I learned at Stake Priesthood leadership meeting that we can increase our spirituality by gleaning insights from the biographies of BYU football players.

I also learned that you shouldn’t make gagging noises during Stake Priesthood leadership meeting if the bishop is sitting behind you.

(Vomit)

As is so often the case, Utah State’s basketball team emerged victorious in their early-season matchup with BYU–the final margin was only 10 points, but having watched the game, it wasn’t that close. On that early December evening, there was no question who the better team was by the time the final buzzer sounded, and the previously-undefeated Cougars walked off the court in sorrow and BYU fans immediately began littering Facebook with explanations and apologies for why the Cougars lost.

(This is in keeping with BYU Fan Rule #1: No BYU fan shall ever admit that any athletic team representing BYU on the field of competition, has been defeated fairly or was outplayed by a superior opponent. All losses shall be attributed to a) poor officiating, b) untimely injuries to key players, or c) dirty play on the part of the opponents.)

But then, a couple of funny things happened. USU lost a bunch of games, and BYU kept winning. Mere weeks after their victory over BYU, the Aggies were staring at a record of 8-6, while BYU was in the middle of a winning streak that would eventually reach 15 games and earn the Cougars a (brief) Top 10 national ranking. This was hard for me to swallow, I must confess. Seeing my beloved Aggies lose to the likes of Long Beach State and Northeastern was a painful experience, and I have struggled through a state of denial and depression for much of the cold, dark, Southern California winter.

However, the God of Sports would not withhold His Warming Hand forever. No, following an ugly 22-point drubbing at the hands of Louisiana Tech, a switch was flipped, and the Aggies started winning. And winning. And winning.

And now, with only a handful of regular season games left before the WAC Tournament and Selection Sunday looming on the horizon, my Aggies have constructed a winning streak of their own–now at 11 games, and improved their record to a respectable 21-6 mark. More importantly, USU’s RPI has improved steadily since the terrible start, and sits at #36 as of today. Indeed, the Aggies have even convinced the national media to start paying attention to them again, and are now found in their annual anxiety-inducing slot on ESPN.com’s Bubble Watch. Which brings me back to the point of this post. According to the recent edition of Bubble Watch,

The Aggies have won 11 games in a row to climb into the NCAA at-large bubble discussion, but they have absolutely no margin for error down the stretch. The Aggies have one big feather in their cap: a 71-61 victory over BYU at home on Dec. 2.

You see, USU’s win over BYU represents that oh-so-important victory over an RPI 1-25 team, which the Selection Committee always cares about so much. However, BYU’s current RPI is only 20 right now, and a single loss before the MWC Tournament could possibly push that RPI into 26-50 territory, with Utah State’s NCAA odds being the collateral damage.

So, Brigham Young University, here we are. I am standing before you now, pleading with you, begging you, and promising not to laugh at BYU coed jokes for at least a month: Just keep on winning. A win for you is a win for me. My Ag’s SOS (currently 84) and RPI standing will rise with every additional victory you pick up. I am not naive. I know that you know that my lips are fertile with treachery when it comes to BYU athletics, and we both know that the second Selection Sunday passes, I will do all in my power to ensure your quick and shameful demise in the NCAA Tournament. I will mock you. I will curse you. I will taunt people in my congregation who graduated from your slimy halls. I will probably even push the BYU-Aladdin Song post to the front of this blog on the date of your first round game.

But, for the next 3 weeks, I will sell my soul. I will be your friend.

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1. I have flown to Finland 5 times in my life, and my luggage has been lost or screwed up on 3 of those occasions. This was the first time it happened in the middle of a freezing-butt cold stretch in Winter.

2. This is the first time I have returned to Finland since my mission where I have not been asked to speak in church. I am very grateful for this.

3. Sauna is even better than I remember.

4. Cigarette smoke stench on old people in Finland is different than cigarette stench on old people in the US. It has a slightly more stale and bitter twist to it, but less overpowering. I remember noticing this 10 years ago, but had forgotten.

6. Finland is beautiful when there is a fresh blanket of snow on the ground in the midst of the winter darkness that otherwise seems so all-encompassing and impenetrable.

