Posts Tagged ‘golf’
“The sacred moon overhead / Has taken a new phase”*…
As Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger report, an analysis of commercial radio spectrum filings shows a growing number of players– government agencies, but increasingly private companies– bettting on the emergence of a lunar economy…
Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found.
More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.
Last year the number of commercial filings to the global co-ordinating body for lunar spectrum outstripped those from space agencies and governments for the first time, according to FT research. The filings cover satellite systems as well as missions to land on the lunar surface.
“We will look back and see this as an important inflection point,” said Katherine Gizinski, chief executive of spectrum consultancy River Advisers, which has filed for lunar spectrum for three satellite systems on behalf of other companies since 2021.
Although total registrations were lower in 2024 than the previous year, the increased proportion of commercial filings reflects a race to build the infrastructure that will enable the “cislunar economy”, the area between the Earth and Moon…
More on the players and the game: “The race to claim the Moon’s airwaves” (gift article), from @financialtimes.com. See also:
* William Butler Yeats, “The Cat and the Moon”
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As we linger over the lunar, we might recall that it was on this date in 1971 that NASA accomplished the third lunar EVA: Commander Alan B. Shepard and Lunar Module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell became the fifth and sixth men to walk on the Moon (in the lunar highlands near the crater Fra Mauro) as part of the Apollo 14 mission.
During this four-hour “activity,” they deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP)– scientific experiments that were left on the lunar surface and other scientific and sample collection apparatus. B efore lifting off on the next day, the astronauts went on another moonwalk almost to the rim of nearby Cone crater, collecting 42.9 kg of samples along the traverse. At the end of this 3.45 km walk, Shepard used a contingency sampler with a Wilson 6-iron connected to the end to hit two golf balls.
“Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?”*…
From our old friend (see, e.g., here and here) Flowing Data‘s Nathan Yau…
I read that there are more golf courses than there are McDonald’s locations in the United States, which seemed surprising. There are about 16,000 golf courses and 13,000 McDonald’s locations. How could this be? Obviously, there are a lot of McDonald’s locations, but where are all these golf courses? Some maps made it clear.
[The yellow circles in the map above show] the distribution of McDonald’s locations across the conterminous United States. As you might expect, they concentrate around cities.
An area in East Los Angeles has 110 locations within a 10-mile radius, which makes it the most dense area. This makes sense because McDonald’s was founded in southern California. The second most is an area just outside Chicago with 88 locations. This also makes sense, because McDonald’s headquarters are in Chicago.
At first glance, [the distribution of] golf courses [the green circles in the map above] looks similar to the McDonald’s one. There is a higher concentration around cities, but golf courses are more widespread, especially in the Midwest.
This makes more sense now. You can have a golf course in an area where there aren’t that many people, because people will travel to play golf. Few people are going to travel specifically for McDonald’s.
…
The high number of golf courses along the Florida coast and in the northeast jump out to me, someone who has never played a round of golf. I also noticed it’s fairly common for smaller golf courses to sit next to each other, whereas you’re not going to see neighboring McDonald’s restaurants, which seems to contribute to the higher totals for the former…
Amazing but true: “McDonald’s Locations vs. Golf Courses,” from @flowingdata.
* Ray Kroc (founder of McDonalds-as-we-know-it)
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As we get down with data, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Byron Nelson teed off in the first round of the 1945 Miami International Four Ball Tournament. For five months– from that swing through August 4– he was untouchable: Nelson won that tournament and his next 10, a record 11 events in a row, and shot 50 consecutive rounds under par.
“There’s always a shot; you just have to find it.”*…
Finesse at it’s finest…
[image at top: source]
* billiards adage
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As we take our cues, we might send accomplished birthday greetings to Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias; she was born on this date in 1911. An athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field, she won two gold medals (in track and field) at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time.
Famed as an athlete, she had many other talents: she was a seamstress (who won the South Texas State Fair in Beaumont in 1931) and an musician (a singer and a harmonica player who recorded several songs on the Mercury Records label; her biggest seller was “I Felt a Little Teardrop”).
And she was a competitive pocket billiards player.
“The more serious about gardening I became, the more dubious lawns seemed”*…
Surprisingly, the lawn is one of America’s leading “crops,” amounting to at least twice the acreage planted in cotton. In 2007, it was estimated that there were roughly twenty-five to forty million acres of turf in the United States. Put all that grass together in your mind and you have an area, at a minimum, about the size of the state of Kentucky, though perhaps as large as Florida. Included in this total were fifty-eight million home lawns plus over sixteen thousand golf-course facilities (with one or more courses each) and roughly seven hundred thousand athletic fields. Numbers like these add up to a major cultural preoccupation.
Not only is there already a lot of turf, but the amount appears to be growing significantly. A detailed study found that between 1982 and 1997, as suburban sprawl gobbled up the nation, the lawn colonized over 382,850 acres of land per year. Even the amount of land eligible for grass has increased, as builders have shifted from single-story homes to multi-story dwellings with smaller footprints. The lawn, in short, is taking the country by storm.
Lawn care is big business, with Americans spending an estimated $40 billion a year on it. That is more than the entire gross domestic product of the nation of Vietnam…
How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America, and what are the financial, the medical, and perhaps most painfully, the ecological costs? “American Green.”
* Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
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As we go to seed, we might spare a thought for John Garnet Carter; he died on this date in 1954. A hotelier who ran a lodge at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee/Rock City, Georgia, he built the first “Tom Thumb Golf” course to keep the children of his guests occupied– only to find that the attraction was a hit with adults.
Miniature golf dates back to the 19th century in the UK and the earlier 20th century in the U.S., when putting greens became attractions in their own right. But Carter’s patented “Tom Thumb” approach– which incorporated tile, sewer pipe, hollow logs, and other obstacles, along with fairyland statuary– earned him the honorific “Father of Miniature Golf.”
Carter, putting
“I only fear danger where I want to fear it”*…
The third annual International World Extreme Sports Medicine Congress confirmed our collective willingness to wreck ourselves in pursuit of stoke.
Global experts on how outdoor athletes stumble, trip, twist, crash, snap, pop, tear, and occasionally croak in hard-to-reach places convened in Boulder, courtesy of the University of Colorado’s sports medicine department. The mission? Bring practitioners up to speed on the many methods we’ve invented to destroy our bodies, so they can be prepared when they wheel in another human pretzel in a helmet…
An example of the findings that surfaced:
Seventy-two percent of BASE jumpers have witnessed a death or a severe injury.
Heard: Reporter had to depart before the question “are BASE jumpers insane?” was resolved. But we’re going with “yeah.”
More injurious insights at “19 Lessons I Learned from Extreme Sports Pros.”
* Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
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As we take it to the max, we might recall that it was on this date that “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias won the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship. Successful in in golf, basketball, baseball, and track and field (a double Gold Medalist at the 1932 Olympic Games), she is considered one of the greatest female athletes of all time. She is surely also one of the most committed: she had missed the 1953 Women’s Open, undergoing surgery for colon cancer; she was still in recovery when she took the title the next year. Sadly, she relapsed and missed the chance to defend her title in 1955, as she was back in surgery; she died of her cancer in 1956.
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