Mitt's Speech

I was not embarrassed to be a Mormon. I can hold my head up high in political circles as a Mormon American after that sincere explanation of how patriotism and my religion might merge.

Megan on Hillary Clinton

While driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving last week, my 4 year old daughter Megan heard a clip of Hillary Clinton on the radio. It was a particularly shrill clip (Sean Hannity's replacement played it so I am sure it was impartial). Megan said "that's not a very nice person." I said "do you think she should be our next president?" She said "no Daddy."

So there you go. Megan would vote against Hillary. I guess I would too given the chance. But my vote would be based on politics and not neccesarily a sound bite on a far right conservative radio program.

My next $11,995 bike

Will definitely be one of these Arantix open lattice carbon-fiber bikes by Delta 7 sports. At 2.7 pounds for the frame, the frame itself weighs about 8 to 9 times less than my current low-end of the high-end mountain bike.

We have a bog in Orem?

Turns out that the recent stink in Orem is a bog fire burning out by Geneva Road.

PECASE awarded to professor at BYU

This is a very big deal. The PECASE ain't quite the Nobel Prize (congratulations Dr. Capecchi!), but it's the top award in the US for young faculty. Congratulations to Adam Wolley and the Chemistry/Biochemistry Dept. at BYU.

Memo to BYU students angry over parking

In a representative democracy, such as Provo, you need to vote. Otherwise, your only recourse is making angry statements about parking at city council meetings.

A $cout executive is...

Well-paid. And honestly, I have no problem with that. But if we could just file trip permit applications over the web and/or email, I'd be much happier. The IT infrastructure in my Council is just new maturing into web 1.0, sort of.

How change education in Utah, step 1

Step one is to go to your neighborhood caucus meeting and elect delegates which represent your views on education. Neighborhood caucuses (or is it caucii?) are held in March. You will know most of the people there, they will be your neighbors.

The caucus system puts a lot power at the grass roots level, the you have to go to your caucus meeting.

In the Post-Voucher Era

Let it not be said that Utah Republicans blindly follow their state party leadership like sheep.

Memo to George F. Will at the Washington Post

George:

Nice op-ed piece on the Utah voucher fray out in the wild-wild-west. In paragraph 6, you mention that Utah's pending population boom will bring many students into our already crowded school. The good Senator Bramble and the Chamber of Commerce radio ad raise the same issue. I am not convinced. Here's why:

But public education is funded by property tax. Won't those newcomers need somewhere to live? If we assume that they won't live in existing structures with existing residents, then new residences will need to be constructed for these newcomers. Won't that increase the tax base and increase property tax revenue?

Vouchers actually make the situation worse. According to the Voter Information Pamphlet, vouchers will cost the Utah tax payer an extra approx. $40,000,000 in 13 years (that's cost of voucher program minus savings to public ed.). So not only will we have to build more schools, we'll also have to pay more money to fund the voucher program.

The fun thing about vouchers is that it's a financially complex issue. I must be missing something. Somebody please tell me where I am wrong.

To What Extent do Vouchers Make Private School Affordable?

If tuition is $4,500 (the PCE number), vouchers have a significant impact on affordability across both family size and income. If tuition is $6,935 (a Deseret News number), vouchers have very little impact on affordability. I also did the numbers for sending my 2 kids to Ivy Hall at $5,600 per kid. Vouchers have a negligible impact in making Ivy Hall affordable for us (it's not, if you were curious).

Assumptions, model and detailed results given below. If you want the Excel spreadsheet to play with on your own, leave a comment below and I'll send you a copy.

The following graphs express the cost of vouchers as a percentage of annual income assuming that half of eligible children attend private school in a 2 parent home (except for single parent and single child homes). In the graph, the horizontal axis is annual family income. The vertical axis is number of children attending private school. The values on the vertical axis are 1, 1, 2, 3 (sorry for the lack of labels, my medicine kicked in and it happens to cause excruciating headaches and fatigue).

I decided that "affordable" means that tuition accounts for 5% or less of the family income. Affordable is colored blue. "Might be affordable" means that tuition is between 5 and 10% of the family income. Scenarios which might be affordable are colored orange. "Not affordable" means tuition is greater than 10% of the family income.

First up, we'll assume private school costs $4,500 per kid as assumed by Parents for Choice in Education.

Without vouchers, private school is affordable for only families making more than $110,000 and with less than 2.5 kids in private school. Not so good. Private school is maybe affordable for families making more than $60,000 a year and for larger families with more income.





The impact of vouchers on affordability with tuition at $4,500 is striking. With vouchers, all but large families with low income can afford or might be able to afford private school. Using the PCE tuition assumption, vouchers have a significant positive impact on affordability.

Next, we'll redo the numbers using the amended Deseret News numbers, which includes some kind of weighted average tuition which is $6,935.

If tuition is $6,935 then private school is affordable without vouchers only for small families making around $150,000 a year and might be affordable for small families making $70,000 or more.




Vouchers have little impact if tuition is $6,935. There's no significant change in families that can afford private school. Some small families making around $50,000 may be able to afford private school.

We happen to send our twins to a private preschool, all preschools are private so no sympathy cards are being played here, and I sanity-checked my affordability assumptions on our family budget. No problem. We'll send them to private kindergarten next year and kindergarten will be affordable because we'll make it affordable, but that's another story for another time ... maybe later this week depending on how things go.

Clarifying What I Meant by "Cost to Public Education"

In a comment, Bradley reacted to a plausible interpretation of my last post on the cost of vouchers to public it. It was a plausible interpretation of what I said but not what I meant.

Here's what I meant...

Suppose little Jimmy's parents choose to send him to private school next year. Rightfully so, as you point out, Jimmy's public school allotment no longer goes to the public school. That's the way it should be.

But the problem for me is that $500-$3000 of your tax money also follows Jimmy to private school. That's $500-$3000 coming out of tax revenue and into education but not into public education.

I am calling that a cost to public education because that's $500-$3000 that our legislature decided to spend on education (instead of transportation, infrastructure, public safety etc.) but which did not go to public education.

The central question for me is still this: if we can find and extra $40 ish million a year (that's cost to tax payer minus savings to public ed. using the numbers for the 13th year in the Voter Information Guide) to spend on education, then is subsidizing private schools really the right way to spend it?

For a state with the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation already, I think that the answer is no.

If you look at educational outcomes (in terms of % of population with a HS degree for example), no other state in the union spends less on education per capita and gets better results. Imagine what we could do if we were closer to the national average.

Why do vouchers cost public schools money?

My neighbor and I were carpooling home the other day and talking about vouchers. He was surprised, I think, that vouchers will cost public schools money. I knew that they would (from the voter's guide) but couldn't explain why.

I re-read the voter's guide and here's why.

When a student's parents choose to send that student to private school on a voucher, some of that student's oreo stack (ie dollars) remain in the public school. But some go to the private school. Sure. We've seen the ads we know this.

The catch is that the oreo stack only stays in the public school for 5 years. After 5 years, the oreos just go back into the general fund, or something. Maybe they get dunked in milk?

5 years is a long time in school years for a child. But, in the end, the money still goes away.

Other People Question Spending Tax Money on Vouchers

The KSL Editorial Board says "Is Utah's public school system broken and in such disarray that doing something as radical and unproven as directing precious tax dollars toward private schools, many of them parochial, the answer? We think not!"

And Green Jello says "I believe providing more accessibility to private schools would also provide another great option for students who need a non-traditional approach to their education needs if it could be done without creating an additional drain from Utah's taxpayers and from the already underfunded public schools system. However, referendum 1 doesn't succeed in this point. After the 13th year and beyond it would be a drain on the public coffers, and I'm afraid it would be viewed as nothing more than another entitlement program."

I agree with both. Pramahaphil over at Green Jello is even an accountant. I am not very good at accounting, so reading the numbers in the Voter's Guide was all I could handle. Pramahaphil read the Legislative Fiscal Analyst's Report, probably enjoyed it, and reached a similar conclusion to mine.

Cycling Moab with 4 Year Olds

 

We took the girls down to Moab for the weekend and they were dying to ride their bikes in Moab, just like Daddy did with the Scouts a year ago. So we packed up their bikes and headed to Sand Flats by the Slickrock Trail. And we biked at the Rotary Park down the hill off the road to Sand Flats.

They had a great time. Megan is a pretty good biker for a 4 year old and Ashley is a little more apprehensive so far.

The Rotary Park is a fun green shady oasis in town.

Faculty are anti college sports?

[Salt Lake Tribune - Monson: Professors show their annoyance with college athletics]

Monson's citing a reputable study, so he's probably on the right track. But I wasn't surveyed in the study and I just want to go on record as saying that as a college professor myself, I love college sports. In my department, lunch conversations alternate between football and "other stuff" almost all of fall semester.

Then again, in our department, Computer Science, we don't see players from marque sports like football and basketball. I've had a men's diving diver and a women's tennis player. Both were good students and seemed to enjoy the challenge of doing both school and sports.