7. There are several things that make a trip to Finland completely worth it–even when it’s been below freezing every minute of my time here: Valio’s Banana yogurt, watching children sing the Tip-Tap Tip-Tap song before Santa Claus comes, candlelit cemeteries on Christmas, and Budapests.

More to come…

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Failure #1:
My first attempt at a podcast! Just before Halloween, Steve Evans, John C, and I discussed Halloween candy, Trunk-or-Treats, and a Book of Mormon-based novel that John found in his local library. After recording, I discover that the software I was using to record (Audacity) has multiple input settings, and that I had chosen the wrong one. Thus, I had recorded 15 minutes of silence. Steve mocks me harshly, and exaggerates the length of time we were recording before I caught my mistake to anyone who will listen.

Failure #2:
Another pre-Halloween attempt, in which Steve Evans, Guest Kyle M, and I fail to launch on account of Steve’s struggles with his recent installation of Windows 7 and Audacity’s compatibility with it. Of course, we don’t realize that his software has failed until we have been talking for 35 minutes or so about a variety of topics, including Halloween, Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, and other minutiae. I feel poetically smug as Steve tries to reconcile his mockery of me the week before with his own foul up.

Failures #3 & #4:
John C, Steve Evans, Kathryn Soper, & I combine for a couple of essentially doomed attempts as Kathy learns to navigate Audacity, and John C’s audio files are too quiet to be used. At this point, I was still thinking that we were in “practice mode” and that all would be well on the next attempt. I was so naive!

Failure #5: The Thanksgiving Day Miracle
Kathy Soper, Steve Evans (sort of), and I discuss Turkey Bowls, Thanksgiving Day feast preparations, and plans for Black Friday. The entire recording comes off without a hitch, and we nearly have our first success. Unfortunately, after editing, remixing, and spending roughly 1/4 of my Thanksgiving Day preparing an amazing Zeitcast, I accidentally save a blank audio file audio file over the top of an edited, complete Zeitcast. file. I receive a “look” from my wife for having wasted the entire morning while she wrestled with kids & the holiday meal, and determine that I should probably not attempt another Zeitcast for a while.

Failure #6:
The bitterness of Failure #5 a fading memory, Kathy Soper and I reengage the mics and keyboards. This time, with Steve Evans not available, we only make it about 5 minutes into the conversation before Kathy’s recording software crashes. I’m too annoyed to care about trying a second take in one day, so we agree to give it another run the following morning.

Failure #7:
Kathy and I combine for the most epic of all failed Zeitcasts to date. The recordings are done properly. The editing is completed without a problem. The audio file, as well as supporting text, links, and photos are uploaded to BCC in correct fashion. The Zeitcast is posted! It’s a success!…and then it is determined that the discussion Kathy and I had about Finnish Christmas food is too mean for public consumption. The Zeitcast is pulled, with only a few minutes of the podcast’s remnants to be found in the RSS feeds of BCC subscribers.

[UPDATE! I posted an edited version of Failure #7 at BCC here.]

Failure #8: ????????
To top Failure #7, the next bomb will likely have to nuke BCC entirely, leaving no survivors.

[UPDATE No. 2: Failure #8 appears to have come off without a hitch...]

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By the time the game was supposed to start–yesterday morning at 8:30am–it was clear that the number of hands who had expressed interest in playing was a gross overstatement of the number of people who were actually willing to show up and toss around the pigskin. We waited 30 minutes or so past the scheduled starting time, and finally managed to scrounge up 6 players, myself included. We all stretched out, the hardcore footballers put on their cleats, and we staked out a shortened field since our numbers were so few, and no one really wanted to run much anyway.

Thus went the Harbor Hills Ward Elders Quorum Turkey Bowl 2009: The Armpit of All Turkey Bowls:

Play 1:
My quarterback drops back to pass, I fake left, then cut right, and QB hits me in stride for a perfect touchdown pass…yeah, not really. What actually happened is my whole “cut right” thang didn’t go to swell, as my running shoes gave way on the dew-soaked grass and I bit the turf. The ball flew right into the hands of the guy defending me, who returned it for an easy touchdown. We get the ball back immediately, with our pride stung but still intact.

