Good Week to Be a Cougar

John Beck deserves a standing ovation for beating the Utah Utes on an amazing final-minute drive of their 2006 rivalry match-up. Doing so, I'll admit that I was doubtful of success after seeing his 4th down conversion in overtime last year. But I was cheering for the Cougars.

At the end of this year's game, they needed a touchdown to regain the lead immediately following Utah's TD score, which put the Ute's up by four points with only 1:19 remaining. After the kick-off, Beck and the Cougars had 75 yards in between them and the opposite end zone. Beck threaded passes to his receivers, and moved the chains.

The final play was at the Ute 11-yard line with 3 seconds remaining: Beck scrambled up and down, left and right in the backfield for what seemed like an eternity. As he scrambled desperately to his right , a defensive player in hot pursuit, he suddenly jumped, twisted, and delivered the ball across his body and across the field. The ball was flying off camera, so I had no idea why this weakly thrown ball was going that direction. I was thinking that the Utes had beat us again. Then I saw TE Johnny Harline appear, alone--sliding down on his knees just a couple yards behind the end-zone line, his arms pulling the ball triumphantly against his chest. Touchdown BYU!

I released a much-needed cathartic cry of victory and danced exuberantly. Then I applauded John Beck and the rest of the successful 2006 BYU Cougar football team. Undefeated in the Mountain West Conference, beating Utah was the crown jewel.

I gave the Cougars a standing ovation.


I also thank the Utes for the preparation and passion.

(here's a video clip for those who want more)

Plastic Ute

We all know that the Ute's pulled off an intercollegiate miracle last
year when they beat us on the football field with a back-up
quarterback. But now they've embarrassed us again, this time off the
field. I don't know how they crept with their slimy tentacles past our
vigilant campus guards, but they obviously have. The Utes got onto
campus and have covered all our statues with ugly plastic. Oh how it
makes my blood boil! It's despicable and adolescent: it's
despic-escent.

We must respond to keep our cougar-pride intact. A bed-wetting few
might say we should take the moral high-ground by doing nothing, but
this is definitely something worth fighting over, I mean for.


(For those who don't know, this is a joke. BYU actually covers their own statues with plastic to protect them from Utah Ute rivalry-related vandalism)

recent stand-up development

Give me some comedy feeback--either comment or email me. (I'm performing in front of a crowd of BYU students, so you know the audience)

Born Again Atheist

Global warming research can be run like a religion. Michael Crichton noted: “Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists….If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths” He takes us through the comparison—there's an initial Eden, a paradise and perfect unity with nature. Then there's a fall from paradise into pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge. We are all “energy sinners,” but we may seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Organic food is its communion. link

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance released—A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming. In the report fifty-six actual scientists doubt the certainty of catastrophic, man-made global warming. Their substantial number constitutes a substantial debate. link

Additionally, in my research of global warming history, I’ve noticed that proponents easily draw money-lines connecting corporations and skeptical scientists but rarely recognize the buzz-word money-line to their own wallets. The research proposals that have the most political “buzz” get the most grant money. If nothing else, we must consider the incentive political capital gained. Interestingly, I’ve read that a famous global warming activist recently defected, Claude Allegre, saying, “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!” link

Minimum Wage: Good or Bad?

link

Over at The Times and Seasons ( Quite possibly the most spastic, yet logocentric, onymous Mormon group blog in history.) the group is discussing minimum wage laws. You may choose to take a gander.

If the government really cared about the working poor they’d prohibit anyone from working for less than $40 an hour.
--Matt Evans

There is almost no way to politically oppose the Min wage if it comes up for an actual vote.
--bbell

The government cannot raise wages.
--Christian Whitney

writing revolution on the small screen

I had a surprising thought: "I've seen every episode of The Office (all of 'em), and I don't even know what time it comes on. " I don't know if other people have had similar thoughts recently, but I laughed after I had the thought. "But how can you have seen them ALL if you don't even know what time the TV shows are on?" some of you techno-novices maybe asking yourselves. Read on. In recent years I haven't watched much TV fiction. Now I watch enjoy Lost and The Office.

Potential for TV-Script Weaving

Because of TV-show DVD rentals, TiVO and Bit torrent, people often watch TV shows starting from episode #1. Before these behaviors started, I think more people tuned in randomly to shows (this is how I have behaved, and I didn't stick to any shows--maybe some early X-files). The new behavior means that shows can be written differently (assuming lots of people behave like I do); they don't need TV shows that stand alone like they did 10 years ago (like early X-files did). Humor, for instance, can stretch between episodes more effectively if the viewer has seen all the preceding episodes. (Perhaps Arrested Development was ahead of it's time--err--ahead of our viewing behavior shift).

Some people hate and refuse to commit to watch a show at a specific time, only watching one episode at a time, and having to sit through commercials (this accurately describes me). Plot development can be so slow, and that annoys people. If a person must endure slow development from week to week, then chances are increased that the person will get distracted by another show or activity.

So some TV shows are becoming more serialized. TV studios have made them more accessible for us to watch from episode #1. This makes it easier for writers to make TV plots into more vibrant tapestries. Who can't appreciate a vibrant tapestry? Nobody, that's who.

Ok, everybody go jog around the block now. And eat some vegetables, for goodness' sake.

global warming paranoia

Then there is this shockingly funny article in The Telegraph: "Climate chaos? Don't believe it."

This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect.

Next week, I'll demonstrate the atrocious economic, political and environmental cost of the high-tax, zero-freedom, bureaucratic centralism implicit in Stern's report; I'll compare the global-warming scare with previous sci-fi alarums; and I'll show how the environmentalists' "precautionary principle" (get the state to interfere now, just in case) is killing people.

That may make your laugh or cringe.

The next part will make you laugh.

The worst case with global warming is that the melted icecaps would inundate our coastal cities, turning them into swamps with the ruins of deserted skyscrapers festooned with tropical lianas and Spanish moss. Meanwhile, the lifelong growth of cold-blooded creatures' would no longer be retared each year by a cold season, so they would grow twice as fast, many times as large. At the same time, the rise in temperatures would retard the fertility of large mammals. Soon, the Earth would have reverted to a reeking, fetid Permian swamp where giant hissing reptiles and monstrous arthropods would clamber over the deserted ruins of the works of Man. High-tech civilization would be maintained only in a few deep artificial caverns near the poles which, from time to time, they would send out expeditions in futuristic aircraft to loot the abandoned cities of the past for lost treasures. And that would be so cool.

Stevo Darkly

link

new invention idea

Noise-canceling headphones...

Noise-canceling shoes!

Anyone who would like to pay me millions for the idea, well, come back when the offer is in the bazillions.

Maybe DARPA would like to strap these babies on the SEALS or Rangers, or other sneaky dudes.