Of Shrubbery and Geocaching

As promised, this week's edition of Brigham's Buckets will focus on some random fun facts on shrubbery and geocaching. These riveting subjects stem from a conversation with Amber Mercer when she spotted approximately seven deer eating leaves outside the Richards Building last Thursday the 18th of February at 6:01 pm MST (see photo). Somehow that deer sighting led to an information exchange involving facts about shrubbery and geocaching, which we will now discuss.

The term "shrub" can be used interchangeably with the word "bush." If you've ever laid eyes upon a bush, you've seen a shrub! Shrubs can be differentiated from trees by an inspection of the base of the plant. A tree has one single trunk that emerges from the earth and splits into different branches well above the ground. A shrub, however, splits into several different branches right from the base and lacks a single trunk. A hedge is made up of several different shrubs that together form a conglomerate landscape feature. 

Shrubs can be tricky as they can be subsetted one step further into what are known as "subshrubs." These little guys are basically just smaller versions of shrubs that don't ever grow to be as tall. They've even been described by some as "not as going up." Another tricky thing about shrubs is that sometimes the line between shrubs and trees can be rather grey. In fact, some plants can even be classified as both shrubs and trees! Fascinating stuff.

Geocaching wasn't a thing until the early 2000s, which was actually surprising to me. The government did not release GPS tools to the general public until that time, so I guess geocaching would have been basically impossible without some device that tracks your precise location and the precise location of a cache. 

In what would seem to be a rather innocent and uneventful activity, geocaching has actually led to some wild stories. Below are a few:

• Some hikers got lost and in their desperation found a cave in the snow. In it was a geocache and they were able to use the coordinates from that to call in search and rescue.
• While looking for a geocache some people discovered a car in the bottom of a ravine. Upon investigation they found a person in the car that was somehow still alive and they were able to get the person rescued.
• Several people have fallen from cliffs while searching for geocaches.

There is a geocache at Kiwanis park that we successfully discovered last night. Luckily it involved no traversing ravines or cliffs to find, and to spice things up we added a cool mummy finger puppet to it for the next time. Thanks to Amber Mercer for her research and insights on shrubbery as well as for her photo of the RB deer. 

Of Basketball

I miss basketball. This morning I decided to stay home from campus since my only class is live remote anyways, so during my lunch break I wandered upstairs to talk to my neighbors for a bit. They had a basketball chilling on the living room floor which of course I picked up and practiced my shooting form several times. I then noticed they had a full length mirror on the wall, and my form looked to be in surprisingly good condition (Shayne, notice how there is no hyphen between surprisingly and good since surprisingly ends in ly). 

It's been since the end of June since I've balled. Last year we had a great group of ballers in my elders quorum and we'd rent out a gym in the RB to play in every couple weeks. I hope my jumper hasn't dipped to Russell Westbrook levels in this COVID-affected year. I'm grateful that despite my own lack of participation in the beautiful game the game continues onward. 

Watching Anthony Edwards absolutely destroy a man tonight with a poster dunk was a sight to behold. We mustn't forget about Steph Curry and the Warriors mounting an epic comeback a couple days ago against the Heat while playing with no bigs and Wiggins on the tallest guy on the court. Can we talk about the NBA without talking about the atrocity it was that Luka is starting in the all-star game over Dolla Dame? I actually like Luka a lot so no disrespect to him at all, but he hasn't been as good this season as he has been in prior years and Dame has been playing out of his mind. But then again this was probably the best thing to happen to Damian Lillard because now he'll use that as even more fuel to convince people to (as he said) "put respect on his _______ name."

Basketball is a large reason I'm studying statistics. In high school I watched the beginning of the analytics revolution in the NBA and how Steph Curry fueled that by his incredible scoring efficiency and deep three-point range. I love the data visualization Kirk Goldsberry did in Sprawlball and what he continues to do on Twitter. I love playing basketball, I love watching basketball, and I love how statistics and basketball overlap.

Here is a photo from the last time I played basketball at the Tueller reunion. Stay tuned for a riveting post next week featuring random facts about shrubbery and geocaching. 

Of Rain

The sound of "Sleeping Lessons" by The Shins again awoke me this morning, and with it came the sound of rain outside. Why on earth is it raining in February? The weather this winter has been very strange, and even though I am still yet to ever strap on skis or a snowboard, I'm disappointed in the lack of snow. Pretty much every single weekend forecast has shown snow Thursday - Sunday and almost every week it's either not snowed, snowed a few flakes, or rained like today. 