I suppose that if I were in an, um, easy major like the humanities or public broadcasting, that I might see more marquee sports players in my classes. Ok, easy is probably the wrong word. Let's go with "less time consuming."

If you know any football or basketball players or cheerleaders in a technical major, I'd love to know who they are. So far, I know 0.

I should add that I knew a Utah scholarship football player and met a BYU scholaship basketball player. Both starters. Both very smart impressive people. Seriously. Just don't have a lot of time for demanding majors.

Input needed on field work test sites

In the lab, we are preparing a proposal to a build the technology for capturing the shape, color and reflectance of rock formations using consumer hardware. This technology will allow the general public to virtually visit remote sites and create an archive of fragile rock formations before they are damaged by vandalism or natural causes.

We are looking for a field work test site somewhere in the desert. This will be a place we can visit to test our ideas. We need a place with the following characteristics:

1. Within 2.5 hours of Provo, Utah.
2. Includes a cool looking rock formation. Need to be able to walk around the entire rock formation.
3. Low elevation. We want year-round access.
4. Is between 1 and 2 miles from the closest road. This is negotiable though.

We are thinking of using the Conquistadors near Little Holes Canyon near the Grand Canyon of the San Rafael River, see picture above. The problem with the Conquistadors is that they are next to a 50 foot cliff with loose rock. Safe enough, but safer would be better.

We are also thinking of using the first Pinnacle (following Steve Allen's guidebook) in Pinnacle Canyon off the Tidwell Draw North Road.

Got any other ideas?

The Budget Numbers on Vouchers

After reading comments left here and elsewhere, I decided to go do some studying to find the cost of vouchers to the Utah taxpayer. As you might guess, it all depends on which assumptions you make. I'll use the Impartial Analysis in the Voter Information Pamphlet.

In the end though, the question is: If vouchers create an additional tax-payer burden, are vouchers the best way to spend that money?

More specifically: What if we spent the extra cost (if any) of vouchers on teacher raises?

Let's say that there are 30,000 teachers in Utah. (There were about 21,000 in 1999). In the first year, vouchers may only cost the tax payer an extra $3.1 M. Using that number, we could give all teachers about a $100 raise. Not that exciting, but a nice way to say "thanks" to the people who teach our children. The other estimate gives vouchers a $6.0 M net savings to the tax payer. Teachers would need to take a $200 pay cut to fund vouchers the first year. Not that appealing if you are making a teacher salary and if you are trying to actually hire teachers.

It's a lot more interesting in the 13th year (when vouchers are fully phased in). In the 13th year, vouchers cost the taxpayer either an extra $60 M or an extra $43 M depending on which numbers you believe. So the question is: should we use that extra $51.5 M (I used the average) to subsidize private schools or should we use it for public schools? If we use it for public schools, I vote we put it all in teacher raises. Let's say we have 40,000 teachers in 13 years (I made that number up), then we could give all of them a $1287.50 raise. In 2020 dollars, an extra $1287.50 per year won't be a ton of money, but every little bit helps--especially if house prices continue to rise and you want to buy a house.

Vouchers may save money in the first year. But after 13 years, when everyone thinks of them as an entitlement (which is why it's odd that conservative Republicans support them so passionately), they are going to cost additional money. If we are going to spend additional money on education, and I think we should, then let's spend it on making public education better.

And that's why I'll still vote no on vouchers.

Loading a helicopter with 1 skid on the ground

Apparently that's what it took to get these guys out of Grand Staircase Escalante. I saw it happen once on Timpanogos above the Timponooke Basin just below the saddle. It was impressive even from a distance.

[Salt Lake Tribune - Three hikers plucked from wilderness cliff in daring helicopter rescue: "The helicopter flew in this morning, landing one skid on a ledge and opening the door for the three men to jump inside."]

The Secret 18 Mile Loop in North Orem

One of the pending comments was curious about the 18 mile roadie loop I mentioned in a post about the dangers of riding the Provo River Parkway in clueless foot traffic. Since I am sitting in my living room in my new cold weather cycling jacket and not riding my bike (due to rain), I thought I'd take a minute to post that route.

It goes something like this:

Get on 2000 North in Orem, head west. Turn left at the stop sign just before the dump. Head south for a while. At the next stoplight (next to a park, I think it's 400 South), turn left. Ride west to 400 east. At 400 east, turn left again. Head north for a while. Turn left on 2000 north for another 18 mile loop.

One of my woodbadge tickets was to ride the Alpine Loop, which I did two weeks ago. That was my first time all the way around. It's pointless. The climb up Provo Canyon, then to Sundance, Aspen Grove and the Summit is great. The descent down the Sundance side is way fun. But the drop down the AF side is not so fun and the ensuing ride through Cedar Hills, AF, PG, Lindon is even less fun.

Moderating comments, oops

It turns out that there were 25 comments waiting to be moderated here at Utahania. I took a long summer off from many things, including blogging. But the good news is that I got continuing faculty status (BYU equivalent of tenure), taught computer graphics for the first time, published my first paper in computer graphics, took the scouts to camp, the kids on a vacation or two and even went to family woodbadge.

Anyway, at some point in that process, the blog set itself to have comments moderated. I guess that actually sending me email when a comment needed to be moderated was too much? At any rate, I am now caught up.

20 out of 25 were great comments that I wish had been out there in the community. I even agreed with some of them :) . The other 5 were, or appeared to be, unrelated spam.

Sorry about that, I'll stay more on top of that now that I know there's a silent queue of pending comments.

Why I oppose vouchers

As much as it kills me to be on the same side of an issue as the UEA, I am going to have to vote against vouchers. I have two primary reasons.

First, I am a fiscal conservative. While I do support parents' choice in education, I don't think that the government should spend your tax money to help parents choose private school. Similarly, I don't support using your tax money to help parents have a choice, for example, in what kind of car they drive. Just to be clear though, I do think that your tax money should be spent to provide education to all children for free. Public ed has problems. However, I think many of them can be blamed on the UEA (sorry UEA). Tenure in 3 years? That's crazy. Stretch that out to 6 or 7.

Every person I know who supports vouchers and hates their local elementary school (n=2) simply has a bad principal. If it weren't so hard to fire a bad principal, then public ed would be a better place. It's easier to fire a college football coach than it is to fire a principal. What's wrong with that?

Second, voucher proponents have made a big deal out of the following arguement "vouchers aren't bad for public ed because a student who leaves on a voucher leaves behind the money spent to educate that student." Apparently, the legislature found some money in the general fund that can be used to pay for vouchers without taking money out of public ed. If we have the political will to take money out of the general fund and spend it on vouchers, then why don't we take that same money and use it on public ed? The Utah Senators and Reps. that I've met are pretty smart. They have to understand this arguement against vouchers. So why don't they support using that money for public ed but do want to use it for vouchers? That's an easy one: UEA again. Legislators are reluctant to throw more money at public ed because they aren't happy with how it's going to be spent.

Dawn: hope that helps you get through class next time!

Memo to DesNews: Paper Ballots are not Ludite

Last Thursday's editorial in the Deseret News painted me, and people like me, who want voter verifiable paper audit trails as being afraid of technology. That's funny because I love technology and have made it a major part of my career.

Back in '04, many Computer Science professors at the U and BYU got together to ensure that our legislature understood the difficulties of getting electronic voting right. I was one of those professors and still believe that a voter-verifiable paper audit trail is important in establishing the legitimacy of an electronic election. Not because of public perception, but because it's just too easy to get electronic voting wrong.

Phil's post, Phil Windley's Technometria | Saying Yes to Paper Ballots, reminded me that I needed to say something about this.

Welcoming the New Utah County Democrats

The New Utah County Democrats were elected as the party leadership last night. Welcome! It's good to have a viable second party in our county.

They say, on their website, "even our moderate Republican friends and neighbors are now grumbling about how out of touch their own party is to the needs and opinions of real Utahns."

Exactly correct. As a moderate Republican, I was dismayed by statements at my party's convention last week. We are very close to "Republican means anti public education" That's an extreme position I don't agree with. (Not just the "Satan's role in immigration" thing but also just about everyone's statements on education and vouchers).

A viable second party in our county will pull the Republican far right back towards the middle. They won't like it, but it will be good for our state.

The other way to pull the county Republican party back to the middle is to get moderates elected as delegates and then as party leadership. Unfortunately, moderates tend to be uninvolved other than voting every 2 or 4 years in November.

War Criminal?

Memo to those who call President Bush a war criminal:

It's a serious thing to call a sitting president of the United States a war criminal during a time of war. Unless you are correct, it borders on treason.

If you really believe that he's a war criminal, then you should be doing more than leaving comments on blogs, writing blog entries, holding rallies and debating radio talk show hosts for charity.