Play 2:
Our QB, having learned not to trust me, throws to the other guy this time, who makes a great snag on a slightly overthrown ball. After hauling in the pass, his momentum causes him to lose balance, and a slight push from his defender (“touch” football) sends him to the ground, landing on his shoulder and tearing a ligament. The following 15 minutes cannot be described here, because they were rated R for mild profanity and crude humor at a wounded man’s expense. With the injured player needing a ride to the hospital, we lose two players, and with only four remaining, decide to call it a day.

So, let’s recap the important statistics:

Harbor Hills Ward EQ Turkey Bowl, 2009
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Time: 4 minutes
Plays: 2
Turnovers: 1
Season-Ending Injuries: 1
Injury-Induced F-Bombs: 8 (approx.)

If you can top that for sheer suckitudeness, I salute you, and encourage you to leave your story.

Note: I realize, after a few people have responded to me about this post, that I need to make it clear that the F-bomb count was not MY F-bomb count. My count, smugly righteous as always, was 0.

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Since I moved into my ward over three years ago, I have observed an interesting phenomenon. Every Sunday during opening Priesthood exercises, which are held in the gym, all the men stand in the exact same formation–we form a perfect half-arc around the 3-point line on the basketball court. No one stands inside the 3 point line except the Bishop, who stands directly below the hoop.

Well, last Sunday, my Bishop put an end to it, and made us all take five big steps in toward him. The awkward tension in the room was palpable–kind of like asking 50 families who have been sitting on the same pew for 20 years to find a different pew, all at the same time.

The economic and mathematical analysis of voting has generated a large amount of literature. Ever since Ken Arrow showed that there is no social choice function that satisfies the logical choice properties, people have sought to find the next best solution. Recently, Marginal Revolution had a thread about range voting that generated a lot of discussion about voting systems in general. I won’t bore you with the details of range voting, but to say that you assign a score to multiple options within a range of numbers. The highest score then wins the election. This is actually similar to a Borda Count, where the range in equivalent to the number of options.

However, voters in the booth still have the problem of mapping a multidimensional preference set to a single candidate. Thus, I propose a double blind voting system. This system does not require the voter to map preferences to a candidate. In fact, the candidates will be unknown. The voter participates in a survey in which the voter declares preferences across many issues in society. And then, with each issue, the voter will rank the issue in terms of importance.

Potential candidates for whichever office is open privately declare candidacy for an open office. They too must submit a declaration/survey form but they do not rank the issues in terms of relative importance; they only declare their preference.

For example, suppose there are only three issues affecting a society: Guns, healthcare, and military intervention abroad. Then, on a sliding scale of 1-10, people in the survey will declare their preference for government involvement on these issues.

Suppose that these are the results of the voting declarations, where the composite ranking is a value that shows which issue is the most important to the greatest percentage of voters:

Since we have the public’s preferences independent of the candidate running, we can now map a candidate’s declarations with the public’s preferences. Mathematically, I was thinking something along the lines as a sum-of-squared-difference-with-the-mode calculation. Suppose candidate X declares a 3 on Guns, a 4 on Healthcare, and a 5 on Military. Then candidate X would receive a (assuming that the mode on Guns is 3.5) .25 score for Guns, a 9 score for Healthcare, and a 0 score for Military. Each of those scores would be weighted by the composite rank, for a total sum of 3.71. Now, suppose candidate Y declares a 9, 7, and 5 for the respective categories. Candidate Y would then have scores of 30.3, 0, and 0, with a final weighted sum score of 13.6, and thus losing the election. Now, even though candidate Y is right with the mode on two issues, the stance on Guns drives candidate Y away from public preference since so many of the public weigh Guns as the most important issue.

One nice thing about this method is that preferences can be easily aggregated to any level of voting; nationwide, statewide, or district-wide. So, a minority opinion in a local preference setting may still have significant identification in a national setting, or vice-versa.

