It’s
Masters week. Finally. I don’t know if anyone else is as excited as I am about
this year’s play at August, but from the early coverage on the Golf Channel of
the Monday through Wednesday practice rounds, it seems that everyone is ready and
eager to watch the competition. Even though this upsurge in anticipation is
mainly about Tiger’s return, this field is the strongest in a long time, with
at least ten players who could win. There will be no Danny Willet who sneaks in
this year. In fact, Willet won’t come even close to making the cut after two
rounds. We who are golfers can’t wait to see who will prevail. But even hordes
of non-golfers will be watching. I’d guess that tv viewing will be up between
thirty and fifty percent over any past years. And most of the hype is because
of Tiger. Isn’t it odd that only a few years ago, after the sordid tales of his
adultery and subsequent divorce, many golfers as well as non-golfers were
against him? And now we have the new, surgically repaired, more humane Tiger, and
most of us are rooting for him. I hope he wins. But I wouldn’t be unhappy to
see Spieth, Johnson, Mickelson, Rose, or even Garcia win it. I want the drama,
the hutzpah, the magical moments and magical shots. I just don’t want another
Danny Willet. Come on, Thursday, you can’t come soon enough.
Another look at the A.I. movement. The
accidental death of a woman struck by a driverless Uber auto has a bunch of
folks now apprehensive about driverless cars and saying they will never ride in
a driverless car. Not going to happen, folks. It’s a done deal. In the blink of
an eye, there will be only cars that
drive themselves. In an article about the accident, the writer said, in the
near future, we’ll be boarding pilotless planes. On that same subject, I read
that Steinway is now making a grand player piano that will play any classical
music perfectly and with as much feeling as when a human plays it. Huh. I
thought that why we had dvd’s and vinyl disks. Why do we now need a really
expensive piano to do what dvd’s and disks can do?
On Sixty
Minutes, I saw that we now have an island in the pacific made up entirely of
the world’s plastic debris, twice the size of Texas. Twice the size of Texas. I
can’t seem to make that fit in my head. Twice the size of Texas. What can we do
about it and what are the long-term consequences if we do nothing? It’s just
another of the many things that drive me crazy.
Countdown: My doomsday clock hasn’t gotten any closer to
midnight. I’m now in a holding pattern, no worse but still no better in terms
of my energy levels. My last blood examination showed that I’m anemic, just not
making enough red blood cells to provide for a proper amount of oxygen. There
are many causes for anemia and I seem to be the unlucky recipient of many of
them. Taking too much aspirin can cause blood thinning that leads to low red
corpuscle production. Improper diet can lead to lowered production. Inflammatory
diseases like rheumatoid arthritis can decrease red cells. Check. Got that.
Bone marrow deficiency, check, got that (my diagnosis of myelodysplasia is indicative
of marrow deficiency). So, what can I do to rectify this problem? Stop taking aspirin. Start taking lots of vitamin B-12 and folic acid. Eat a diet that contains more of the above.
Maybe even have a transfusion of blood rich in red cells. That will be my main
question for my pulmonologist when I see him—what should I do?
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