You should be presenting a case to Congress and the UN to help you get a war criminal out of the Oval Office. You should be prepared to see it through until Bush and Cheney are imprisoned, probably for life.

If you commitment to Bush/Cheney as war criminals isn't that deep, then let's all continue to oppose/support the war but let's tone down the rhetoric a little.

Usage rules for incite versus insight

The BYU newsnet today has the following headline: BYU NewsNet - Speakers to Share Incite at Women's Conference.

I think that they meant "insight" but "incite" is much more interesting especially if you watched "The Mormons" documentary and listened to the bits about women in the church as described by a former Church member.

The Mormons

The Mormons documentary wasn't too bad. The first night was far better than the second. Ken Verdoia did an excellent job of speaking about LDS history in a way that I think non-Mormon people will relate too while remaining correct and positive. I was extremely impressed with Ken's pieces.

I think anti-Mormons will be disapointed with the coverage and I think that some Mormons will be as well. That means that they probably got it about right.

Elder Oaks' on Mountain Meadows was good. I thought they made Will Bagely look pretty dumb. They let him say "Brigham Young ordered it" but didn't let him give any justification. I guess you just have read his book if you want to find out how he formed his opinion.

The bit on dancing in the middle was odd but fun. Both my sister (in Boise ID) and brother (in Seattle WA) had their spouse turn to them in that part and say "but you can't even dance!" My wife was asleep by then.

The second night was pretty slow and less balanced. The disaffected intellectuals got lots of air time to comment on the state of the church generally.

Mormon intellectuals are fine. The problem is that one can't actively advocate positions that oppose the LDS Church _and_ remain a member of the LDS Church. People are free to oppose the LDS Church, you just can't be a member while you do it. It's neither complicated nor oppressive. I am probably over simplifying the situation, but if you oppose the LDS Church and don't believe it's fundamental claims or positions, then why do you care if you remain a member or not? I am sure it's more difficult than that because Toscana seemed to sincerely struggle with the actions of others, her decisions and their consequences.

Utah County Republican Convention

Fortunately the resolution on Satan's involvement in illegal immigration failed. There wasn't a quorum so it was all moot. Even so, it would have failed in a straight up vote. The wording on "close the borders" may have passed if there was a quorum needed to suspend the rules and remove the Satanic part.

I was extremely pleased to hear Stephen Sandstrom talk about immigration. He said, more or less, that his first year in the House taught him that immigrants are people too with desires, goals and feelings. That's progress.

The debate on vouchers in our Senate District Caucus was fascinating. John Valentine is our senator and gave a great inside scoop. I had an interesting discussing with the State or County PTA President afterwards.

The good news is that I've finally come to a position I agree with on public/private education. Stay tuned...

Ralph Nader at UVSC (for BYU, sort of)

I didn't attend the alternative commencement. I draw the line at one commencement a month. Even if the guy who gave Bush the presidency is speaking.

One of my colleagues did go and the comment I got from him was "you should have heard his ideas on health care." So it's just as well I didn't go.

It's interesting that the alternative event was far more political than the official one. Politicizing graduation was one of the original complaints with the Cheney invitation.

Unfortunately, news reports suggest that Nader did not follow Mike's first law of graduation speaking, which is, be short, be uplifting and sit down.

Serious kudos to the students who arranged it. It strengthens my hope in the future of our democracy.

VP Cheney at BYU

 

Being a BYU professor has very few perks. There is no annual bonus. The Christmas present is a book. Although I love the books, seriously, you aren't going to remodel the living room with a book. When I retire, I hope I have a collection of about 30 of them. I already had a copy of the book, it was an LDS triple combination, we got last year. The gift was bound in a very fancy Italian leather. I digress.

But today the perk was a short line to get in commencement and a second row seat. See blurry picture to the right.

Graduation today was excellent. Completely non-partisan. Even the 9 protesters at the gates of campus on my way home from the Marriott (3 pro 6 against) seemed silly and trite. It was a fine occasion. The VP seemed touched to get his honorary degree and I thought it was an appropriate gesture for a guy who's been in government service since 1976.

I hope the graduates all enjoyed the talk. The VP obeyed Mike's first law of graduation speaking. Which is: nobody really came to hear you talk. Keep it short and meaningful then sit down.

Satan?

[deseretnews.com | County GOP delegate links illegal immigration to Satan]

I got this resolution in the mail as part of my packet for the county convention on Saturday. I can't decide if I should stick around to vote against it or just let the lack of a quorum kill it naturally.

Mormon Democrats I know

Stereotypes about Mormons and politics are easy and fun. And there is ample evidence to support them. However, the problem with stereotypes are that they ignore a small but significant part of the population which does not fit the stereotype.

In an effort to debunk the "all Mormons are Republicans" stereotype, I thought I'd list off a few staunch Mormon Democrats that I know well. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent :)

A Bishop. I served as his counselor. He is one of the most significant influences on my church service life.

A Stake Young Women's President. She's doing great.

A Ward Clerk. Formerly one of the best Scoutmaster's I know.

Another Bishop.

A few BYU faculty.

A counselor in a Relief Society Presidency.

A Stake President.

I continue to be a Republican. There may be other Democrats lurking about as well, but, oddly enough, politics rarely come up at Church.

BYU Protest Update

I took a quick lap around the BYU library today to see how BYU students were enjoying their rights of free assembly as given to them by the BYU administration and American Military power.

Conservatively, (I am a conservative after all) the anti-Cheney protest by the BYU Democrats drew 2 times as many people as the pro-Cheney protest staged by the BYU Republicans. The Republican protest drew about 3 uniformed ROTC students while the Democrat one appeared to draw none. It was hard to spot military uniforms through all the people at the Democrats' protest. Graduation should be interesting. I'll bring a camera to this one.

Since the Republicans are outnumbered 2 to 1 here on the BYU campus, I predict the Democratic candidate will win by a landslide in November 08. Unless of course, something happens in the next 18 months...

Walsh on Commencement Speakers at BYU of U of U in 2007

My other favorite part about Walsh's recent article is this:

Paragraph 3: "The decision to invite Vice President Dick Cheney to speak at Brigham Young University's April commencement shreds the LDS Church's perennial claims of political neutrality. "

Paragraph 4: "the University of Utah's commencement speaker choice of LDS Apostle Thomas S. Monson. "

Let's do some cut and paste to consistently apply the standard from paragraph 3 to the information in paragraph 4:

Mashup of paragraphs 3 and 4: "The decision to invite [Apostle Thomas S. Monson] to speak at [the University of Utah's] [May] commencement shreds the [state of Utah's] perennial claims of [religious] neutrality."

Doesn't really work does it?

Neither does the original paragraph 3.

[SLCSpin » Blog Archive » The Problem With Rebecca Walsh’s Column]

Welcome UVU!

The Senate Site reports that UVSC has just become UVU. Right now, it is a university in name only (literally) but I look forward to having another University in Utah County and wish them the best of luck. I know a few of their CS faculty and they will do well with the change.

As a parent of children in Utah County, I am hopeful that in 15 years when my kids are old enough to attend university that UVU will be a viable option for them--assuming that they can get in. But their father, mother, both grand-fathers, both grand-mothers, a great-grand-mother and a great-great-grand-mother all graduated from BYU so they may decide to attend BYU--if they get admitted there!

[The Senate Site: Utah Valley University!]

My Wow Moment

I installed Vista on my work desktop yesterday because it was a slow Monday afternoon. I've had three wow moments so far. First, "Wow, it looks just like it did before and I am not sure why I did that" Second, "wow, search was fast. Much faster than it was on OS X" Third, "wow, they still don't have support for different background images on multiple monitors"

Your mileage may vary.

Windows Vista – Show us your "Wow"

Average Sunset on Mt. Timpanogos

 

This image is the average image created by compositing 43 images of Mt. Timpanogos taken at 99.6% of the lit day over the course of the last 2 months. As such, it represents the average sunset over that time period. The average noon-day picture (taken at 50.0% of the lit day) is bit more murky.

A story that warms the conservative heart

The film version of Edward Abbey's liberal environmental epic "The Monkey Wrench Gang" will not be filmed in Utah because the state didn't offer the producers a large enough tax break. Instead, it will be filmed in New Mexico.

One does wonder how the producers managed to get the film rights to Ed Abbey's book without agreeing to film it in Utah. It's kind of central to the whole premise.

[ksl.com - Utah's Online Source for Local News & Information "The Monkey Wrench Gang" to be Filmed in New Mexico]

On a related note, I have read Ed Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and came away with the following conclusion: convservatives want culture to remain unchanged, liberals want the environment to remain unchanged. The liberal position is a little uncomfortable if you plan to build on or use things built on land that was previously undisturbed. But if you already own your vacation cabin in the mountains, the liberal position isn't too bad.

In-state tuition for students here legally

Anthony asked a very reasonable question in a comment. Do non-US students here legally for school get in-state tuition?

