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]