Categories
Gardening

Gardening from the Ground Up

The concept of gardening from the ground up is that I start by creating pure compost in a worm bin which I then use to make compost tea which is circulated through an bioponic system. The system should require no fertilizers or chemical additives to grow vegetables in a dirt-free, weed-free environment.

I have decided to document the process of building the system, cataloging what works and what corrections I have to make to keep the system working.

This week I received the works I ordered (500 red wigglers) and placed them in the worm bin I had prepared. I expected that they would settle in comfortably but after the first day I found that roughly ten of them had escaped to seek better accommodations (and died on the ground in the attempt). I realized that I had too much course material in the worm bin and added about a gallon of peat moss. Twenty four hours later I checked on the worm bin and found that none of the worms had left so we may have a good bin situation now. I will keep monitoring over the next week to be sure.

Categories
Sports

Expanding the Big 12

As a BYU fan, the news on Wednesday that the Big 12 was openly exploring candidates to expand by 2 or 4 teams in the near future was very exciting. For years I’ve hoped that BYU could get into the Big 12 and there could never be a more obvious opportunity for them to do so than this.  I have long believed (and possibly even publicly stated – I can’t remember right now) that the Big 12 needed to get to 14 members, both to be level with the SEC and Big Ten and also to have some wiggle room if the power conference landscape shifts in the future.

Looking at the current landscape I identified what I believe to be a very good expansion scenario. Here are the four schools I think they should add as full conference members (in order of strongest to weakest addition).

Categories
National

Trump is a master manipulator

Donald Trump didn’t have time for political correctness. That being the case, neither do I. I’ll summarize my message by committing the PC crime of declaring that Donald Trump shares a key trait with Adolph Hitler. I’m not suggesting that Trump would incarcerate or attempt to exterminate Jews or any other sect of the population, nor am I suggesting that if we make the mistake of electing him he would invade or annex Canada. What I am saying is that, like Hitler, he is a master at manipulating people and working the media to simultaneously display and distort his public image.

In wanting to understand those who support Trump I decided to buy his book and pay more attention to what he was saying rather than what was being said about him. What I found was disturbing because it became clear to me how deft he was at manipulating his image and his message to sound appealing despite his obvious personal deficiencies (like the most basic level of human decency).

I no longer wonder how people can support Trump but I’ve also read Mein Kampf, and while Hitler’s worst traits are fairly obvious in that work when read in 2012, they would have been much less obvious to the people of 1932 Germany who were suffering economically and angry from the fallout of WWI, who nearly elected Hitler to lead their nation that year.

I am absolutely confident that if we choose Trump in 2016 those who supported him will find themselves consistently disappointed by what he does, both in those things where he deviates from his campaign rhetoric and in those things where he sticks to his campaign positions.

Categories
National politics

Real solutions require internal change

Mother of Exiles
Photo by melanzane1013

When I read Ann Coulter’s endorsement of Trump I knew I couldn’t stay silent any more. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she might endorse Trump, after all, Ann has never been one to shy away from a confrontational approach on issues she cares about (although she spends more time being right on the issues she speaks about than Trump does) so his style shouldn’t be a huge negative in her eyes. The only reason I read her article was that the title was intriguing (“I was hoping for a taller honest man”) and I wanted to know her reasons for deciding to hold her nose and choose Trump. When her message was a complaint that people either dislike him or feel they have to hold their noses to vote for him combined with an emphasis on his approach to immigration I knew it was time to speak out about how the GOP at large is missing the mark on immigration – which is why the childish plan from Trump’s imagination (“Mr. Putin, we’re going to build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it to boot.“) has so much appeal among party members.

Categories
thoughts

How the Big 12 should structure their conference championship

With yesterday’s rule change on holding conference championships the Big 12 has an opportunity to get their “13th data point” but they can structure it so that they only hold a championship when they don’t have a clear champion already. The way to do that would be to only hold a championship game when the team with the best conference record doesn’t have at least a two game lead in both their conference record and their overall record. (They might make an exception to the two game rule if the conference leader either lost to the team two games behind them or won on their home field.)

The two game rule means that most years they would be holding a championship game but it allows them to avoid a trap game for their conference champion when they already have a clear winner. (That 13th data point doesn’t mean much when 12-0/9-0 #1 team beats 9-3/7-2 #2 team again but it sure hurts the whole conference if they lose.)

