Friday, November 12, 2004

Update Notes

Main email address has changed to Gmail. Haloscan is toast and Blogger comments enabled. Blogroll in progress.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

A Quick Note: The Perils of Going to Lecture

The below is the first in a series of posts that resulted from a friend and me who had more amusing things to do than listen to lectures an an Unnamed Class. A note for the humor impaired--most of this is sarcastic and intentionally ridiculous. We wouldn't actually write any of these (well, most of them...).

Titles Rejected by the Honors Thesis Committee:

New Light on the Book of Revelation: The First Six Hundred Sixty-Six Days of the Clinton Presidency.

Culture of Shame: Back-Alley Abortions at BYU

“Not Just a Token”: Recollections From BYU’s Second African-American Student

Condoms or the Pill? A Quantitative Survey of Birth Control Choices at Wymount Terrace

Historical Mormons Revisited: Eliza R. Snow as a Postmodern Radical Feminazi

In Defense of Censorship: The Irrelevance of Academic Freedom

New Light on the Manifesto: Genetic Health, Rural Utah, and Inbreeding Trends

Quantifying Righteousness: A 116-Variable Model

Judging Righteous Judgment: Ten Reasons Emma Smith is Going to Hell

The Modern Mormon Romance Novel: Artless Drivel, or Soft-Core Porn?

“Give Said the Little Stream”: Wasting Water and Drought Among Utah Mormons

“Come Thou Fount” and Apostasy: The Hymnbook Committee’s Quantifiable Effect on Church Membership

Safety in Numbers: Why We Care More About Third-World Baptism Rates Than Converting Our Neighbors

Testimony Meeting as a Dying Art: Some Recent Trends

Female Sons of Perdition? Why Hillary Clinton is Not the AntiChrist

Market Failures, Monopolies, and Rent-Seeking: The BYU Bookstore as a Case Study

BYU Liberals: Tragically Misguided, or Actively Evil?

Profiles in Incompetence: The History of the Daily Universe

Mormon Eugenics? The BYU Honors Housing Program

The Book of Mormon Code Revisited: Shocking Insights From the Original Manuscript

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

National Election Observations II: Thanks, Edwards!

Traditional CW: VP candidates are supposed to balance the ticket, pulling either ideological factions or electoral votes into the nominee's column.

Edwards: Generates media excitement for about three days. Brings no southern states to Kerry. Brings no appreciable benefit to Kerry period. Would not have been reelected Senator from North Carolina. Desperately wanted to be VP nominee. Is widely talked about as a potential candidate in 2008.

Is this failing to make sense to anyone else? Kerry shouldn't have given him the time of day after defeating him. If Dems nominate him in 2008, one will have to question their sanity. "Edwards! He Doesn't Get Results!" One has to wonder what would have happened if Kerry had picked a moderate midwestern popular Democrat--say, one who could have pulled Ohio into his column.

We Get Results

The DesNews got defensive last Saturday!

Our decision toward the end of the campaign to reverse ourselves and urge
the defeat of Initiative 1 most certainly left some people with the impression
we felt otherwise. We have been accused of flip-flopping, an odd, meaningless
term that lately has turned thoughtful reconsideration into a pejorative — as if
stubborn and rigid dogmatism was a virtue.

Thoughtful reconsideration is okay, I suppose. But when your excuse for changing your mind is "Well, we hadn't actually read the thing we were endorsing," it looks pretty pathetic no matter how you try to justify it.

And is the Desnews really trying to say that flip-flopping is a meaningless term? ~71% of Utahns may disagree.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

National Election Observations I: Thanks, Iowa!

One of the best ironies of this election requires us to cast our minds clear back to what was supposed to be an interesting primary season. Remember the drama of the Iowa caucuses (before the Dean Scream)? It was the last real drama, as Kerry sailed through almost every state based on his Iowa Momentum (and Edwards' reluctance to attack). And why did Iowa Democrats select Kerry for frontrunner status? Supposedly, according to accounts at the time, it was all about electability. Kerry was boring, but electable, said the CW about what IA Dems were thinking.

Turns out IA Dems didn't even know their own state. Iowa went for Bush, one of 3 states to flip from 2000. Can we reform the nominating process yet?

Amusing

First in what will hopefully be a series of election-related posts:

Sometime before election morning, someone had scrawled a series of 'vote for Nader' messages on the sidewalks leading to campus. You have to admire their dedication...