This weekend we should be in Tampa at our second ultimate tournament of the season. Last year at this time we were given the gauntlet of playing the 1st, 4th, 5th, 14th, 17th, 18th, and 20th ranked teams in a two-day span. This year I'm sitting in Harold writing a blog post and wishing my Vans didn't have a split in the seam on the left shoe that got the toes and ball of my foot wet. I'm wearing my Waffle House hoodie today instead of enjoying a peanut butter/choco chip waffle and a bacon hashbrown bowl. It is insane that Monday will mark an entire year since our last collegiate or club ultimate game. I don't think anyone anticipated COVID shutting down sports and life for so long, and it's still very unclear as to if or when we'll have competitive games again. 

A teammate expressed to me this week that he was having a hard time staying motivated with nothing really on the horizon. It made me to take a step back and think about how motivated I am. After thinking about it briefly I concluded that I've actually loved those early mornings. I love getting up and getting in hours of work with the boys before morning classes. I'm willing to wake up at 5:30 most mornings because I like playing competitive ultimate, and you cannot find that at Kiwanis park playing pickup with your fhe group. I love hitting the gym and translating that strength to more physicality, durability, and explosiveness on the field. I love the associations I've been blessed with in my years playing this sport.  

After further thought I realized that this motivation/interest principle totally applies to school, work, and other undesirable tasks. On Monday I'll spend several hours either downloading 4500 + xml files one by one or creating some tool that will automate those downloads. I'm excited about it because I'm very interested in this project for the BYU men's volleyball team. Other school assignments or other life tasks aren't nearly as exciting, so I need to be better at looking at the big picture and greater purpose and letting that provide me with motivation to get after things. 

Happy Valentine's Day from CHI from Tampa, 2020

Of Fries

The last few weeks have been spent engaging in the same passionate debate with an old roommate on whether McDonald's or Wendy's have better fries. It's a no-brainer that McDonald's has better fries; fries from Wendy's are way too salty and the quality between batches of fries is wildly inconsistent. One day you'll get a bunch of flopsy fries, sometimes they're crazy salty, and once every so often you'll get a batch that are great. People like Wendy's for the 4 for $4, not the fries. If fries weren't included in the 4 for $4 would anyone actually order fries at Wendy's? I think not.

Anyways, this debate with my friend started when he and a couple friends went to a few different fast food joints, ordered fries from each, and then performed a "blind taste test" to see which one was best. For starters, their sample size was pathetic (only 3 or 4 people as the tasters) and there was nothing blind about the experiment since they all knew what fries they were tasting. They decided that from their taste test there was conclusive evidence that Wendy's fries were not only better than McDonald's but that they were the best fries at fast food locations. You cannot draw conclusive evidence from an experiment that breaks every rule of statistics. This isn't breaking some obscure, higher-level statistical theory but rather basic principles from STAT 121 which just about everyone at BYU has taken some point. The smaller the sample, the greater the variation and less conclusive the results. Personal bias stemming from a non-blind experiment introduce invalid results. I like statistics, but I love statistics done right.

To prove my point, I posted a poll on my Instagram story asking people if which fries they preferred. I didn't include a picture of any fries (which could subconsciously introduce bias) nor did I put my personal opinion anywhere and let the poor people who choose to follow me vote on their preferred fries. Though I'm happy that McDonald's pulled through (currently 126 - 109 or a (.54 - .46 split), I'm disappointed in how close it was. I'm confident that with a larger sample size (235 is way bigger than 4) and no personal bias we are able to see the true results: 

I'm losing my faith in the opinion of the general public over non-important issues like fries and NBA All-Star voting. I'm sad that people jump on trends so easily and actually think that Wendy's fries or better or that Trae Young should be in the all-star game or be considered as an MVP candidate. On what planet would you take Trae Young over Ja Morant? Both are lottery pick point guards drafted to turn their respective franchises around. Ice Trae arrived as the newest member of a garbage team and now the Hawks are... still garbage. As a rookie, Ja became the leader of his team and led them to a play-in game for the playoffs (in the West by the way). Ja Morant has not been described as a piece of tissue paper on defense as Trae Young has been. While it is fun to watch Trae put up 30 points, do some street ball dribbles, and pull up for 30-footers, he's not helping that franchise become a contender. How are people voting for James Harden after a season where he refused to play for the Rockets until he was traded? In that downtime the dude put on like fifty pounds. Klay Thompson is apparently one of the leaders in votes in the West despite playing zero games and being out for the entire season with a torn achilles. 

I guess my point in this is that we often get caught up in the fun trends and don't take five seconds to actually look closer and make a more sound analysis. McDonald's fries > Wendy's fries, Ja > Trae, and slightly overripe bananas > slightly underripe bananas.