I believe the implication is that if they do not, then it's mighty odd for students here illegally to get favorable treatment compared to people who kept the law. It's a good point.

The key difference is that a child of an illegal immigrant brought here at the age of 4 didn't choose to come. It seems unfair to punish that student for a choice made by their parents. For example, children of crack dealers still get in-state tuition even though their parents broke the law. That seems reasonable to me.

Here's what the Utah Law says (from The University of Utah - Admissions): "Aliens who are present in the United States on visitor, student, or other visas which authorize only temporary presence in this country, do not have the capacity to intend to reside in Utah for an indefinite period and therefore are classified as nonresidents. ... Aliens who have been granted immigrant or permanent resident status in the United States are classified for purposes of resident status according to the same criteria applicable to citizens."

The summary is that if you intend to reside in Utah for an "indefinite period" then you get in-state tuition. If you are here on a temporary visa, then you can not intend to say indefinitely.

I believe Anthony also suggested that a person who is (a) brought here illegally (b) attends school here for 3 years (which meets the residency requirements established for everyone) (c) graduates and (d) gets admitted to college should be (a) nationalized then (b) given a tuition break based on existing law.

I like that idea, a lot. I'd support it.

Vote against Utah HB224

HB224, which repeals in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants, made it out of committee Friday. HB224 is a bad idea.

If a child is (a) brought to the United States illegally by their parents (b) graduates from High School after attending for at least 3 years in Utah and (c) gets into college, then they ought to get a tuition break.

To penalize children brought in illegally by their parents is a form state-sponsored punishment of children for their parent's illegal behavior. If children of convicted drug-dealing US citizens aren't sent to jail with their parents, why should children of illegal immigrants be penalized?

In 2005-06, there were 182 students taking advantage of the tuition break. At $5000 of tuition lost per student, that comes to almost an opportunity cost of almost $1,000,000 to support keeping these students in school. To put that in perspective, if we took 1/3 of the budget surplus, that would be about $100M in round numbers, for 2005-06 and spent it on covering lost tuition for these students, we could fund the program for 50-100 years depending on how many students use the program.

[Salt Lake Tribune - Undocumented kids' tuition break takes hit]

Hey, that's the person that runs with my sister!

KSL has a piece on Joy Postma and running marathons. My sister runs with Joy and we met Isabel and her parents and my sister's New Year's Eve shindig. Joy et al. had to go home before the midnight run but it was fun to meet Isabel and her parents.

Reading the article also reminds me why I quit running marathons after my first and last running of the Logan marathon. I have a low tolerance for pain.

Donut Falls open again

The city bought the canyon containing Donut Falls for $1.284M in order to preserve the watershed. And that means that Donut Falls is now open again winter travel. Donut falls is one of two places where I've been out in weather cold enough to make my snot freeze. The other was Aspen Grove while snow caving with the scouts. [Salt Lake Tribune - Treat time: Donut's for all]

Way to go Democrats!

Rob over at Utah Amicus has posted the The Letter to the NNSA from Utah Democratic Chair, Wayne Holland Jr.

The Democrats and Utahania (and many other) agree on this one. Not a good idea. The point about "do it when the wind blows toward Utah" and the similarity with the same directives in the atomic tests is uncanny and well argued.

The University of Utah is conducting a project on the simulation of accidental fires and explosions called C-SAFE. Maybe it could be tweaked to include intentional fires and explosions, like say, Divine Strake?

Interesting to note that the above mentioned letter includes the Grand-Staircase Fiat of the Clinton era as an arguement against Federal action without public comment in Utah. In that case (in my reading of the letter) the ends justified the means. In this case, the ends don't. I disagree (with the Escalante part). I think the ends never justify the means when the Feds act by fiat.

Nice work Democrats, seriously.

Rashaun Broadus' Bad Day

Broadus is a great BYU team player. Lots of hustle and brings much needed energy to the court. Assuming these charges hold up, I'm hoping this works out well for Broadus in the sense that he realizes BYU is serious about the Honor Code and he re-commits to follow it more carefully. It could also be that he decides BYU isn't the place for him after all. Hopefully the former but if the latter, then Utahania's college sports editorial board wishes him the best.

Salt Lake Tribune - College Basketball: Y.'s Broadus arrested on four charges

Big Box and Daybreak

As correctly reported at slcspin almost 2 years ago, Daybreak does not and likely will not contain a cornucopia of neighborhood stores inside the friendly confines of the planned community. My sister, a Daybreak resident, and I were talking about it over New Year's and she independently (she doesn't read SLCSpin, but she just got a mac, so maybe she'll read RSS feeds now) claims that there's no neighborhood stores because of all the big box right outside the gates. Her hairstylist says there's just no market for neighborhood stores (like his) inside Daybreak because all of the shopping is outside. (We also did a midnight run on New Year's eve at Daybreak in which we ran uphill in 2006 and downhill in 2007. Just as 2007 officially started, we were able to say "it's all downhill from here." My other sister and I crossed the finish together in a sprint to win before I looped back 50 yards to re-finish with my wife.)

It's complicated, but if people want neighborhood shopping and living, then they'll quit shopping at big box stores--even if they are just right outside their neighborood.

Meanwhile, Ikea's going to open the next big box soon... Salt Lake Tribune - Big name stores committing to Utah market. Funny how Ikea's big box is a "give ourselves a pat on the back" event while other big boxes are the targets of neighborhood protests (followed by neighborhood shopping.

Unusual Sunset

 
As I mentioned before, I've got a camera in my office window snapping pictures of Timpanogos at various times of day for a project on rendering terrain under time-varying lighting conditions. Last night it captured the attached time-varying lighting effect. Not bad.

The Apocalypse must be near.

Because the CIO of the LDS Church has created a blog on which... 1. He posts frequently. 2. The posts suggest that he stays on top of technology and 3. The Church's CIO is genuinely concerned about using the best technology and practices to further the mission of the Church.

As a supportive lifelong member of the Church I am thrilled to see the new blog, hopeful that it will lead to good things and hopeful that I can contribute to the discussion.

Joel Dehlin, you get the Utahania gold star of the day!

2 and 0

That's the stat of the day because that's the record for non-BCS schools against BCS schools in BCS bowl games. With a record like that, it's no surprise that the BCS doesn't want to allow non-BCS schools into the game.

This win was significant because OU was actually a good team. Utah's win over Pitt two years ago wasn't a big deal because Pitt wasn't a good team. But isn't that another problem with the BCS? Mediocre teams in the right conference always get an invitation while everyone else has to go undefeated.

We were fortunate to have some bona fide Boise State fans over for the game yesterday (one drove down from Boise all day Monday--for other reasons, our house was just a good place to watch the game). The game was more thrilling than BYU's win over Utah last month. In the BYU-Utah game, I only lept off the couch to my feet once. In the BSU-OU game, I lept to my feet twice.

It's time for a playoff.

My Return to Blogging

I've got a serious problem with life Utah County that compels me to return to Blogging.

While preparing for a snowshoing trip with my 3 1/2 year old twins and their neice, I became aware of a serious issue facing the average citizen of Utah County. The problem first appeared when we went to WalMart to buy inexpensive snow boots for the kids. I get clued into it while at Target looking for boots then it gots serious at Big 5 and Sports Authority.

The problem is that both Big Box and Sports retailers quit selling snow boots in about early December! Walmart and Target were busily stocking sandals (this was December 29) and I am not sure what Big 5 and Sports Authority were trying to do. They did have lots of softball equipment though.

So we had to tape plastic shopping bags around their feet up to their knees, but their tennis shoes on top of that and go play in the snow like poor white, um, people. The bags worked great and cost less too.

The second problem was that, while Boise State U. rents children's size snow shoes, BYU (and every where else we called in Utah County) does not. So we went sledding instead. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all.

Like shooting fish in a barell

One of my projects at work is to learn how to color terrain in the presence of time-varying lighting conditions. This includes things like lighting effects caused by the weather and the time-of-day. The current approach, which is working great until I have more time to spend on this, is to aim a camera out my office window and record images of the mountains during the day. After an image is recorded, a program visits several weather stations on the web and records the weather. Since the images record objects with known colors (like the orange brick building in the lower right corner) we can take the difference between the actual color and the recorded color and compute a function which describes the effect of light under those conditions.

And so this image was captured last night at around 6:45 pm. It is one of our better images and the goal is to lift the lighting function from this image and use it to relight synthetic terrain images as if it were 6:45 pm.
  

My first collision on Provo River Parkway

It's the 11th of the month, must be time for a blog post...

I was riding the Provo River Parkway in Provo Canyon this afternoon on my sweet road bike (my next road bike will be a sweet, sweet road bike I hope) when I hit a pedestrian for the first time. There was a group of small boys playing in the woods off the trail and their parents were on the other side of the trail walking away while calling to their sons/friends. Being moderately observant, I quickly surmised that young boys were about to run across the trail in front of me without looking. Which they did. No problem, I was going way slow we didn't even come close.

