Visiting Column #52 -- The Toidy-Toid Was a Boid

The previous 1,051 columns since 2014 were almost invariably for the reader to enjoy, or to contemplate, or just laugh, not infrequently at me.  Certainly I intended that they often be a departure point for some reasoning and thought on an issue of the day.

This one?  Not so much.  This one is really for me to preserve a memory before it goes away, a memory of something I did that I couldn't believe I could do, still can't, and I want to remember it while it is fresh and still being enjoyed.  So bear with me.

I took up golf as a freshman in high school in 1965.  Since I have played the game since, that means I have been playing for 55 years.  Of course, in high school and college I played pretty often, not so much in med school and thereafter (singing and then raising kids), but after my 40s I tried to play a couple times a month, and usually failed to do so.

There have been some highlights, of course.  I have had two eagles in my life, bizarrely within a week of each other in 1987, and both at the Fauquier Springs Country Club in Virginia, where I played for a few years.  The first was a hole in one, so that milestone is at least checked off the list.

I'm a very distinctly mid-80s golfer.  If I were to have to bet an over/under on my score, no matter the course, before playing, I would say "84."  There are four courses in the plantation where we live, and though I have broken 80 on three of them, I'm still a reliable 84, if you're betting.

My best lifetime rounds were a 76 (four over par) in Concord, Massachusetts in a college competition, and then a couple years later a 75 (also four over par) in Chapel Hill, NC on the last day of first-year med school finals in 1974.  But those were very much the exceptions.  I'm not that good a player.

In that 75 in Chapel Hill, I played the back nine in 36 strokes, the lowest nine holes I'd ever had, and the only time I've played nine holes in even par.  That's plot material.

- - -

So last week, I went out for a practice round with three other guys I had not met before; I just plugged myself into a threesome with a missing fourth.  And here is what happened.  Remember, this is for me to keep a memory alive that I hope I'll read years from now.

The first hole is a fairly straight par-4 with large bunkerage in front of the green to the left.  I drove up the right side into light, very playable rough, and had a pretty open 9-iron shot left to a two-level green, elevated in the back where the pin was.  I got the shot about 15 feet short of the pin for a pretty simple two-putt par.  I could also feel the greens were a bit slow and breaking less than you would read them.

Number Two is a fairly long par-3 with lots of water on the right all the way up.  It's usually a 4-hybrid for me, into a green that slopes downhill left to right and toward the front.  With little wind all day, and with the pin center right, I took the usual clubbing and got it just on the front of the green for another two-putt par.  How about that, even par after two and, better yet, I hit both greens in regulation, something I try hard to do.

The third hole is a relatively long par-5 that I've never reached in two and probably can't, even with a good supporting breeze, which there wasn't anyway.  But I did get a drive up the left center, comfortably left of a pair of traps in the right center of the fairway in driving distance.  I took time over the 3-wood second shot and got it up left center about 40 yards short of the green.  I remembered to commit to the gap wedge shot and got it within ten feet of the pin, which was right center of the green.  The birdie dropped, and son of a gun, I was actually one under par after three holes.

Number Four is a short par-4, but a hard hole.  There is a swamp about 200 yards out, so I can't hit driver off the tee.  Moreover, the green is a wide but shallow one, elevated on the right side.  So you have to get your drive up close to the swamp area, so you can hit a shorter (higher-loft) iron into the green to get it to hold.  This time the pin was on the much-easier left side.  I drove a 3-wood up the left center, but my full pitching wedge in was pulled a bit left and just off the putting surface.  I could still putt, though, and approached within a foot for a tap-in par.  Still minus-one.

The fifth hole is also a par-4 with a swamp in front of the green, but longer and you can hit driver off the tee.  There is a trap up the left center of the fairway to avoid, but if you fade your drive a bit, and it reaches the peak about where the trap is, you'll get a nice roll down the other side of the hill, which I did.  My drive rolled through the fairway and was in light rough with a side-hill lie down to the right.  The pin was on the left side of the green on a sharp slope forward.

Being in some rough, I added one club and hit 8-iron into the green to be sure to clear the swamp.  I thought I didn't swing hard enough, but having added a club, it was enough to clear the swamp and a trap just in front of the green, ending up a dozen feet uphill of the hold and past it.  I tapped the fairly straight downhill putt lightly and it went right up to the center of the hole and dropped in.  Two under par after five, and four greens hit out of five.  Yesss!

