Public Thoughts

What makes a sport great? From an entertainment media perspective, what makes a sport great is having lots of action and frequent breaks to play advertisements. Football hits one of those two criteria. There are many frequent breaks in the game that seem to last for a lifetime. It is an advertisers paradise. But football fails to hit the first criteria of a great sport, which is to have lots of action. Viewers get bored watching football because the ratio of action to advertisement is so low. Hockey meets both criteria for a great sport. There are frequent stops in play for icing, penalties, and other stoppages. There is just enough time to fit in three or four 30 second advertisements at each break. It is also a fast-paced, action-packed game. There are always people moving on the ice and scoring opportunities every few seconds. The action-to-ad ratio is much higher than that of football and possibly of any other sport. So BYU should replace their football program with a hockey progra...

How do we perceive reality? John Locke asserts that reality is perceived from the physical world to our minds at two levels. Primary attributes are inherent in the object that we perceive and can be measured absolutely. Secondary attributes are subject to our judgement and perception. For example, a water bottle can be tall or short. The primary attribute to describe height would be inches or centimeters. One question that arises from Locke's proposed method of perceiving reality is how ideas can exist in our mind, independent of any physical connections. How can I think about human rights when there is no distinct material object that reflects the attributes of human rights? Locke answers this question through a process called abstraction. His claim is that attributes can be separated from the object. As this process continues, you can abstract an abstracted idea. Consider the following example. An apple is a fruit. What is a fruit? A fruit is a collection of sugars and fiber arra...

During lunch, I came to the realization that I did not have time to do wrestling and teach piano lessons. I knew in my mind that there was a time conflict, but it wasn't until lunch that I comprehended what that meant. I would have to stop doing one if the activities. I decided that teaching piano lessons was more aligned to my goals than wrestling. After school, I got home and laid down on the couch to take a short nap. I had trouble sleeping, because I was stressed about quitting wrestling. I said a silent prayer, and asked Heavenly Father to let me know if I was making the right decision. I asked him to make it very obvious to me, so that I would not have any doubt that I was doing what he wanted. I also asked him to give me leave so that I could rest my body. My anxiety subsided a little bit, and I started to think about how I was going to tell coach Little. I decided that I should be honest with him, and tell him that because I was working at the computer shop, teaching piano ...

 It is ridiculous that the frontrunner only runs on the hour. Today my sister-in-law came to Salt Lake City to surprise her sister. I decided to go to Salt Lake City as well to visit with my newborn niece. I took the bus to the Provo Station and as I got off the bus, I watched the train pull out of the station. I had to wait another hour before the next train left. If I had a car, I could have driven to Salt Lake faster than it took to wait for the train and then ride to the city.  This is the whole problem with public transportation in Utah, specifically Provo. Unless you plan your trip around the bus and train schedule, it is always faster to drive. If there were a train every 20 minutes, it would be a viable alternative to driving to Salt Lake. If there were a bus every 10 minutes, nobody would need to drive because the bus is just right there. I want to be able to decide on a whim to visit my friend across town, and have a bus appear at the station within 10 minutes.

  My name is Finatra. I am the emperor of Arrakis. Thousands of years ago, a traveling merchant came to our desert kingdom and requested an audience with me. The man looked to be in his 50s with darkened skin and sun-bleached hair that was beginning to turn white. For a merchant he was extremely well built. His clothes tried to conceal it, but I could see that this man had known hard labor and was as strong as an ox. He said that he was traveling west to collect new goods to sell. I allowed him to stay in my house and sup at my table. This proved to be my fatal mistake. During the night he stole into my room like a shadow. He knocked me unconscious and when I awoke, I was bound and gagged in the back of his bouncing wagon. He took me up to the top of a mountain where he was met by a group of what looked to be priests, wearing robes tied at the waist with a simple rope. They handed him a bulging purse and he rode back down the mountain, leaving me alone with the priests. The pries...