The problem was that a third boy, deeper in the trees whom I did not see, also came out onto the trail. And that would have been ok if he had been facing forward while he was walking down the trail. Which he wasn't. I weaved a couple times trying to guess where he was going to go. I guessed wrong and hit him at a very slow speed. Well, actually, it was more like he walked into me just as I came to a stop. Fortunately, I de-clipped my pedal just in time to avoid a turtle. Nobody got hurt, he barely came to a stop and all was well.

What does the careful cyclist learn from this experience? Well, I learned three things. First, be very careful when small children are present on the trail. Very very careful. Excessively careful. Second, teach my small children to be careful when walking on the Provo River Parkway Trail. Third, ride somewhere else. The parkway trail is a pedestrian path. It's sad but true. I was talking to one of my neighbors about it tonight and he said he doesn't even ride the parkway trail anymore and suggested a nice 18 mile loop near our houses. Now that's a good neighbor and he's even in my LDS Stake Presidency. That's enough for me, Church leaders must be inspired after all ;).

Utah County Republican BBQ

I like, Utah Conservative attended the republican Utah County BBQ last week. It was about what I expected. Out of order questions that can be answered by reading the bylaws and food followed by a unanimous vote. I came for the meeting to fulfill my responsibility as Neighborhood Chair then left before the BBQ because, no offense, but I'd rather be home with my 3 year olds than hanging out with the county power structure for the party.

Free markets and internet pornography

Pete, you pretty much got what I was trying to say. Let me propose an alternative position that plays to your strength on this issue, might be more consistent with your personal values and makes it clear that you want to do something to help families handle internet pornography. You own Senator Hatch on this technology thing (this is no surprise though).

My impression is that the free market idea doesn't work well here because many families are technology-aliterate in the sense that they are afraid of technology and don't spend the time to figure out what their options are. In 20 years, that will be different, but for now, that's the way it is.

The FDA (or whoever it is) puts out the food pyramid which is supposed to give nutrution-aliterate people a quick and easy guide to making good food choices. It is still a free market in that people can buy whatever food they want, but the government has done something to help people understand their choices.

Why not propose a similar thing here? ... "As your senator, I will work with a broad bi-partisan coalition to help American families understand the strengths and pitfalls of their Internet filtering options. An educated populace can then make choices that will enforce their family values on Internet content. I will alos seek to increase Federal funding of research that investigates better filtering solutions" (I threw the research thing in because research is important to me :))

The closest parallel I can think of is movie ratings. In a free market, ratings would be optional and families would just choose which theaters to visit. And really, that's what we have. We have a ratings system which puts clear, simple information in the hands of families and then they decide. A similar rating system for Internet Service Providers may also be helpful for families that don't understand Internet technology.

And finally, the miracle of the free market isn't always a good thing. For example, public education may or may not thrive in a free market. The charter school experience will bear that out one way or the other. Government welfare and social security, while serving a critical role our society, is completely contrary to pure free markets.

Best Disc Golf Course in Utah (County)

Would be the new Art Dye Course in American Fork. We played the first 12 holes this morning (before I had to get home). Interesting layout, unlike Bicentennial in Provo. Challenging, but not overwhelming like the Rock Canyon Course.

The course at Solitude, discussed in the
Salt Lake Tribune a while back, is fun but I lost 2-3 discs. I made an epic 1,229 foot drive downhill on no. 18 at Solitude but sadly I was about 500 feet right of the hole when it finally hit the ground. That's another par 4 at most courses.

What I wish Pete Ashdown would have said about Internet pornography

Recently, I mentioned that I wouldn't vote for Pete because of his position on Internet pornography (that was buried in a post about how much I like his thinking on the feed-the-hungry reverse fundraiser). Pete left a comment on my post in his usual unassuming way, which is a refreshing attitude to see in a political candidate.

Here's the gist of what I had hoped Pete would have said:

"At Xmission, I've done a lot to give families the tools they need to control the information that comes into their house over the Internet. While we haven't solved the problem, we have made significant progress. The Federal Government can and should play a role in requiring internet service providers to give all parents the same tools. In the 10 years since the rise of the WWW, very little has happened in the private sector to solve this problem. It is time for the government to intervene. In addition, the Federal Government can and should fund research into more effective ways to identify and classify objectionable content. This is a particularly difficult problem since the United States Government can not regulate the creation of content throughout the world. But with some ingenuity and creativity we can and must do a better job of giving families the tools they need to filter content.

My opponent, and most other sentors, lack the experience and knowledge needed to understand or propose such legislation. I do. I have the vision and the know-how needed to give parents the tools they need to filter material that they find objectionable. Rather than make empty promises and spew hollow rhetoric, I have plans and an agenda based on my N years of experience as one of Utah's first [or Utah's first?] internet service providers."

The thing about Pete is that he's not a phoney on this issue. He's got the background to make some progress on the issue and he's done good stuff at XMission, but that's not what his platform is about. I respect that, but I wish it was different.

Jordan School District Money for the Sandy Soccer Stadium: In what universe does that make sense?

I had to study modal logic as part of my education--and I use it surprisingly often. Basically, modal logic is a kind of logic in which the truth value of a statement depends on the Universe in which the statement is evaluated. For example, you could say that in Universe A the statement "the sky is green" is true and in Universe B the statement "the sky is green" is false. Obviously, we are more likely to inhabit Universe B (depending on what else is true or false in Universe B).

So when my sister out in Daybreak forwarded this little gem about using school money to fund the new Sandy soccer stadium despite explosive growth in her part of the Universe: deseretnews.com | Funds from Jordan District sought for soccer deal.

My first thought was: in what universe does that make sense? I am not convinced that such a universe is consistent with the one in which I currently live.

I'm all about soccer and my niece had a great time at the Real Madrid Real Salt Lake game, but school money on a soccer stadium? An Alpine School District Board Member (I think that's the right title) lives in my neighborhood, so I realize that school funding is often more complex than my brain is prepared to deal with, but I am having a hard time on this one. Fortunately, the Jordan School District Board Members also made cautious statements like: let's see the proposal, we are waiting on the numbers etc.

Way to go Pete!

Pete Ashdown's putting on a sort of reverse-fundraiser dinner to raise money for charities that deal with hunger. Very creative thinking by a political candidate. Now if Pete could switch his stand and become more like a tradiational Democrat and favor government involvement in the regulation of pornography on the internet, then I could actually vote for him in November.

I asked Sen. Hatch at a pre-state-convention lunch about regulation of the internet. His answer convinced me that he doesn't really understand how the internet works and what role government might play in regulating the internet. I think Pete gets it (I've been using the internet since 1994 so Pete's got 7 years on my) but I don't agree with his stand on Internet porn.

[Pete Ashdown%u2019s Campaign Journal � Feed the Hungry not Politicians]

Romney will never win

Because his great-grandfather was a polygamist. That settles that. I suppose then that Karl Rove will begin digging for dirt on Hillary's great-grandparents as well? There's 8 of them and at least 1 of them had to have done something, maybe one of them opposed abortin or gay marriage?, that should cost her the presidency.

Salt Lake Tribune - Could ancestors haunt Romney?

Why Democrats can't get Elected in Utah

A Democratic politician inviting an acrid anti-Bush protestor to his anti-war rally that just happens to coincide with the President's visit to the American Legion convention is going to loose a lot of casual voters. And the democrats wonder why they can't lure in the lemming-like voter who hasn't read the platform of either party.

From a public perception angle, it's almost funny to protest the war and the president during an American Legion convention. Most of these guys are old men who fought in WWII or Vietnam era people who are sick of protestors anyway.

ksl.com - Utah's Online Source for Local News & Information Sheehan Invited by SLC Mayor to Participate in Protest

Utahania.com Tour of Utah Combativity Award goes to...

Todd Hageman of Team End!

So me and some colleagues grabed our roadies and headed up the Nebo Loop to get some riding in and watch the Tour of Utah go by (four CS professors on road bikes is not as pathetic a sight as one might normally imagine, but still inspires some pity).

After the race went by, we decided to keep riding up. After those of us in the slow group of professors had been dropped by the fast group of professors, rider #92 from the Tour of Utah, Todd Hageman, came cruising up the hill. It appeared that Todd had wiped out somewhere on the course and was gutting it out to the finish. I was impressed.

So Todd Hageman of Team End, you get the Utahania.com combativity award for your gusty finish of Stage 4. Nice work and I didn't realize how fast you all go until I'd been passed by one of you on the road during a race.

Herrin Twins Updates

Maybe it's because I have 3 year old twin girls (not conjoined and not even identical) of my own, but this Herrin twin story just grabs me every day. Fortunately, the Herrin's post updates in the most web-literate of fashions. This is, for me, the most interesting blog in Utah right now: Updates from HerrinTwins.com.