This is where I started telling the guys in the foursome that I do not play like this; I'm not the player they were watching.  We have a custom here like a lot of places, the "birdie flask."  Make a birdie, you take out a flask and share a wee nip o' whiskey.  I forgot it on #3, but this time took out the flask, and sure enough, it was empty!  The other players were already good-naturedly teasing me, and one said that he would take care of the booze -- whereupon he took out his flask only to discover it was also empty. 

We headed to #6, a mid-range par-3 with the pin on the center right.  I hit a 7-iron but poorly, and ended up short right of the green with a 50-foot pitch-and-run.  The 7-iron was bad, but the pitch was really bad, and ran another 25 feet past the pin and just past the putting surface.  I was resigned to trying to lag a putt close enough to save bogey, but the putt was pretty straight, and dropped in the hole for a very lucky par -- two bad shots and a fortunate putt.  Still two under after six, territory I had never, ever been.

Number 7 is hard to describe.  It's a par-5, a dogleg left with a stand of trees 250 yards out up the center.  Your "normal" approach is to keep your drive to the right (but not too far, because of course there is water there), and then hit a second shot up the right side (but not too far, because of course there are traps there).  Then you turn left for a third shot into a very narrow (and not all that deep) green.

Alternatively, you can hit a drive up the left side, where there is a secondary fairway to the left of the trees.  That route cuts the dogleg and is shorter -- except you can't hit driver, because there is a waste area 190 yards out.  So you either hit a 5-wood and go that way, or take the normal approach up the right.  I'd rather not go left, because your third shot is to the shallowest angle and likely runs over the green.

My drive tends to fade, so I took driver and faded it up the right side.  I decided on a 4-hybrid second shot to favor accuracy over distance, and left a full gap wedge third.  But I pulled the wedge a bit and went left of the green, between two traps but safe.  That left a short pitch; I left that one ten feet short but again, it was a straight putt and dropped for a fortunate par.  Seven holes, two under.  Who knew?

Number Eight is a mess waiting to happen.  It is a longish par-4 with the fairway narrowed by trees that poke into the right half of the fairway at 180 yards out.  I've found it best to stay short of those trees and hit a 5-wood or the 4-hybrid up the center so the trees don't block the approach.  I never hit driver there unless I have already messed up the round.  This time I hit the hybrid but pulled it a bit; nothing special and still in the fairway a long 7-iron out.  I didn't hit the 7 perfectly but not terribly; it came up a few feet off the green for an easy two-putt par.  I'd survived both #7 and #8 and was still minus-two.

The ninth hole is a short and easy par-4, and I was pretty sure I was going to have my first-ever under par nine holes.  I have never driven it, but I've come within 25 yards a few times.  This time I hit the drive left-center and on a small hill, not in the fairway but a good lie.  I just wanted to hit the gap wedge somewhere on the front of the green -- the pin was in the center toward the front and not the hardest placement.

I took a deep breath, really concentrated and hit the wedge to eight feet past the pin.  At that point, I figured every putt was going to drop, since they pretty much all had.  This one was a bit downhill, fairly straight, and the thirty-third stroke of the day rolled in for the third birdie of the round.

Like I said, I'd never had nine holes better than 36 before; only once been as good as even par for nine, and never played nine holes without a bogey.  I have no idea what came over me, and I know I played over my head, but at least there is a round to remember, a 33.  And now that I've recorded it for my own future enjoyment, I will indeed remember it.

You're probably wondering about the back nine.  Unfortunately, as we got to the back nine a different group was in front of us, and they were playing incredibly slowly.  I have back issues normally, and when you don't swing a club for ten minutes, repeatedly, your back can stiffen up and mine did, reverting me to my normal game.  I didn't have any expectations of "shooting my age" (I'd have needed a 36 on the back), and was lucky even to get through 18 holes with the very slow pace and the hopes for a hot shower.

But I have a neat afternoon to remember otherwise.  If you're reading this, cool, but the article is really for me.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #51 -- If "Contact Tracing" Works for COVID, Then ...

As I write this, I am 69 years old, which is not a surprise to regular readers of the column, but relevant for this piece. It is relevant because it means that I am old enough to remember another pandemic, which started about 40 years ago and therefore, being an adult at the time, is in my adult memory. 

I am talking about AIDS, if you haven't already figured that out. And I'm also talking about COVID-19, and I'm going to talk about hypocrisy because, well, I see that a lot. Only in this case, no one seems to be connecting dots. 

I have to assume that a lot of people reading this were not around 40 years ago, or were too young to recall the news details. So I'm going to help you out a little, because those details are, as usual, where the devil is hiding. Let's snap back, if we could, to 2020 and COVID-19. 