Categories
National politics

Carly Fiorina

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

Even as I begin writing this I haven’t decided where I stand on Carly Fiorina. She sounds like a strong candidate when she speaks – I can understand Holly’s enthusiasm based on what Carly says – but I’m not yet convinced of how much substance is behind the rhetoric. I’ve had concerns about her performance at HP because that’s the only real sample we have of her capacity to lead. Carly declares on her campaign website that “her record as CEO speaks for itself” and some of her critics would undoubtedly agree (while arriving at the opposite conclusion that her supporters do). After consideration I have concluded that her record as CEO doesn’t speak for itself any more than the data in a scientific study speaks for itself. Data is data but without context (or with incomplete context) the same data can lead to vastly disparate conclusions.

If the question before me were “should Carly Fiorina be our next President?” the answer would have to be I really don’t know yet. Thankfully the question right now is simply, “does Carly Fiorina deserve serious attention as a candidate?” The answer to that one is yes she does. I endorse Carly Fiorina for president – she brings an important voice and perspective to the debate and may yet prove to be our best option.

Categories
National politics

John Kasich

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Photo by Marc Nozell

John Kasich was among the long list of GOP candidates that I had no particular opinion of going into this process. As a multi-term governor of Ohio I anticipated a decent amount of political experience but was surprised to find a cross between Rick Santorum (more political experience than expected) and Ted Cruz (“judge me based on what I’ve done”).

The more I learned about him the more convinced I became that for this election cycle in the GOP there is an inverse correlation between real political experience and polling numbers. If the primary voters in the GOP decide that maybe they should do something other than a wholesale rejection of those with political experience then they should seriously give John Kasich strong consideration. I very much endorse John Kasich for president because even when we need a change of course experience is a valuable commodity.

Categories
National politics

Lawrence Lessig

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Photo by Innotech Summit

I was surprised to hear that Larry Lessig had declared that he would run for the Democratic nomination. Having followed his work on intellectual property law for years I have always liked Larry because he has proven to be someone who has a solid understanding of the information age – which is uncommon among elected officials. With that background I was really hopeful that he would be a good candidate.

Unfortunately this promise killed any chance of being endorsed:

If elected, he says he will be the first “referendum president,” promising to serve only as long as it takes to pass his Citizens Equality Act of 2017 — a bill aimed at reforming campaign finance, voting rights, and Congressional representation. Once the bill is passed, Lessig said he would then step down, handing over the reins to his vice president.

Sadly, Larry isn’t running to be president, he is running to enact a particular piece of legislation. I can’t endorse Larry Lessig for president. Even if the legislation were correct and very important (which is a matter for debate) I would consider it irresponsible to endorse someone in hopes that he chose a good vice president to succeed him.

Categories
National politics

Ted Cruz

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

Ted Cruz isn’t running for office, he’s applying for a new job. At least, that’s the sense I get from his campaign. Rather than spending his time talking about what he will do his message is “here are my values – the things that drive my decision making process – and here are the actions I have taken based on those values.” The message to voters is, “if you like the values I believe in and the way I’ve defended them please give me the opportunity to do so as President.”

I like that approach to campaigning – rather than the “let me discern what you want and then promise to be the candidate of your dreams” approach.

Ted’s values centered approach and his open “judge me based on my past actions” attitude make him a candidate deserving of consideration. I endorse Ted Cruz for president.

Categories
National politics

George Pataki

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

George Pataki seems to be running for president simply because there was no clear front runner for the GOP nomination. His campaign website doesn’t even talk about issues so I’m left to conclude that his platform is “as a former governor of New York my name has been in the media much more than the governor of Idaho so I may as well give this campaign a shot since my name has been floated as a potential presidential or vice presidential candidate in previous election cycles.”

If voters want to know where Pataki stands on anything they either have to follow campaign news very closely (because he gets hardly any coverage in the crowded field) or else they have to go to his Wikipedia page – where they will find a significant number of positions that really don’t agree with much of the national GOP voting base. (That’s only a strike against him because he’s seeking the GOP nomination – otherwise it wouldn’t play into my evaluation for this series.)

I went into this with no opinion of George Pataki but I conclude that as a candidate he is simply a placeholder in case the voters reject all the candidates who are really trying to win the nomination. I can’t endorse George Pataki for president since he gives me absolutely no reason to think of him as anything more than a fallback option.