I have now seen it all

An article at CNN today about 9/11 conspiracy theories in academia quotes a guy from the American Association of University Professors as saying, basically, "academic freedom doesn't include conspiracy theories" like those advanced by Dr. Steven Jones at BYU. (Dr. Jones was quoted earlier in the article).

Now I have seen it all. Back in the good old days, the AAUP censured BYU for limiting the the academic freedom of one Gail Houston. Now the AAUP is getting after people like Dr. Jones and BYU (my extrapolation) for excercising too much adamic freedom. Nice work.

I suppose we should just invite the AAUP to come and run the University for us to make sure we get it just right.

All kidding aside, if you read the AAUP carefully, they are advancing a very logical arguement dispasionately and I've got to admire them for that even if I don't think they understand BYU very well. Their deal is that academic freedom should include all and only the work that lies within the boundaries of a well-defined academic discipline. Dr. Jones' work on 9/11 probably lies outside those boundaries, so I agree with them on that, but I am still waiting for a good qualified peer review on Dr. Jones' work.



CNN.com - 9/11 conspiracy theorists energized - Aug 6, 2006: "Faculty can express any opinion outside the classroom, said Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. However, 'with academic freedom comes academic responsibility. And that requires them to teach the truth of their discipline, and the truth does not include conspiracy theories, or flat Earth theories, or Holocaust denial theories.'"

Snow in Provo? In August?

It's either hailing in a really strong wind or snowing outside my office right now. If it's hail, then the wind is really strong because it's flowing in the wind like snow would. If it's snow, then that would be a first for me in August, in Provo.

I'm back from the blogging-dead. July was, let's say, a very busy month. Things appear to becoming more reasonable. This was bad news for my cycling goals, but good news for my job security goals.

Robert Gehrke: That's almost as bad as a blog!

Today's headline article in the Tribune asserts that the recent letter from the LDS church may have aided Cannon's win over Jacob. That's a baseless yet lurid headline that one might find in a blog. Nice work for a real, professional journalist. But Robert acknowledges the "solid" rhetorical foundation for his piece with: "It is impossible to quantify exactly how either moved the final results, but [more baseless statements]."

[Salt Lake Tribune - LDS letter may have aided Cannon win]

(AirMed|Lifeflight) can land at Aspen Grove in the Dark

We took our 3 year olds on a little campout up to Aspen Grove last night for some peace and quiet high in the mountains. On our way back from Cascade Springs (perfect for a 3 year old by the way), we noticed LifeFlight executing a landing at the Aspen Grove trailhead. Curious. We noticed that AirMed was already there. Even more curious.

Then the airlift began. I believe there were 3 flights upto somewhere higher on the mountain. Probably ferrying SAR upto to some late evening situation. Just before dark, one of the helicopters made it's last trip and shot out of there south toward Sundance and out of the moutains. I assumed that the helicopters couldn't fly missions up there at night and that SAR would be up there for the night doing their thing

At 1:15 am last night, I discovered that helicopters can land at Aspen Grove at night. It sounded like their landing pattern took them directly over our tent. Unfortunately, the pilot missed on the first approach and had to come around again. They sat at the trailhead forever and then finally took off. I have a vague recollection of a police or ambulance siren in there somewhere too.

At about 30 minutes before sunrise this morning, another helicopter arrived and began, I assume, ferrying SAR off the mountain. That took about 3 trips.

So much for peace and quiet. But good news for a Provo man who took a long fall on the trail while hiking solo. I am curious to hear what the whole story is later today or tommorow.

The VV-PAT made it!

I used to be involved in the electronic voting thing a little more than I am now. One of my academic role models, David Dill at Stanford, was very heavily involved in the whole thing.

What little I did to influence the Utah decision was focused on getting a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VV-PAT for short). Magentic images on disks or other non-volatile media are so easy to modify without leaving any trace of the previous image that I thought a VV-PAT was essential.

I wasn't sure where it ended up, but I was happy to see a beautiful easy to read VV-PAT when I voted this morning.

Whom to vote for tommorow

If you are in the same disticts as I am, then you can help tommorow's close races be not so close by voting for the following...

1. Stephen Sandstrom over Jim Ferron. I struggled long and hard on this one. I liked voting against the UEA's guy (Sandstrom) at the convention and I like Ferron's positions on local transportation and finance in general. However, I didn't like Ferron as a Charter School investor and a State Legislator. I know that might be a reasonable thing, but I just don't like the conflict of interest. The thing that put me over the top was Ferron's latest campaign mailer that included an LDS Church statement designed to support his position. I don't like that, alot. So I am going Sandstrom.

2. Joe Cannon over John Jacob. First of all, Jacob is way too tight on immigration. I visited Berlin while there was a wall. I don't like walls as an immigration policy. The problem is INS. INS is a disaster. If we make legal immigration possible without requiring a team of lawyers or 5 years of beaurocracy then we can get more people in here legally and we can all get along just fine. I like that children of illegal immigrants who graduate from a Utah High School can get in state tuition. I mean, come on, these kids got dragged here by their parents, succesfully completed high school and want to go to college. Let's give them all the support we can. Let's not create an oppressed underclass like they have over in France. Utah is relatively free of car burnings perpetrated by hopeless, voiceless immigrant children. Let's keep it that way. Jacob's campaign was just weird too. The Satan comment was an unfortuate lesson for him in how to work with the media (which I believe is "say as little as possible" if read REAL reporter correctly).

3. Jerry Grover over the other guy. I wasn't sure I wanted an engineer on the County Commision or Council or whatever it is called, but after meeting all of the candidates, I decided that a real engineer on the County Commission is exactly what I want.

That is all. Happy voting and don't get freaked out by those touchscreens!

Nice work Robert Gehrke.

Robert Gehrke's piece on John Jacob leads off with Jacob's belief that Satan is opposing him in the race against Cannon. Gehrke even includes Jacobs' request "I don't want you to print that."

Nice work letting people talk off the record, Robert. Good to see that weak journalistic ethics are still alive and well at the Trib. Have you all sold any inside information to a tabloid yet this year?

[Salt Lake Tribune - Jacob's bad luck: Is it . . . Satan?]

Bicycle Tour of Moab with the Scouts

We recently returned from a 4 day 3 night bicycle tour of Moab with the Varsity Scouts. No scouts were lost, killed or (permanently) injured during the entire trip. We did have some injuries, but they were just scrapes and bruises.

We set up a trip around the White Rim in Canyonlands (that's 100 ish miles of moderately difficult dirt roads). For scout groups who've trained and have competent adult leadership, the White Rim in mid-June is a difficult journey in which there is a significant chance of severe injury in a remote location with a difficult evacuation. We found that we could travel at about 7 mph, we had an injury accident every hour and experienced a tour-ending bicycle failure every 2.5 hours. That's why we opted to take the Potash Road back to Moab after the 20 mile ride into Airport Tower camp (going clockwise).

It was great. We got all the desert dirt road riding we wanted and our 50 mile day ended with 22 miles of paved road into town. Every scout finished the 50 mile ride for the merit badge. We even had overcast with light wind all day for the 50 miler.

We did Slickrock on Friday. For a scout group, Slickrock on a sunny day in June with a 7:30 am start will require about 2.5 liters of water per person to complete safely. Unfortunately for us, we only had about 1.6 liters per person and there was no opt-out option when the water got real low and the sun got real high. Fortunately for us, Dan Mick of Dan Mick's Guided Moab Jeep Tours carries a case of water to pass out to less-prepared scout groups such as ours, and the one behind us. Dan drives a tricked out jeep and we meet one of his clients on Saturday. She and her family had a great time. That should sound like an endorement of Dan's jeep operation. It was meant to be. Good karma should come to good Samaritans like Dan.

Slickrock was fun with the scouts. We experienced about 6 injury accidents. All injuries were minor and 4 were mine. My Canari jersey looks like swiss cheese and my knees look like strawberries. But it was a blast. Although the riding was more technical, a serious injury here would be less serious than an injury on the far side of the White Rim.

Friday afternoon, we cleaned up a park in town for our service project then lazed about in the shade while the scouts played soccer in the park. That evening, we rode down from Sand Flats to the Moab Community pool on 400 North for a shower and a swim. A perfect end to the riding part of our tour and a good set up for our spiritual meeting friday night followed by the 1/2 day whitewater trip on Saturday on the Colorado past Fisher Towers.

When I got home, my 3 year old daughters were very concerned about my "owies" on my knees and elbows. I told them I fell of my bike and they thought that was ok. Later, I told them I would take them down to Moab. Megan got a scared look on her face and said she didn't want to go. I asked her why. And she said she didn't want to fall off her bike and get owies too. I admired her courage, but I don't think her tricyle would make it far on slickrock. We'll have to take all the bikes and do the Millcreek trail in town instead.

RSL wins several games ahead of schedule

Previously, I extrapolated a bit to project the date of RSL's next win to be sometime in August. Well, it turns out that they've won 2, lost 0 and tied 1 since my projection. Nice work. I suppose that my projection must have appeared on the locker room bulletin board, fired up the team and now they are winning. Just happy to help where I can.