Specifically, I want to talk about "contact tracing", the practice of figuring out all those with whom an infected person has been in contact since their becoming infected with COVID-19. 

I would say that, while conservatives are not particularly opposed to contact tracing, we are not so passionate about it as the left which, for whatever reason, seems to raise it every other word, possibly because the Federal government has not gone all nanny-state and tried to implement it with the almighty power of the government -- you know, power. 

 I suppose I see the point of both sides, but what I do or not see as far as COVID-19 tracing is less important than the disparity, where the left is so gung-ho on it. Why? Because now we're going to head back to about 1980. AIDS at the time was (listen close if you are under 50) an invariably fatal and very ugly disease that was almost totally in the gay community and among IV drug addicts and, aside from reused-needle transmission, was sexually transmitted (aside from a rare transmission through such means as blood transfusions). 

The virus, HIV, was a nasty bug, and it is important to note that, as opposed to the COVID-19 fatality rate of about 1% of symptomatic patients, and about .05% of infections, the fatality rate for HIV infections was essentially 100% back then. 

You would think -- and most sane people would as well -- that if you thought that contact tracing was a good public health measure for COVID-19 in 2020, you'd have practically insisted on it for the much more dangerous AIDS in 1980, right? Well, you would be so wrong. 

The left was all "individual rights" back then, and violently opposed contact tracing for AIDS. Gee, I wonder why then and not now? It's not hard to figure that out. In the spirit of the times back then, "outing" someone as gay was not a good thing, and testing positive for AIDS pretty much labeled you back then as being gay. To their discredit, there were people who regarded AIDS as a plague visited on the gay community for their "sins." So I get it, I really do. But we were talking about a universally fatal disease in those days. 

As an straight actor at the time, back then I saw its horrors nearly first-hand (as if you didn't know how many actors were gay). Unfortunate as it was, the fact that it was a death sentence for those who contracted it, was a great deal more important than the embarrassment to someone who was "outed" as a contact. 

This all broke during the Jimmy Carter administration, when the Democrats had both houses of Congress and the White House as well, and could do what they wanted. With a large Democrat campaign-funding source being Hollywood (and its closet-gay community), can you make the logical leap to why the left, then running the government, was so reluctant to trace patient contacts? I truly dislike that kind of hypocrisy. 

I've written often that with the left, it is all about power, and you can tell that when the hypocrisy is exposed. What I don't understand is why, even though it is 40 years since, not one article has come out pointing out the vast difference between the left's nanny-state approach to contact tracing for COVID-19 in 2020, vs. their knee-jerk "don't touch our gay donors" opposition to the same technique for a 100x more fatal disease in 1980. 

So now there is an article. Comments welcome. 

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #50 -- Trump and the Middle East Grand Plan

Within the past couple three weeks, something most of us thought impossible has had its first steps, and not only do those steps seem productive, but for once the process seems inexorable, in the good way.

It started -- well, it actually started in 2017, as we will see, but for those among you who only read headlines, it seems to have started with the surprising step of the United Arab Emirates recognizing the nation of Israel and exchanging ambassadors, which constitutes full diplomatic relations.

Now, the UAE is one of those oil countries of the Middle East with a large concentration of power shared among the emirs who give the nation its name, as you know.  More importantly, they are capitalists who know which side their bread is buttered, or which side their oil ... OK, oil doesn't have sides, but you get my point.  They act in their own self-interest.

Last week, Bahrain followed suit, also recognizing Israel and actually having a ceremony to celebrate the two nations' new ties right there in good old Washington, DC, in the People's House, where resides one Donald J. Trump.  As Bahrain was taking that step, words of support for the new relationship with the once-upon-a-time enemy came from other Middle East petrocracies like Morocco and Saudi Arabia, meaning that they, too, were on the verge of swapping ambassadors with Israel.  Dominoes were falling all over.

A bit surprised?  Of course you are.  Peace in the Middle East, at least peace between Israel and the Arab world, was that long-sought but frustrating goal, failed at by pretty much every president for decades, save for Barack Obama, who didn't so much "fail" at trying to pacify the region, as "ignore" the region, never seeming to care if there were peace there.

Donald Trump is a different president.  We knew that when we elected him.  He was the guy who built the ice rink in Manhattan privately when the city government couldn't get it done.  One thing we know about him is that when he looks at government and sees it doing something stupid, or doing something stupidly, he tries to figure put how to do it cheaper and better, like the ice rink.  It's in his DNA.

