SHAKESPEARE AND THE FORCE OF MOVING WATER

SHAKESPEARE AND THE FORCE OF MOVING WATER

 As I watched the devastation in Japan I thought of one of my favorite quotes from Shakespeare dealing with missed opportunities. Yes, I know he wasn't talking about a tsunami,  but it still came to my mind because of the reference to tides:

Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures

 Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

Kenneth Chang reports in an NY Times piece that a modest cubic yard of water, 3' x 3' x 3', weighs nearly 1,700 lbs. If that water is moving at 30 or 40 mph in a tsunami it becomes deadly.  The article notes that if  it is a wall of water  10 meters high and two miles long then it is like a hundred tanks moving at a high speed. In this event, the earthquake pushed  section of sea floor 250 miles long and only 50 miles deep an average of one yard. That caused billions of cubic yards of water weighing trillions of pounds to be moved towards shore. In  oue state, living inland from the coast, I don't worry about a tsunami as much as I do  about the destruction caused by an earthquake here of  this magnitude. 

0 thoughts on “SHAKESPEARE AND THE FORCE OF MOVING WATER

  1. There’s a humming industry of Norman detractors. Golf pros who sell their lessons and opinions on the internet and do frequent “swing analysis” work for the great modern tour players, etc. I won’t name them but they’re all full of shit when it comes to Moe Norman. Their biggest error is in saying he wasn’t long, but they make their point after studying his swing from his mid to late 60’s. If you see early footage of Norman, you’ll see he pasted the ball.

    He couldn’t putt and didn’t really care that he couldn’t. He had an average bunker game too. I’m not sure about his short game. For one, he rarely missed greens, but he three putted often. If he was even an average putter, he would have won nearly every tournament he entered.

    Hogan was a piker compared to Norman. Norman hit more balls than 25 Hogans and “tee to green” would make mince meat out of him. But the game of golf includes putting.

    The flip side of the argument is that had not Norman been injured in the head, he would have had a normal life and not hit as many balls. Nor would he have developed the iron back, forearm, and hands he acquired by hitting million of balls. So when people say that had he been ‘normal’, he would have won everything in sight, they’re wrong. Had he been normal, he wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

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