Being a fair weather fan, I might even get out there to watch a game this summer.

Patagonia Ambassador's Climb of Delicate Arch not so Clean After all?

Outside magazine has a three-page story on Dean Potter's Climb of Delicate Arch. The article mentions that the climb was filmed from above, implying that a cameraman was above him on the arch. The article discusses how ropes were used and the article includes close up pictures of rope damage at the top of the arch. While it's not clear that Potter's rope created the rope damage, it is clear that he used more than just chalk.

What's amazing about this whole thing is that neither Patagonia nor Potter have backed down. Patagonia stands behind their ambassador while saying that "not all of his actions represent the company" (in which case they should call him a part time ambassador).

The online poll at Outside online is running just under 9 to 1 against the climb, by the way.

May was Bike Month: The White Rim in a Day

We did the White Rim in a day to preview it for a scout trip in June. Unfortunately, we had to drive most of it. That is somewhat unfortunate because cycling the White Rim is a lot more fun than driving it. The Park Service helpfully informed us that doing the whole thing requires at least 10 hours non-stop and that doing it in a day "doesn't leave much time for sightseeing." Well, they were right. We needed 9 hours and spent very little time looking at the scenery.

That made a 15 hour day in the truck. Lots of time to talk and I think we listened to all of General Conference on my ipod. I think the people from Colorado that we saw were a little confused to hear an LDS apostle blaring in our truck at Monument Basin.

A few observations that fill in what you might find in the many White Rim trip reports available online:

• The Murphy Hogback itself isn't that bad. A short climb before (going clockwise) the Hogback was more intense.
  
• The climb out of Hardscrabble Bottom (still going clockwise) was more technical than Murphy Hogback.
  
• The road after Hardscrabble Bottom is narrow enough that we had to fold in the passenger side mirror (in a Nissan Frontier) to avoid scraping it off.
  
• We did the road in a stock 2005 Nissan Frontier (as mentioned). No clearance or turning radius issues.
  
• The Airport Tower camps are fully exposed to the sun.
  
• The Potato Bottom camps all have shady cottonwoods. Sweet.
  
• There are no picnic tables in any of the camps.
  
• Monument valley is pretty darn amazing. Kind of like Bryce Canyon except fewer hoodoos, fewer people and different colors but a better backdrop.
  
• The drive has no serious clearance obstacles the main challenges were climbing without slipping, making the switchbacks on Hardscrabble and the narrow road.
  
• There are very few places in which one can drive faster than 10 mph. You'll be tempted to speed up, then road will quickly remind you that it is an unmaintained backcountry road. The ditches are deeper than you think and the slickrock is bumper than you think.
  
• Most of the time, you can ride a bike at an average speed of 13 mph. You need to know that because the bikes can easily outride their support.
  
• I had to take a break from driving to get on my bike and ride for a while. Driving is bumpy, hot and dusty while riding the bike is way fun.
  

May? is Bike Month: How to get hypotheromia

My sister came down from Boise so we hooked up with my brother-in-law for a ride up the South Fork party ride. Turns out that that cold front didn't miss Orem, it was just delayed.

I kept going up South Fork Canyon because I seriously underestimated how cold it would be coming down. My sister kept going up because "I knew it would be too cold to go down" Nice logic.

The weather up South Fork was perfect for hypothermia tonight: a little chilly, light wind and rain. Throw in three people wearing a lot of spandex without a lot of body fat, send them down the canyon at 25 mph and you've got a serious situation at 8:40 at night.

So we called my wife on the cell phone and hudled in the men's room til she got there to save us. It was cool (well, cold).

Hopefully Search and Rescue won't have any overdue hikers out there. It's miserable. I was not this cold when we took the Scouts snow caving last winter.

This is May?

Is CNN always this wrong?

Lou Dobbs' insinuation that the LDS church is recruiting Mexicans to relocate to Utah to fill the pews is just funny. How many CNN achors' assertions are similarly unfounded? (I am willing to admit that I have been duped by a vast LDS conspiracy on this one, but I haven't seen any facts to support Dobbs' claim yet).

If the LDS church realy is recruiting Mexicans to come to Utah, then I don't know why an they aren't doing a very good job. In my neighborhood, there are two LDS churches within 1/2 mile of my house and about 4 churches within 1 mile. They are all full every Sunday from 9am to 4pm (with 3 wards per building) and there are plans to build another 1 or 2 within 1 mile. Ironically, the smallest church congregation in my neighborhood is the Spanish speaking congregation. Of the 5 Latin American families I know of in my neighborhood, only 2 are LDS families that attend church. By contrast, 6 of 7 American families on my street are LDS and attend Church on Sunday.

[see deseretnews.com | The winners and the losers]

Simply Unacceptable.

It is simply unacceptable that Utah County has slid down to 8th place in the nation in "Largest Families in US Counties" according to income tax report statistics at ksl today [ksl.com - Utah's Online Source for Local News & Information Utah Counties Have Largest Families in U.S.].

It's probably all those single BYU and UVSC students that brought our numbers down. It's nice to have two Universities in our county (UVSC will be one soon enought), but I guess there are tradeoffs.

Patagonia Clothing Company is Lame

My sister sent Patagonia a little email letting them know what she thought of their Patagonia Abassador climbing Delicate Arch. She says that this is what she got in reply and said I can post it (I sent my own missive to Patagonia, but they haven't replied yet. If Patagonia doesn't want me to post it, then I assume they'll get in touch with me.)

I would have given Patagonia some slack and just let this die, but this reply is amazing. Basically, Dean's climb was OK because it didn't break any NPS rules and, you know, its OK for climbers and the NPS to not agree on resource management. Sure no problem. But, Dean's actions also violate well-understood Moab climbing community rules that forbid climbing named arches. And that's not cool.


----- Original Message ----- From:
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 10:06 AM
Subject: RE: Comments from


Hello,

Thank you for writing us with your concerns. Patagonia ambassador Dean
Potter's May 7 free solo of Delicate Arch has generated significant
controversy about the legality and appropriateness of the climb of what has
been described as a national icon. We will be interested to follow the
controversy and to listen to views of those on both sides.

A few facts are in order. First, no crime has been committed. The National
Park Service has conceded that its regulations were ambiguous and that they
will not cite Dean for the ascent. They have said they will seek to clarify
their regulations to prevent a second try. The Park and a number of opinion
leaders have argued that Delicate Arch is an icon that should not be
climbed.

It is important to note that Dean did no harm to the route or to the rock.
He free-soloed the arch, placing no anchors and creating no impact beyond
blowing dust off the holds. As he says, "No one reveres rocks more than me.
I consider all rocks sacred, as do most climbers."

Dean, like all Patagonia ambassadors, undertakes his own climbs on his own
terms. He told us about the climb afterward.

We have taken positions in the past on a number of issues of climbing
ethics, including bolting. We take no position on this one. As Casey
Sheahan, our CEO, notes, "From the early days in the Tetons to the
rebelliousness of Yosemite's Camp 4, every generation of climbers has had
its run-ins with government regulations that attempt to restrict climber's
freedom of expression. At Patagonia we don't control the ways our sponsored
athletes conduct themselves except to encourage respect for the environment
and uncommon approaches to every challenge. Dean is at the pinnacle of free
solo climbing, makes decisions for himself, and has our complete support."

Again, we thank you for your time and your opinion.

Patagonia


-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 6:33 PM
To: patagoniacs@patagonia.com
Subject: Comments from


Email:
First Name: Dawn;
Last Name: Muhlestein;
Zip: 83716;
Comments: I am writing in regard to Dean Potter, one of Patagonia's
sponsored climbers. I recently read an article regarding Dean Potter's
recent ascent of Delicate Arch in Moab, Utah. I am disgusted that Mr.
Potter would even consider climbing Delicate Arch with or without climbing
gear.

I am a climber myself. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Potter's
climbing accomplishments. Dean Potter's noteriety as a climber makes his
recent climb of Delicate Arch worse. Are there different rules for "famous"
climbers than the rules for the rest of us? Everyone knows that the arches
are not to be climbed. Climbers have to share resources with many other
recreational users, his recent actions shed a negative light on climbers in
general.

Dean Potter claims that he did no damage to the Arch and that he did nothing
wrong. How many others will say, "Potter climbed it... I can too"?

I have always respected Patagonia's commitment to the environment, but Dean
Potter's recent actions do not reflect that same level of commitment.
Perhaps Patagonia should reconsider Dean Potter's sponsorship.

Dawn Muhlestein
Boise, ID;

Provo is complete again

Provo now has an Indian lunch buffet again. Bombay House quit doing lunch a few years ago (allegedly, the owner wanted more time at home). The new Indian place is on Center Street at about 100 W in Provo where Beuno Vita used to be. Yes, it's true, Beuno Vita is gone. The Indian buffet was very good, but the prices are a little steep. I hope they make it!

