked 2 bathtubs, painted 4 of 88 stair railings, quit painting when I realized I spent 30 minutes on just 4 of 88, spent a total of about 8 hours installing a new hard drive in a 4 year old computer, cleaned the gutters, spent $1,200 getting the 2 lights in our pool and spa repaired, delayed spending another $700 getting the heater repaired, realized I entered an online payment to my dad's insurance company of $24.83 as $2,483.00, left my Ipod touch and Klipsch headphones in the seatback cushion for seat 18D, flight 1905 on April 30 on American Airlines.

Right here, right now, the world is too much with me. The bright side? I read a great book which espoused 7 decisions each of us must make in order to achieve our potential:

1) The buck stops here.

2) Seek wisdom.

3) I am a person of action.

4) I have a decided heart.

5) Today I will choose to be happy.

6) I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit.

7) I will persist without exception.

The concepts inspire the best of intentions. Attitudinal execution will take some work.

Motivation to do so in 20th Century Poetry:

Time passes and you must move on

Half the distance takes you twice as long

So you keep on singing for the sake of the song.