Well, I don’t know about you, but I for one am very happy to
read that John Fry is speaking up and giving us his side of the
story.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I for one am very happy to read that John Fry is speaking up and giving us his side of the story. In case you haven’t been following it, Mr. Fry of Fry’s Electronics – you know, the chain of techno-gizmo superstores that has been running the same endlessly-repeated TV ad since Pong was the standard in video games – seems to have constructed himself a championship-grade 18-hole golf course on the old Flying Lady property without deigning to touch bases with the folks who are paid by the public to supervise and regulate such things.
Pretty much like the former owner of the property, who also believed that such things as permits and inspections were unnecessary shackles on his artistic freedom, Mr. Fry wants to assure everyone that he’s on top of all the right things to insure that his golf course is environmentally spiffy even if such killjoys as the City of Morgan Hill and the Santa Clara Valley Water District have been, no doubt inadvertently, left out of the loop. No matter; he has folks who do all the same things the public agencies do and they’re doing a fine job – trust them.
Now, I’m as anxious as the next guy to give a pass to rich people whenever I can. Like the old saying goes, the rich are members of a club everyone despises and can’t wait to join, and Mr. Fry does have some good points to make in justifying why he chose not to subject his golfian vision to the prying eyes of public servants. For example, he says that the place is much nicer now than it was when it was the Flying Lady with its 9-hole, let’s be charitable and just say highly unique, golfing adventure. There are some of us able to remember the bizarre apparition that was the Flying Lady course who might think Mr. Fry has set himself a rather low standard for comparison, but improvement is improvement, and it should be noted.
Of far greater importance, the property owners don’t want us to forget, is that this property, which will also house a think tank founded by Mr. Fry called the American Institute of Mathematics, will be the home of a “world-renowned institute” that will bring “dozens of mathematics researchers” to town. A spokesman says, “The Institute has solved more mathematics problems than any other.” Well, all right, now we’re talking. Finally, after well over a century, Morgan Hill has found its identity. Time to add that to the City logo: “Morgan Hill – Where Math Problems Are Solved.”
So, OK, I buy the idea, it makes sense to me. We’re getting dozens of free-spending, hard-partying, tourist-attracting mathematicians out of this deal, and that’s the trade-off for the golf course being built on the private owners’ say-so that the government’s normal and traditional obligation to provide for the public health, safety, and welfare by supervising large environment-impacting projects like construction of golf courses doesn’t apply to them.
It kills me to think of all the years we’ve wasted on the Mushroom Mardi Gras when we could have been attracting mathematicians and becoming world renowned among the millions of cognoscenti who keep track of the locations where particular problems are solved so they can plan their pilgrimages. But we’re on the right track now; all that’s left is to repeal those picky laws, ax the bothersome regulations, and furlough all the nosy public employees. Who needs em? We’ve got a math institute! And as history proves, no great mathematician – not Newton, nor Galileo, nor Einstein, nor Doug Samuelson, the biggest nerd in my high school who got an 800 on his math SAT and got to go to Cal Tech – ever did a lick of profound work without having a really first-class built-without-permits golf course next door for inspiration.
It’s really a small price to pay.