When Trump looked at the Middle East, he saw countries like the UAE, which only hated Israel on paper, since Israel did not in any way threaten the emirs, but they had to go along with their fellow Arab nations.  All the UAE wanted was to be able to drill and sell oil, and stay rich.  Israel was not a barrier to that.

But, interestingly, the USA was a potential problem.  Under our lands and off our shores is a vast resource in oil and natural gas, to the point that if it were allowed to be tapped with far less restrictions than the Obama and Biden types had imposed, the USA could become energy-independent and, in fact, a next exporter of fossil fuels.  Adding a net exporter to the market would drive down prices, and that would hit the emirs right in the wallet.  That was a threat indeed.

President Trump could see that, and he could also see that playing nice with the Arab world had not settled the Israel peace issue.  Plus, he could see -- and here is the important point -- that if the USA were in a position to export gas and oil, and thus threaten energy prices, not only would he gain leverage in the Middle East for peace purposes, but it would also cause economic problems for Russia, which was peddling gas to Europe without competition.  Nice bonus there.

So look at all the factors.  Most of the Arab world didn't really hate Israel; like the UAE, they mostly just wanted to sell oil and stay rich.  Israel was not a threat to that.  The Palestinians were showing that they simply wanted to play the victim card, walking away from every previous peace deal.  Since the Palestinians and their terrorist buddies were no asset to the Arab world, their actions were getting tiresome to the Arab nations, who were asking themselves why they should even care, if the Palestinians didn't.

And one other factor, perhaps the biggest -- Iran.  Iran has been the biggest source of instability in the region, funding terrorists (including with the $150 billion that Obama and Biden gave them) and fomenting wars.  The Arab world truly hates and fears the Iranian mullahs, since not only are they Shiites (where the Arab oil nations are mostly Sunni) they represent an unnegotiating, wartime threat to their oil business.  And the mullahs are kind of nuts.  Trump's energy policy is a threat to the Arab oil types, too, but they knew that, unlike the Iranians, they could negotiate with Trump and did not see the USA as a military threat.

One of the first things that President Trump did in 2017 was to start lessening the barriers to becoming energy-independent.  Silly, Obama-era drilling restrictions were lifted, and steps were taken toward becoming energy-independent and a net exporter, which we now are.

I hope you are following, because if you are, you see the grand plan.  Where prior presidents failed in achieving Middle East stability, because they tried to do it just diplomatically, Trump understood their self-interest.  He knew that the Arab world didn't really care about the whining Palestinians, that they didn't have a gripe with Israel, and that their real fear was (A) Iran, and (B) getting euchred out of their oil profits.

So President Trump quickly put the USA in a position to influence the world's oil producers, by becoming the biggest one -- and we not only can now influence the world market, we are also the biggest consumer and can thus manage both the supply and demand side.  With his plan, we could get what we want.

And what we wanted, along with stymieing Russia and handcuffing Iran, was peace.  Peace between the Arab nations and Israel, a very achievable goal, given the bigger threats out there.  Trump sends a team including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, over to Dubai.  "We are the big dog in the energy world now", Kushner might have said.  "You know what we'd like to see?  We'd like you to recognize Israel and institute diplomatic relations.  It's no skin off your back to do that, right?  And then we're going to ask your friends to do the same, but we need you to go first.  And if you do, perhaps we'll be a bit more conservative in how much energy we dump on the world and compete with you."

The Wuhan virus has been an almost unmitigated disaster for the entire world, but there has been one helpful aspect.  When the world shutdown crushed demand for fossil fuels, oil prices tanked, getting the attention of the OPEC types fast.  Whatever Kushner told the emirs in Dubai, it surely resonated with them that the oil demand curve was a lot more fragile than they could handle, and maybe those Israelis weren't so bad after all.

If I had to guess, I'd think that when Trump loosened the constraints on energy production in the USA, his primary goal was to boost our own economy and, secondarily, to damage the hold that OPEC had on the rest of the world.  But I will bet that early on, it occurred to him that the Arab oil sheiks, capitalists and realists all, saw that their real threat was Iran, and that their best ally was going to be the USA, providing Trump made sure they knew that they could work together.

I can't say that was the original plan.  But diplomacy based on UN-style diplomats sure hadn't worked, but diplomacy based on mutual understanding of what side of the bread had the butter, now that was something that could work.

