300 Million Golf Balls Lost or Discarded in US Each Year, Each Needing 100 to 1000 Years to Decompose

November 13, 2009November 13, 2009Digital Citizen 2 Comments

Ball-hawk-collection Christina MacFarlane of CNN reports that 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States every year! There were no numbers for world estimates, but you can bet it’s a lot because there are a lot of countries in which golf is being played. I think double the 300 million, would be a conservative estimate. The US might like to play “us versus the world” in those team golf tournaments like the Ryder Cup, but that doesn’t mean they have half the golf players, courses and balls in the world.

Furthermore, each golf ball is estimated to require 100 to 1000 years to decompose naturally. This is according to simulations done by research teams at the Danish Golf Union. It had to be simulations because the golf balls of today haven’t been around 100 years.

In case you don’t think golf ball pollution is a problem, though, scientists who scoured the depths of Scotland’s Loch Ness in a submarine recently, hoping to discover evidence of the prehistoric Loch Ness monster, found hundreds of thousands of golf balls lining the bed of the loch!

That’s hundreds of thousands of golf balls!

Maybe the golf fanatics know about golfing around Loch Ness, but I sure as heck didn’t think there was that much golfing around there. At least not so close that hundreds of thousands of golf balls would be in the lake. It’s not like everybody shoots with the range of Tiger Woods, and even then, that’s not that far to get a golf ball into the loch!

Given the pollution of that magnitude, the poor monster is probably dead from either being pelted by stray golf balls, or having swallowed some in searching for food and picking up large morsels of things at the bottom.

Unfortunately, the pollution of golf balls is not just the presence of those balls. What’s in them is very bad for the environment.

The Danish Golf Association has found that during decomposition, the golf balls dissolved to release a high quantity of heavy metals. Dangerous levels of zinc were found in the synthetic rubber filling used in solid core golf balls. When submerged in water, the zinc attached itself to the ground sediment and poisoned the surrounding flora and fauna. Then, removing a partially degraded ball from a lake or woodland area could result in further damage to the wildlife. It’s not all that simple as picking them up, though a few hundred thousand under water could be rather difficult.

So what can we do about the golf balls? Well, the easiest thing would be to stop playing golf. Golf balls are the least of golf’s environmental impact. Look at these statistics about golf courses from 2004… never mind 2009.

1.8 million kg of an arsenic-containing pesticide, monosodium methanearsonate (MSMA), banned in India and Indonesia, is applied every year to golf courses and cotton fields in the US to control weeds

2.5 billion gallons – Amount of water it would take, per day, to support 4.7 billion people at the UN daily minimum, or the amount of water used, per day, to irrigate the world’s golf courses

23 – Number of golf courses in Japan before World War II
3,030 – Number in operation or soon to open in 2004

8.2 kg – Average amount of pesticides used per acre, per year, on golf courses (18.0 lbs), compared to just 2.7 kg (1.2 kg) used in the same time and space for agriculture (667% difference)

6,500 cubic metres (6.5 million litres) – Amount of water used by 60,000 villagers in Thailand, on average, per day, or one golf course in Thailand, on average, per day

150,000 acres – Current area of the wetlands of the Colorado River Delta, which now receives just 0.1 percent of the river water that once flowed through it, or the area that could be covered to a depth of 2 feet with water drawn from the Colorado River by the city of Las Vegas, which uses much of that allotment to water its more than 60 golf courses

Don’t forget all the travel, whether vacation or golf carts, involved and the emissions from it!

Really, is golf really worth all that?

Sure, the golf fanatics would say yes. But what if I were to tell you some other sport had that impact? Or every other sport out there had it since why put it on just one sport? Would you allow people to play that sport then?

But on the golf balls pollution issue, UK law maker Patrick Harvie had this advice:

“Keep your balls on the fairway or invest in a stock of biodegradable balls.”

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.1

The World in Six Songs Challenge (Part 7 of 7 in series)

April 13, 2009August 7, 2009Digital Citizen Leave a comment

Book and Theory Background

Daniel J. Levitin and The World in Six Songs Daniel J. Levitin wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The World in Six Songs, supported by a great website with the many music samples referenced, among other great related material.

My basic paraphrasing of the concept is this. All the songs in the world could be fit into at least one of six categories providing an evolutionary benefit to humanity, often ultimately tied to our social nature.