May is Bike Month: First close call

I had my first close call on the roadie today. Turns out that a car and I wanted to both get into a construction lane on BYU campus at the same time. That was a little awkward for me because I didn't know we were racing and I was in front doing 20 ish MPH and the car came speeding up behind me to cut me off in the construction lane and squeeze me into the cones (I hit the brakes rather than hitting the car or the cones).

The dumb thing about it was that we all arrived at the red light at the end of the block together. I was surprised that I was more angry than scared by the whole thing.

May is Bike Month: A quick 10 with the scouts.

We took the scouts up the Shoreline trail (at 1600 North 800 East in Orem) East to the Great Western Trail and then down into Canyon View park in Provo Canyon. No scouts were lost, killed, injured or maimed on the entire trip. Nobody got a yellowjacket in their jersey either!

My neighbor rode a stock WalMart Huffy on the whole thing and after watching him, I wished I rode my spiffy Trek Fuel 1/2 as well as he did his Huffy.

This ride brought me to 80 miles for the week. A 25 mile ride with the Scouts tommorow will take me over 100 for the week. Not a lot by some standards, but a good dose of riding for a guy like me.

May is Bike Month: Roadie Nirvana

My brother-in-law hooked me up with a Specialized Allez Sport from George's Bicycles in Logan. We did 25 miles this morning. That worked out well except for when I got a yellowjacket stuck in my jersey. So I got the first scratch on my bike when I jumped off to get the yellowjacket out. He was biting me. It hurt.

I get a little twinge of grattiude when I ride by the former WordPerfect campus on my roadie in my spiffy WordPerfect team jersey because Alan Ashton funded most of the last two years of my undergraduate degree. His example not only helped me get through school but helped me see the value of philanthropy. We aren't sponsoring any 140% of tuition scholarships yet, but we do what we can with what we have.

Bring on the Tours (de France and of Utah)!

The Real Drought is Over!

RSL wins a game, on the road! On Grass! RSL's next scheduled win should come 18 games from now when they meet the Galaxy again at Rice-Eccles.

Bring on the World Cup!

The Republican Utah State Convention

Parking was bad enough to make me wish I was a Democrat. I bet their parking situation wasn't as bad as ours ;) Plus, I could have worn jeans and a tshirt and fit in at the democratic convention. I wore "bussiness casual" because I hate being underdressed.

I thought the state convention was run pretty poorly compared to the Utah County Convention. We spent a lot of time while Cannon and Greene fumbled through explainations of the rules and what each motion meant. But, they had a tough tough job keeping that rowdy crowd, well, the rowdy elements of that crowd, under control. If they'd have arranged for the Payson High Pipe and Drum band it would have been a lot cooler.

I should have read Ethan's blog post about Mike Ridgway this morning before I left. Then I wouldn't have been as surprised to see Ridgway give his talk. Which, by the way, was a somewhat rambly pity-inspiring monologue.

It was fun, I'd do it again. Now I know whom I want to vote for in the primaries, even in the county races, without driving by my neighbor's house to see who's signs they have in their yard.

Phil's report from the convention, with pics!

Why we need two viable parties in Utah

Bob Bernick's analysis of the Utah primary system is an interesting read in the DesNews.

Bob points out that the conventions (for both parties) tend to pick more extreme candidates than the general public. Yup.

Imagine this: Imagine that the Republican party feels sufficiently threatened by the Democratic party that at our State Nominating Convention we actually think about "well, will this person run well against the Democrat?" Currently, the delegates and the candidates sort of realize that winning at the Convention is roughly the same as winning the general election. That's certainly true in utah county races.

The exception this year, at the state level, may just be the upcoming Hatch/Ashdown race. Pete's a non-whiney moderate Democrat who's strong where Hatch isn't. It will be interesting to see if Pete's strong positions on digital copyright and the regulation of technology force Hatch to change his position.

The other solution to extreme candidates emerging from conventions is for more people to actcually show up at their neighborhood caucus. Guess what: delegates are elected by their neighbors. If only extremists show up at the caucus, then they all elect eachother.

A Democratic Blog that might help Utah Democrats emerge from obscurity

Rob Miller over at The Utah Amicus has been blogging from the left for some time now. The thing about Rob's blog is that (a) He's not whiney (b) He's very reasonable and (c) He sticks to the issues and advances the Democratic philosophy.

As a moderate (by Utah standards) Repuplican activist, my advice to Utah Democrats is: find more people like Rob Miller and give them more power and visibility in your party.

How I decided to vote for Cannon at the Convention

I got a fine letter from "Team America" supporting Merrill Cook in the upcoming convention. The letter went on and on about securing the border. I am happy to say that this letter is the final piece of data I needed to decide to vote for Cannon. We don't need a border that looks like East Germany in the 1990s.

I love being a delegate.

Boycott Patagonia Clothing.

So this climber down in Moab climbed delicate arch in Arches NP and he can't seem to fathom why that's not cool. He's sponsored by Patagonia. Patagonia appears to be all environmentally aware, they even have an "action alert!" page.

Let's take action by boycotting Patagonia until this guy is no longer sponsored by Patagonia. That's easy for me because I can't afford any of their stuff anyway. But if I was willing to pay too much money for a fleece jacket, I'd buy a The North Face one instead.

Just doing my civic duty

Paul Rolly got it right. This is indeed a good time to be a Republican Delegate to the State Convention in District 3. My only regret is that I got to one of John Jacob's breakfasts at Mimi's a little late and missed ordering the main course.

Why the Democratic Party in Utah will Remain in Obscurity (part 1)

Chuck Lambert's missive in today's DesNews gives the first reason why Utah Democrats are destined to obscurity. Memo to Chuck (and the rest of you): quit whining about Utah voters being Republican lemmings and figure out a way to make you party platform and candidates appeal to more Utah voters while remaining grounded in Democratic principles. You might also quit calling the majority of voters "lemmings." And someday you might see that Utah voters can be lemming-like Democrats too.

If I do vote for Pete Ashdown, this will be why.

Pete says: "One of the motivations I had for getting politically involved was watching many in the Republican party, who purported to be against regressive regulation and excessive taxation, reverse course when it came to the Internet. " [Pete Ashdown%u2019s Campaign Journal � Net Neutrality]

Right now, I need to figure out which Republican to vote for in time for the State Convention next week. That shouldn't be too hard. None of the Republican candidates appear very viable.

Easy there Linda

Linda Hamilton's piece on the new Tour of Utah in the DesNews casually mentions SLC's "cyclist-mayor Rocky Anderson". Let's not get hasty.

I saw the "no fossil fuels (except electric trains, but that electricity could have been nuclear, so it's all good, except for the fuel rods situation in Skull Valley) trip to Turino" documentary on KUED. It included a clip of the good mayor gamely chugging up a pass in the alps on some road bike. It wasn't pretty and certainly didn't solidify the mayor's standing as a "cyclist mayor."

As I was watching the documentary, I did have two thoughts about Mayor Anderson. First off, kudos for getting on a roadie in the Alps with a camera rolling knowing that the ensuing footage would be less than flattering. Second, I was impressed with how well the Mayor interacted with young people. Not everyone has the knack for that and it appears that the Mayor does.

Reflections on the Utah County Republican Convention

First off, every high school in Utah needs a bagpipe and drum band. The Payson High Bagpipe and Drum band was simply amazing. It's comlpetely irrational, but I love live bagpipe music and it always makes me emotional. The first time I went to Edinburgh, I popped out of the train station and there was a guy busking with bagpipes for tourists. He was playing "Scotland the Brave", and I though "wow, what a stiring tribute to Joseph Smith--oh wait, that's Scotland the Brave" Plus we had some delicious fajita's at a mexican restaurant in Stirling so it was a good visit all round.

Second off, could the Utah County Republican Party please arrange for classrooms that are big enough for the House and Senate Caucases? I stood against the wall sort of sideways (to make room for other people standing) for all of both of my caucuses. Almost makes me want to be a Democrat. I would have to swallow some tough philosophy, but I am sure there'd be plenty of seating at the convention.

Third off, and this one is directed mostly at my fellow House caucus delegates, if Dr.Patti Harrington, the state superindendent of pubic instruction, walks into a room and has to stand for an hour and you are sitting in a seat, then you should get off your rear end and offer her a seat. There's no way you can make a public education official like Dr. Harrington stand in one of her own schools. I thought it was disrespectful.

Fourth off, many thanks to all the men and women in the armed services for allowing us to have a political convention without fear of violence or reprisal. I know how cheesy and trite that sounds, but I was at a funeral for a WWII veteran last week and the words "on behalf of a grateful nation" (which were said to his 75+ year old widow by an even older American Legionaire) and still stuck on my heart and brain. Thanks for being willing to put yourselves in harm's way on a moments notice on behalf of people you don't even know.