Sunday, May 08, 2022

Dunedoo: The strange business of hole-in-one insurance

 

 The Vandal.  Covers Dali, Rand, Orwell, Jesus and nausea, among other topics.



Residents of an Australian town of Dunedoo (real name) were left devastated earlier this week when a beloved golf course was destroyed by a vandal.

SHOCKING VIDEO SHOWS HOW A VANDAL DESTROYED A GOLF COURSE, LEAVING AN AUSTRALIAN TOWN IN TEARS



The strange business of hole-in-one insurance

When golf tournaments promise big cash prizes for holes-in-one, they turn to niche insurers to protect against a stroke of luck

In many golf circles, it was (and still is) customary for the lucky golfer to buy drinks for everyone in the clubhouse after landing a hole-in-one. This often resulted in prohibitively expensive bar tabs.

And an industry sprouted up to protect these golfers.

A newspaper archive analysis by The Hustle revealed that hole-in-one insurance firms sprouted up as early as 1933.

Under this model, golfers could pay a fee — say, $1.50 (about $35 today) — to cover a $25 (~$550) bar tab. And as one paper noted in 1937: “The way some of the boys have been bagging the dodos, it might not be a bad idea.”

Though the concept largely faded away in the US, it became a big business in Japan, where golfers who landed a hole-in-one were expected to throw parties “comparable to a small wedding,” including live music, food, drinks, and commemorative tree plantings.

By the 1990s, the hole-in-one insurance industry had a total market value of $220m. An estimated 30% of all Japanese golfers shelled out $50-$70/year to insure themselves against up to $3.5k in expenses.


That was then this is now, Elon Musk edition

Dr. von Braun authored a book in 1948 while he was at Ft. Bliss, Texas, called Marsprojekt. The science fiction novel was published in German. Three years after Dr. von Braun relocated to Huntsville, the book was published in English by the University of Illinois Press in 1953 and titled, The Mars Project…

In 2006, the science fiction novel from Dr. von Braun from 1948, which had gone unpublished, was released by a Canadian publisher of space-related historical science fiction as “Project Mars: A Technical Tale.”

Chapter 24 of this science fiction work is titled, “How Mars in Governed.” In one passage of that chapter, the book states: The Martian government was directed by 10 men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and had the title of “Elon.” Two houses of parliament enacted the laws to be administered by Elon and his cabinet. The upper house was called the Council of the Elders and contained 60 people who were named to those positions for life by Elon.

Go to yellow hammer for full media dragon story



How Evil Are Politicians?” 

The author is Bryan Caplan and the subtitle is Essays in Demogoguery.   It collects the very best of his EconLog essays on the vicious use of political authority.”  Just out, good price, you can order on Amazon here



If China were to raise retirement age to 65 over next 20 years, the labour supply issue disappears. One of striking results of

recent talk reviewed in Chartbook #118 adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-11

When We Are 65 - if everyone was like Chris Jordan and we all worked to 65 and beyond



100-year-old man breaks Guinness World Record for working at same company for 84 years


 Is there a gender punishment gap for misconduct?



Are spies a cyclical asset?

The number of secret search and eavesdropping orders approved by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court dropped by more than half in the last two years, according to data released Friday by government officials who attributed the drop to the pandemic keeping even spies and terrorism suspects at home.

The figures released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) show the FISA court, named after the law that created it to handle sensitive national security cases, approved 907 probable cause applications in 2019, which plummeted to 524 the following year and 430 in 2021. Those orders covered an estimated 1,059 targets in 2019 — a figure that sank down to 376 last year.

Are Spies Assets Full text  story


The quest for young talent in tennis (NYT)


Listen to Abbey Road with only the Paul McCartney bass line.  Macca ain’t gonna’ be the one who makes them take this down


The promise of cultural philanthropy


Organic farming went disastrously wrong in Sri Lanka


At $300,000, public art sculpture Water Cloud has caused a community storm in Dorrigo, NSW