And let's face it, it worked here.  The Nobel Peace Prize would be well-earned.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #49 -- The Underpolling Problem, 2020 Style

I remember 2016 as if it were only four years ago even though it was ... well, yeah, it actually was four years ago.  But Lordy, have things changed.

In the fall of 2016, my best girl and I got a fair number of polling calls asking about our preference in the upcoming presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  They came through on our cell phones and they came through on the home phone as well.

They were annoying as heck, but we answered them and dutifully indicated our intent to vote (hint: it wasn't going to be for Hillary).  We watched as the poll numbers continually suggested that the former first lady was going to get her wish and get elected.  And we watched on election night with amazement as the polls showed themselves to be completely wrong -- so wrong, in fact, that Larry Sabato, the respected Virginia political science professor frequently on TV commenting and forecasting results, went out the next day to say that he apparently didn't know politics and would have to start all over.

But that was 2016.  This is 2020, and my best girl and I have taken a completely different tack this year.

It is pretty obvious from the caller ID when you are getting a polling call, and we get two or three every day.  Where in 2016 we would have done what we thought was our civic duty and answered the call accurately and honestly, this year we simply do not answer.  We do not pick up the phone, and we do not share our intentions.

If we happen to answer the phone, because the caller wasn't obvious, we do not answer polls, or we do not answer them accurately.  I don't know who the caller is.  People have literally been killed for supporting the current president, and I'm not sure when the Antifa types start doing fake polls.  What a time, am I right?

I didn't consult with anyone on this practice of no longer answering poll calls accurately, mind you; we just do it.  We decided, and that was it.

So as I contemplate the impact of that, I have to ask the obvious question -- "Who else is doing the same?".  And you should be too, and so should Larry Sabato, and Gallup and Pew and Rasmussen and all the other polling companies out there.

Because polling is simply a data collection procedure, it is evident that if the data is inaccurate, the results will be as well -- "garbage in, garbage out", or "GIGO" as we used to say back when I was learning to program in the latter 1960s.  My old college fraternity brother, Fred Faltin, had a similar take 50 years ago, creating the "Faltin Fudge Factor" -- an amount you added or subtracted from your test results to end up with the outcome you actually wanted.  Ahhhh, MIT.

After 2016, we already know that the data is not completely accurate.  I believe that for the most part there was a 5-10% bias in the polling data toward Hillary Clinton; the actual voting went for President Trump, about that percentage higher than where the polling had the numbers a day earlier.  We know that.  You could look it up, as Casey Stengel would have said.

But this is 2020, and that factor, at least 5%, representing polling undercount, exists today at least as much, if our own feelings about responding to polls are in any way representative.  I've seen some broadcasts discussing the topic, and while they still refer to the usual 3% "margin for error", they're also mentioning, although not quantifying, the polling undercount of Trump voters.

And that undercount is at least another 3% on top of the margin for error, based on 2016.  At least.  I hesitate to extrapolate our own situation too far, but we are two Trump voters who were willing to tell polling callers that in 2016, but are either telling them nothing, or lying and saying that we'll vote for the other guy in 2020.

Do the math.  If you poll 100 people and their actual intent is split 50-50 Trump and Biden, the difference is zero points.  If even one couple like my wife and I tell the caller that we're voting for Uncle Joe, then the reporting is 52-48, and that is a four-point spread, above the margin for error!

I hope you get the idea.  There is the accurate data (i.e., whom people are actually going to vote for), and then there is the 2016 factor, the at-least 5% undercount of Trump voters based on how people felt.  Add to that the 2020 factor, where some Trump voters feel threatened or otherwise choose not to answer the calls (accurately) -- and we don't know what that percentage is.  I respectfully decline to guess.

We have not had debates yet, and Biden has essentially not answered a challenging press corps yet to explain all the questions in his policy and opinions on current events.  There is a lot that can change in the last two months of the campaign.  So the "accurate data" part I mentioned in the previous paragraph still has room to swing a bit.

But there is definitely that third group of voters out there, and the polling companies must be wracking their brains trying to figure out how to apply the "new liar" factor, among the 2020 voters, to their predictions.  That's hard because they don't actually "predict", they have to report. If they count 51-46 in one direction, what else can they report?  But if the election comes and their reported 51-46 ends up 53-47 the other way, they look like idiots!

The Democrats have long since started their effort to stack ballots through their mail-out campaign, so what, we have to ask, are they planning for?  Are they thinking that they'll need ten million phony mail-in votes to ensure Biden wins?  How do they even know how to prepare when Gallup can't provide reliable data?

Oh, it will be such fun.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton