AdamSmith

Not really a joke at all.

AND the visual rhyme with cat. lookin's facility is beyond envy. Were you around, MsGuy, when this thread came about? http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2782-martha-stewart-likes-big-wieners/

To be honest I have not the least recall of what that is.

Now who just recently called me down a la Cut the English major crap AS! Which of course is not to take issue with what you said.

Pinehurst today is proud of having called in Coore and Crenshaw some years back for a big restoration of the course to Ross's final design. Over the years it like many courses had been gradually modified during maintenance & upkeep -- greens had been reshaped, bunkers shifted, etc. In particular Coore & Crenshaw changed the rough from high, well watered green grass back to the indigenous wire grass and scrub that Ross had there originally. Largely as a result of not having to water the rough any more, Pinehurst has slashed its water consumption by something like 2/3 or a bit more. Plus, as you say, the natural brown rough looks a lot more interesting. The golfers apparently find it more interesting and challenging too.

Too true. As Dean showed us. And many others.

I always read your opinion pieces. I may sometimes be too lazy an ass to respond. Especially if you make a contentious point too well.

Ross was a Scotsman who came over here in the early 1900s and, apparently, more or less invented golf course architecture in the US. Some commentators last week did remark that the Pinehurst No. 2 course is designed rather like the "links" layouts common in Scotland. The notes above also say he liked to use the native lie of the land wherever possible, with minimal earth moving.

This is why I like older SF better than newer. Rambling, offensive – and unbeatable: beam me up, old-school sci-fiNow that science fiction is respectable, it's lost almost all of the conceptual craziness and dubious sexual politics that made it both fanboy bait and of genuine interest Sandra Newman The Guardian Regarded with amusement and disdain … classic-era sci-fi Science-fiction writing used to be the preserve of spotty teenagers and cranks. It was a small, incestuous subculture, regarded by most people with amusement and disdain. Both were sometimes deserved. The culture was plagued by a misogyny so intense it sometimes crossed the line into psychosis. There were many talented authors, but also an abundance of shameless hacks. The quality of the writing varied wildly not only between writers, but in the works of an individual writer – often within a single book. Several eminent authors prided themselves on being able to write a novel in a couple of weeks. Samuel R Delany, Gene Wolfe and Michael Moorcock have all written both unreadable garbage and books regarded as literature even by non-geeks. In that wild west era, plots could go anywhere or nowhere. A typical plot development, in Philip K Dick's Clans of the Alphane Moon, has a hero crushed by divorce and failure, contemplating suicide in his crappy apartment. At the last moment, he's interrupted by his neighbour, a telepathic slime mould. Having rudely flowed under the door, it says, "I couldn't help overhearing …" Then it offers the man a job and says it will find him a replacement wife. Off it goes, and soon a teenage girl arrives at the door. She is completely content to be fixed up with a much-older suicidal loser by an alien slime mould. Her breasts are exhaustively described. This takes three pages, and is not buoyed by any particular grace or style. It's ridiculous; it's offensive. And it has an effect you simply cannot produce with a book that is well written. Authors also did not feel constrained to create sympathetic characters. Protagonists often despised the human race, whether or not they belonged to it. Fans might be rooting for a hero, only to have him rape a girl because she hurt his feelings, as in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. James Tiptree Jr.'s Love Is the Plan The Plan Is Death is told from the point of view of an insectoid alien besotted with a larva – ingeniously combining gross bugs and paedophilia. Here is a typical passage: Now I feel my special hands, my tender hands I always carry hidden – now they come swelling out, come pushing toward my head! What? What? My secret hands begin to knead and roll the stuff that's dripping from my jaws. Ah, that arouses you too, my redling, doesn't it? (Spoiler alert: In the consummation of their love, the larva eats the ecstatic protagonist.) Perhaps the highest insanity of all was achieved in Cordwainer Smith's A Planet Named Shayol. Shayol is a prison planet where inmates are colonised by local life forms called dromozoa. The dromozoa confer immortality, but also cause people to sprout extra organs and limbs – noses, heads, strings of torsos trailing like railroad cars – which are harvested for transplant. The largest feature in the landscape is "an enormous human foot, the height of a six-storey building". As the prison warden, an artificially evolved cow, explains, the foot is Go-Captain Alvarez, the man who discovered the planet. "After 600 years, he's still in fine shape." It gets crazy from there. These stories share a blithe disregard for the comfort zone of the reader. Jarring elements are introduced so carelessly they're often hard to follow. But this makes them, for lack of a better word, mindblowing. It's sometimes difficult to believe that they were written by a human, and scary to contemplate that that human was at large in the community. The goofball plots, the disjointed writing styles, even the candour of the sexism are things older fans miss, much the way New Yorkers miss the post-apocalyptic landscape of New York of the 70s. It could be nasty, but it was different from everything else, unpredictable and often frightening – and it was ours. Nowadays, we all live in a science-fictional world. Computers are our boon companions; our food is invented in a laboratory. So it's unsurprising that science fiction has moved into the mainstream. Respectable literary authors dabble in it. Science-fiction novels are nominated for major awards. The average reader is no longer a mind-blown teen who will accept any unpleasantness in exchange for cool ideas. The average reader is the average reader. So editors are acquiring books according to criteria that were formerly incidental to the genre – quality, readability, plots that make sense. The twisted misogyny is gone, and with it the bracing misanthropy. The cool ideas are still there, but a certain anarchic power has been lost. As a literary author who's just written a work of crossover SF myself, I'm not hypocrite enough to claim that these developments are entirely negative. But I hope fans of the new SF will look back to some of the weirder, more socially unacceptable books of the past. A crafted work of literature is a beautiful thing; a genius's unedited ravings, however, is a thing both beautiful and rare. • Sandra Newman's new novel, The Country of Ice Cream Star, is published by Chatto & Windus. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/17/old-school-sci-fi-sandra-newman

Some notes on the course... Fifth hole, 475/425 yards; When this hole opened as the 445 yard ninth on the Employees’ Course, hickory golf was the norm and it played as a par five. Nothing has really changed! Yes, it was labeled a par four in the 1930s while Ross was alive but many more fives than fours are carded here, so much so to that some consider it the most difficult two shot hole in American golf. The player can’t see where his tee ball finishes but the line off the tee is less a problem than the resulting fairway stance as the ball sits above a right handed player. From this hook stance, the player must flight the ball some 200 yards to a green featuring a steep false front, a false side and a savage left greenside bunker. Nothing within seven paces of the perimeter of the green allows for a cup, such is the manner in which this green slopes away on all sides. The statistics on this green are fascinating as it only features 1,976 square feet of putting surface with a slope less than 3%. Another 896 square feet of green is between 3% and 4% and might be cup-able under certain (i.e. non-U.S. Open) conditions. The remaining 2,925 square feet of the green features slopes greater than 4%. From well back in the fairway, the target area is minuscule at ~2,900 square feet. While it is rare to find a hole this difficult without water, this most challenging approach is mitigated by the reinstated firm conditions which allow for a run up. Unlike less artfully crafted courses, there is a reasonable bail out area short and right, providing lots of ways to card a five with dignity. During the 2008 U.S. Amateur, Pinehurst No. 2 featured lots of green grass in the form of narrow fairways and wall to wall bermuda rough. Give owner Bob Dedman credit for calling in Coore & Crenshaw to restore the rough edged look and rustic flavor that Ross and Frank Maples carefully cultivated. (Photograph courtesy of Tufts Archives). Sixth hole, 225/180 yards; Even as late as the 1910s, the No. 2 course wasn’t acknowledged as the best course at the resort as many considered No. 3 to be superior. At that time, No. 2 was very much in an evolutionary process that lasted over thirty years resulting in the layout we see today. Ross first expanded it to eighteen holes in 1908 to accommodate the boon in winter golf. Then No.2 received a big boost when Ross replaced two holes elsewhere with the third and sixth holes in 1923. The third requires finessee while the long one shot sixth calls for some sort of long iron to a green set on a diagonal along a front left bunker and swale. Like Oakmont and National Golf Links of America, Pinehurst No. 2 took several decades to obtain its final level of refinement and excellence. The location of Ross’s own home only a scant 150 yards from the sixth tee meant that Ross himself oversaw all major course developements, from transitioning sand to grass greens to moving the course from the era of hickory to steel shafts. We aren’t left to wonder what Ross would have done as he did it! Seventh hole, 430/385 yards; Many restoration projects involve felling trees, recapturing numerous lost bunkers and expanding putting surfaces back to the edges of the green pads. Such was not the case with Coore & Crenshaw’s work. Indeed, the most significant design change to the course occured here at the seventh. Why? Because it was the most altered hole since Ross’s death. Richard Tufts had built up the seventh tee pad, added mounds to the outside of the dogleg and pinched in the fairway at its turn to a mere fourteen yards. Off the elevated tee, contestants during the 2008 U.S. Amateur were blowing tee shots over the trees on the inside of the dogleg and almost driving hole high. Coore & Crenshaw restored the hole’s compromised playing qualities. Eighth hole 490/440 yards; Ross captured some of the most pleasant undulations on the property within this hole. All but the longest drivers play into a valley from where they face an uphill approach to one of the most built up green pads on the course. John Daly famously lost control to the left of this green during the 2005 U.S. Open. Having putted from off the green once too often for his satisfaction, he elected to hit a moving ball and was disqualified. A sad ending for a man with such a gifted short game but the banks that feed balls off the greens can elicit such frustration. A clip of John Daly is found on the Facebook page of GolfClubAtlas.com. Despite its length, the hole plays just fine as the green is open across its front and accepts a wide variety of approach shots. Ninth hole, 190/150 yards; The shortest hole on the course features the most heavily defended green. Set at an angle to the tee, the wide shallow green climbs from front right to back left with a distinct tier at its narrow waist. Similar to the seventeenth at Pebble Beach, the hole location makes a tremendous difference in how it plays. Those on the back flat plateau are difficult because the effective landing area is less than 700 (!) square feet. Front right hole locations are easier to access as the tier in the middle of the green feeds tee balls to them but conversely, the putts feature more break than on the flatter top tier. Though the green measures 6,011 square feet, only 1,880 square feet of it features 3% of slope or less. A very fine one shotter, deserving of recognition for its diversity without appearing contrived. Today’s back left hole location requires a well struck iron to find and hold the small back plateau. Tenth hole, 620/460 yards; Architects like William Flynn, A.W. Tillinghast and Donald Ross believed in the importance of challenging the golfer with true three shot holes. As far back as 1923, this hole measured 540 yards which was no easy feat to cover with hickory shafts. Initially, the hole played straight ahead to a green located nearer the fourteenth green and featured a Sahara type bunker complex to be carried on one’s second. Subsequently, Ross came to believe that such hazards were too one dimensional as they don’t allow an alternate route for the weaker player. As part of his massive re-do in 1935 that saw the course grow to over 6,900 yards in length, the Sahara bunker complex was eliminated. Instead, Ross turned the tenth fairway to the left at the 125 yard mark from the green. Weaker players could bunt the ball along the fairway and still reach the green in three from a far forward set of tees while the tiger worked hard to properly position himself for a pitch to the green from the new 590 yard set of tees. This is yet another example of Ross attractively engaging all classes of players. Though this view from the back markers makes the tenth appear straightforward, … …it isn’t. Out of bounds threatens down the left while this mound down the right ensnares many a pushed tee ball. The tenth fairway has pivoted left around this crossbunker for over seventy-five years. Eleventh hole, 485/375 yards; The eleventh and twelfth occupy land near the harness track/polo field where the elevation varies only a few feet. Here is what’s interesting: Standing on the eleventh tee, the golfer who turns left sees prime golf terrain with holes flowing up and down over the attractively rolling land. This is the No. 4 Course which wraps past No. 2 at the eleventh and twelfth holes. Ross could have easily embedded these two flattish holes into the No.4 course if he was so inclined. That he didn’t and because these holes have been in continuous use since 1911 tells us that Ross liked what he accomplished here. Mo less than Ben Hogan numbered the eleventh among his favorite two shotters in golf. This photograph of Hogan could well be taken today, such is the recaptured sandy floor of Pinehurst No. 2. Continued>>> http://www.golfclubatlas.com/courses-by-country/usa/pinehurst-no-2-2/pinehurst-no-2/

Ah! Good luck. The dogs are essential.

Why innuendo is the best of British humour Samantha and her 38 bees are safe, after the BBC backs away from censoring 'I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’. We look at the glory of a very British sense of humour Masters of the art: The Two Ronnies Photo: BBC By David Thomas 7:30PM BST 21 Jun 2014 The Telegraph The 2.5 million regular listeners to the long‑running Radio 4 panel show I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue will be familiar with the travails of the programme’s imaginary scorer and researcher, the lovely Samantha. She often goes down into the depths of the BBC record library, searching for music for the show. On one occasion, Samantha heard that the nice old archivists were a bit worried about their early vinyl collection getting scratched, so she ordered them a new mat for the turntable. She said that they were very excited at the thought of getting felt under their old seven inchers. Samantha also has an active life outside the show. She’s a qualified croupier and often works at an exclusive Soho club where gamblers pay top money to play roulette all day and poker all night. Poor old Samantha’s been beset by double entendres since she was first introduced by Humphrey Lyttleton in 1985. But she was in worse trouble recently, after the BBC received four complaints from listeners who think the Samantha jokes are smutty, sexist and should be stopped immediately. You might think the miseryguts would be told, “Get a life”, or, if that is a tad abrupt, “Has Sir or Madam considered turning his or her radio off?” Finally, it might be helpful to ask: “Are you aware that Samantha does not, in fact, exist?” That was pretty much how the BBC did respond, back in the Eighties, when listeners complained, or in one case wrote to the Radio Times, protesting at this poor young woman’s appalling humiliation. The complaints were ignored. But the Corporation was made of sterner stuff back then. In today’s PC world, the I’m Sorry… team were, allegedly, told to cut out the smut. According to Tim Brooke-Taylor, a panellist for 40 or so years: “We’ve had terrible trouble with the BBC about the show. Someone complained about Samantha – that it was being rude to women – and told us we had to be careful about this and to not do that. “The writer who does [compère] Jack Dee’s links said, 'Well, in that case I’m leaving’, and Jack said, 'Well, I’m leaving, too’. It’s just so pathetic.” This assault on the Great British double entendre was wildly inconsistent. After all, the BBC has allowed far dirtier and more spiteful jokes to be made by comedians on its TV panel shows. In 2007, for example, Mock the Week’s Frankie Boyle imitated the Queen, saying: “I’m now so old, my p---y is haunted.” That’s a nasty, mean-spirited way to mock any elderly woman, let alone the monarch. It’s also very obviously sexist, not to say misogynist. Yet the BBC’s editorial standards committee decided that while it was “near the knuckle”, it was “well after the watershed, well signposted and within audience expectations for the show”. There is, however, another, better way of treating a very similar subject. Back in the Seventies, Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, writers of Are You Being Served?, made a running joke out of another mature lady’s furry friend. Mrs Slocombe, of Grace Brothers department store, was obsessed by her cat Tiddles. As she used to say: “On the mantelpiece in my parlour I’ve got a whole row of silver cups. They’re for my pussy. Do you know, it wins a prize every time I show it!” Jokes like that maintain a centuries-old tradition of sexual innuendo in British humour. Shakespeare’s plays are, er, stiff with it. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio receives a letter he imagines is from his mistress Olivia. As he reads it, he declares: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand, these be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts, and thus makes she her great Ps.” It may be pure coincidence that of all the 26 letters in the alphabet and all the limitless ways they can be combined, the Bard chooses C, U and (or “n”) T, and that he then mentions his lady’s “great Ps”. Or it may be that he knew that nothing would get his audience laughing more effectively than smut. By the 20th century, absolutely nothing had changed. From Donald McGill’s seaside postcards to George Formby singing about all the scrapes he got into with My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock, the laughs lay in everything the audience knew was being implied, but never actually said. The very fact that British culture was so puritanical created the need to find another way of making jokes about sex, excrement and body parts. The whole skill of the double entendre lay in seeing how close one could go to the boundaries of what was allowed, without quite tipping over the edge. The audience shared a subversive complicity with the comedian. They were both getting away with it. Even the prudish, Reithian BBC was happy to play along. Kenneth Williams, a regular performer in radio shows such as Hancock’s Half Hour, Round the Horne and Just a Minute, based an entire career on his ability to make even the most innocent line sound smutty. And, of course, the Carry On films became a national institution on the basis of endless terrible puns and gentle innuendo. The Two Ronnies were masters of the art, invariably delivered straightfaced, such as this: “The search for the man who terrorises nudist camps with a bacon slicer goes on. Inspector Jones had a tip‑off this morning, but hopes to be back on duty tomorrow.” Between the late Sixties and early Eighties, all the apparent constraints on sexual expression were torn down and the need for innuendo disappeared. Comics could simply talk dirty instead. So‑called “alternative comedians”, such as the Not the Nine O’Clock News team, took huge pleasure in mocking their fuddy-duddy predecessors, subjecting the Two Ronnies to savage parody. Few people noticed that one kind of puritan censorship had simply been replaced by another: political correctness. Woe betide anything that was sexist, racist, discriminatory or – that great catch-all term of mealy-mouthed disapproval – inappropriate. Hence the knicker-twisting confusion that gripped the BBC. As an institution, it wants to be modern. It doesn’t want its metropolitan “liberal” (but actually deeply illiberal) chums to dislike it. And so, gripped by PC frenzy, it found itself in the position of allowing jokes that the majority of people would find genuinely offensive, while banning those that most people would enjoy. Luckily, the BBC is also petrified of media mockery. And so, as news of Samantha’s peril was greeted by scorn for the killjoys and support for the comics, a swift U-turn was performed. BBC spokespeople insisted that I’m Sorry… would be returning to the radio on June 30, with its humour untouched and Samantha still filling her box with the archivists’ seven inchers. It seems that the censors just can’t keep a good innuendo down. In the words of Kenneth Horne, “I’m all for censorship. If I ever see a double entendre, I whip it out.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10916560/Why-innuendo-is-the-best-of-British-humour.html