This is only a simple example. It does have flaws, i.e. there is no enforcement mechanism for candidates to truthfully state their preferences, and does not effectively screen people who might have socially awkward behaviors that prevent them from serving in pubic office.

What it does do, and I think this is pretty important, is that it forces people to do some serious introspection about what kind of representation they desire, and then declare those preferences for a direction of policies. It places the burden of study equally on candidate and voter alike, because it forces both to examine each policy subject in the survey, rather than picking by name. Furthermore, there is no need to expend mass amounts of money campaigning, trying to persuade people for his/her vote.

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2:18pm.
We just got in line, and it would appear that we guessed right–there are only about 15 people ahead of me in line, and suddenly lots of folks are lining up behind us.

220pm.
My buddy Jeff mentions that he hopes the person in the front of the line knows what he’s doing. That would be hilarious if we are all lined up behind a guy who just needed a place to sit for a while, but has no actual connection to the event.

225pm.
Suddenly the fact that I am going stand here for two hours sets in. Everyone else is mostly sitting on the pavement reading copies of their books.

I am wearing some new pants, and I refuse.

240pm.
I haven’t been to Disneyland since late summer–like august I think. Being back here, and watching all the people walk by as I stand in line reminds me of a project I wanted to undertake last spring for BCC but somehow forgot about: counting and photoblogging Mormons at Disneyland for an entire day. Seriously, they are so conspicuous–the white legs, the byu hats, and the 4 kids running around a 23 year old mom and 26 year old dad. Truly, these are my people!

245pm.
Just remembered my plan to buy bill simmons a beer. I hope it works out, but I have a feeling that the “ushers” are more like moonlighting TSA employees and will not let me approach BS with anything that could be broken in half and used as a weapon by a disgruntled Deron Williams fan.

My buddy Jeff thinks it is a great plan, and seems willing to be my alcohol agent here. Here is a pic of him in his red shoes.

255pm.
A sure-thing Mormon family just walked by. I was tempted to ask them about the TCU game. In other news, I appear ro have taken on the role of line authority. People keep walking by and asking me who is coming, what the line is for, etc…a very stout lady in a Jay Cutler Bears jersey just asked–and had no idea who BS is; she must have his column today.

300pm.
I am a little disappointed in the lack of creativity of my co-queuers. Only one guy seems to be dressed for the occasion, and he is boringly laid out in a Tom Brady jersey. No Kobe gear. No Lakers garb anywhere.

310pm.
Last 4 Songs played outside of the ESPN Zone while we have been standing in line:

-Heaven On Earth, Belinda Carlisle
-Cruel Summer, Bananarama
-I think We’re Alone Now, Tiffany
-(some song by Hannah Montana, I think)

I think ESPN is catering to the more masculine crowd.

335pm.
The fellow next to us in line has metallic shades, a Pearl Jam tshirt, and a butt ugly new York giants cap on his head. Why is this important? Because we just realized that he is a huge knicks fan, so I got to tease him about the Jazz having unrestricted rights to the Knicks’ draft pick. I am giddy about that draft pick. I almost want the Jazz to tank themselves and get two killer picks.

338pm.
20 minutes to game time, and no sign of simmons yet. I doubt he will come through the front door, but it is still fun to think about what it would be like if he did, and if I jumped in front, tackled him, and gave him noogies until he says that DWill is the bee’s knees.

4:00pm.
Joyride is playing over the loudspeakers. Someone seriously needs to be let go.

Meanwhile, going inside now! My first intentional celebrity (?) meeting. Hunh.

421pm.
Bill was cool. He talked to me. Like we were old buddies. For almost a minute. He even hollered after me as I walked away from the desk, making sure to get one last thing in. He was cool.

Not Everyone. Sees Things. The Same Way.

I like how Andrew Sullivan approaches it, though I am a Mormon and naturally prefer sympathetic takes to cynical ones (Another from him here).

Most of all, for me, this is just a welcome step away from 2008, during which I constantly was struggling with my active role in the campaign and passage of Proposition 8 in California. My loyalty to the Church and my testimony of the Prophet are strong, but my heart is tired of hurting on this one. So, for a day, I celebrate this breather.