I have written about each category individually in separate posts, with song examples, listed below with links if you want to know more. However, here is how author Daniel Levitin has summarized the songs:

Friendship
Friendship songs centre around group cohesion, whether it be for war, or the bonding of different cliques in high school. For example, in prehistoric warfare, attackers would sometimes ambush another tribe using loud instruments (especially drums) to surprise the targets while they were still sleeping. Countertactics employing the use of singing may also have been used as a signal that the group was awake. These songs serve to protect a tribe/group or succeed in the takeover of another. In the context of social groups, they provide a sense of community and belonging, bringing people together.
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Joy
Joy songs are associated with celebration, moments that inspire people to sing, jump, dance and shout. It has been shown that singing releases oxytocin (the hormone released during orgasm), and music listening releases serotonin (a mood-regulating neurotransmitter commonly used in antidepressants). The positive effect of singing or listening to music has also been found to have a positive effect on the immune system, which creates an evolutionary advantage.
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Comfort
This category of song provides comfort in times of loneliness, stress or heartbreak, along with the classic comfort song, the lullaby. Music written about loneliness and stress can provide us with comfort by assuring us we are not alone in our grief or misery, aiding the recovery process. Lullabies mutually calm mother and child, and may release prolactin, while at the same time providing a bond between the two, which is beneficial for the child.
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Knowledge
Historically, songs have been used to transmit various information such as religious texts, survival and life lessons, and even the ABCs. Studies have shown information set to song is memorized more reliably than when simple rote memory is used. Increasing the reliability of transmitted information provides the next generation with valuable information.
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Religion
Religious ceremonies and ritual go hand in hand, with music frequently accompanying a ritual. Music acts as a retrieval mechanism to guide the movements and words of a particular ritual, and ritual can allow people to stop worrying and focus on the task at hand. Music is also tied to religious ceremonies such as weddings and funerals where acts can be performed as a community, providing social bonding.
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Love
Love songs serve as an expression of emotion, commitment, and honesty. They play a role in mating and bonding. Love provides an evolutionary advantage because it is altruistic, and corresponds with commitment, which leads to better care of children, which is an obvious fitness advantage. With altruism, the greater good comes before the individual, strengthening infrastructure.

The Challenge: Name or Write Six Songs for the World

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If you are not a songwriter, your challenge is to name one song you can think of for as many categories as you can.

Please leave your answers as a comment if you so choose. Of course, you could always become a songwriter and take the other version below.

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If you are a songwriter, your challenge is to write at least one song for each category in your career, because songs in some categories are not that easy to write if they serve the purposes required of songs in that category. I highly recommend you read either my posts or the book for more details on each type of song before writing some songs for each category because song classifications can be misleading to someone briefly familiar with the theory. For example, the Oral Torah that is all about the sacred text of Judaism is a song of knowledge, not religion, because it preserved knowledge, not associated with rituals.

If you have written songs, you will have songs which you can populate into some categories already. If you have them online, you are more than welcomed to leave a link in the Comments to share. Please identify the song and the category because most people have their recordings online in bunches, with with MySpace, where there are many songs per web page link. As you write others, you can add new comments until you get your six songs for the world.
Or just leave a comment with your name, website or whatever, to indicate you are committing to it.

I AM !!!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 11.7

Tagging Your Facebook Friends on Superheroes Poster

February 26, 2009March 19, 2011Digital Citizen 20 Comments

Today’s Facebook poster tagging meme involve comic book superheroes (and superheroines). These are limited to DC Universe and Marvel comic characters, and there are no villains to stay away from the negativity of it all, even if it is fun to jab your friends every now and then. I’m just not that type.

Click on the superhero poster below to get it at full size.
Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
Upload it to your Facebook profile.
Tag your friends (or let them tag themselves).

Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.

For use as English as a Second/Foreign Language exercise.

Comic Book Superheroes Avatars, Icons and Profile Pics for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Other Sites

January 25, 2009September 21, 2015Digital Citizen 2 Comments

These avatars and icons were created specifically for Facebook profile pictures, at 256 pixels wide. However, they could be used for other social media sites and anything allowing for an avatar/icon.

These graphics came from the original files I collected in making the Superheroes Facebook tagging poster, with some additional pics not used. To get a profile picture below:

Click on the thumbnail you want to get it at full size
(there is NO grey trim on the downloadable picture).
Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
Upload it to your Facebook or other profiles.
Click the Back button on your browser to come back to here or click the thumbnails below the picture to move on to the next picture.
Come back another day whenever you feel like using a new one, or download them all now!
Please click here for a complete list of avatars, buddy icons and themed Facebook profile pictures on this site (see blue header near bottom of destination page).