The Art Thief - M. Finkel

 

This book was given to me several years ago, I believe for Christmas, by my mother. She wrote in a note (that was still folded up in the book!) that "Because this one is not spiritual or self-help, it is interesting and fun and true and amazing and wretched and sometimes it is good to read something like this, ha." This was a spot on description!

I finished this book faster than any book to date. I heard somewhere that even though it is nonfiction, it reads like a fantasy book, which is also 100% accurate. The chapters are short enough where you can read one in a bathroom trip or a 4 minute window waiting for someone/something. And what a gripping tale it is! The fact that the story is true makes it so much more intriguing. 

This book sat gathering dust for years, and I was totally unprepared to get sucked into it to the extent that I did. It was refreshing to read a book that was purely entertaining and didn't make me think or ponder deeply about life or about the way I view society. I must admit I had begun to think that such stories were meant for school kids, but my book-reading horizon has now expanded. 

In terms of entertaining books, this is the book I would most quickly recommend. There are others I would recommend first to develop character more, but this was highly entertaining.

An Early Resurrection - A. Miller

I have enjoyed having a few books going at a time, especially books that have quite different genres. This was my religious book that I was reading concurrently with The Coddling of the American Mind. It coincided well with many verses I was reading at the time in the Book of Mormon, so it was cool seeing an analysis of some insightful verses right as I was reading them.

The idea of this book stems from a verse in Mosiah 3 that reads

"thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though he had already come among them."

The idea in this verse is that though Christ was yet to come to earth, His followers could still experience the fruits of His perfect life and Atoning sacrifice as if it had already happened. This book expands that idea and talks about the fruits of the resurrection of Christ and how we can make that alive in our lives though we have not experienced the resurrection for ourselves yet.

Here are a few ideas that stood out to me from this book:

• There is symbolism in death. Let our old self die and become a new person in Christ. This means giving my life to Him and submitting my will to His. What is most important is no longer what I want but what He wants
• Make the Atonement alive in my life! Think of it frequently and draw on its powers often
• The Law of Moses was a type of Christ. We have laws and commandments in our day as well (especially those in the temple). I need to remember that those also point to Christ and aren't just given to us for the sake of a commandment. 
• Being alive in Christ increases our capacity to love: love ourselves, those close to us, those not close to us, and the Lord

The author of this book teaches philosophy at a university in Texas, and his style of writing is very much philosophical. I personally am not as big of a fan of this style of writing, and it is often hard for me to grasp what exactly is being described. I loved the ideas taught in this book, but feel like it was a little repetitive and was maybe better suited as a Sunday school comment rather than a full book. I would recommend this book to someone looking to learn more about the idea presented in that verse above (Mosiah 3:13) and to one more familiar with reading philosophical text. This is a short read (having chapters be 4-5 pages made it feel especially quick), but there are other religious books I would recommend to someone before I would recommend this one.

The Coddling of the American Mind - G. Lukianoff and J. Haidt

And here it is, the post that breaks the naming convention of posts heretofore written. Moving forward book report posts will feature the title and author of the book, while posts about whatever other random thoughts will continue to have the "Of ___" naming convention. Structure of book reports is likely to evolve with time, but for now I think I want to focus on things impactful to me or things I liked or disliked about the book or ways the book shaped the way I see the world around me rather than writing a summary of the book itself. 

This book is one that has been on my list of books to read since before I realized that reading was an enjoyable hobby again (thank you high school and college reading assignments for warping my concept of reading as a form of entertainment). I've had various family members read and recommend this book, so I was excited to finally dive into it. 

Premise

I loved this book! The premise of the book is that the rising generation of college students are soft: they have grown up in and have embraced a culture of safetyism, and thus are unable to navigate the world without safety guardrails. Three fundamental principles ("The Great Untruths") describe the new culture: 

• Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker
• Emotional reasoning: Always trust your feelings
• Us vs them: life is a battle between good people and evil people

At first glance these "untruths" seemed reasonable and I was skeptical about their label of "untruth." The concept of antifragility (the opposite of fragility) is that opposition or stress is required for growth. For example, being exposed to peanuts is what helps many children develop an immunity for that allergy, and preventing children from being exposed at all to peanuts may result in them developing the allergy (because they were unable to develop the immunity through exposure). Likewise, exposure to different ideas or viewpoints is what strengthens our intellectual capacity. Removing any potential danger from a child leaves them woefully unprepared for real life. Creating safe spaces away from someone with a different set of opinions is more harmful than it is beneficial.

Emotional reasoning is letting your mind go to worst-case scenarios or be blinded by cognitive distortions. We see the rise of the culture of microaggressions, which is interpreting things in the worst way rather than giving the benefit of the doubt. The intended message has been replaced by the impact felt by the receiver, which was the way the receiver chose to interpret the message. Benefit of the doubt has been removed.

Us vs Them describes the culture of tribalism: if you are not one of us, you are the enemy. Example of this are mob culture of academics: a writing or saying of an academic (either taken out of context or not) is taken and used as a demand that the academic formally apologize or step down from a position. The mob grows as more people join the bandwagon, and other academics fear siding with the accused because then the mob will come after them as well.

Real Life Applications

Here are some ways I have seen the world differently already since reading this book:

• In teaching the reader CBT, I realized I often fell into those thought patterns as well, and have caught myself avoiding mental pitfalls since reading this book. My mind will often jump to worst case scenarios ("this client thinks I am too inexperienced and unhelpful" or "I'm sensing something is off in this relationship. I think the end is nigh", etc)
• BYU had a career fair last month where hundreds of employers come to recruit students for jobs. Many of these employers are present at this fair every year, including the US Department of Homeland Security. With recent events involving ICE, I saw several IG stories urging BYU to ban them from recruiting students and that their presence presented a threat to students. 
• My brother has an undeveloped hill in his back yard. The last few weeks, the neighborhood boys have assembled on the hill each day to build "houses" from scraps of wood or sticks or whatever other materials they've somehow come in contact with. There is no adult present on the hill and the boys somehow obtained a full-sized sledgehammer to work with. I love this example of free play where yes, there is the potential risk for injury and no, there is no set of rules the boys have to play under or create under (just their imagination!) and no, there is no adult overseeing every act to make sure safety regulations are followed. These are boys who will grow up more resilient and capable of encountering real life events
  

Takeaways

I like how the authors used these truths as the background to describe recent events driving the culture of safetyism in iGen. These events (and honestly the premise of the book) certainly have political ties and this book certainly could have drifted towards a certain political stance quickly. I really appreciated the way the facts and research was presented in an objective, non-partisan way. I read the first half of the book thinking that the authors leaned right and that this book may be poorly received by left leaners, but then the authors revealed that they each leaned left. 

I want to reread this book when I start having kids. The last third of the book is sort of the "ok now what" section where parenting strategies are discussed to teach kids to be antifragile. It was also useful for me to learn these skills.  It was fascinating seeing facts on depression rates between screens and sports. Another reason to have kids play sports!

Books Read Previous to 2026

Here lies a list of books read in the last few years that I may circle back and record thoughts on at some point but will not at this time:

• The Bug Book - P. Weamer
• Morality - J. Sacks
• Getting to Yes - R. Fisher and W. Ury
• Seekers Wanted - A. Sweat
• Range - D. Epstein
• Praise to the Man - Various Authors
• Atomic Habits - J. Clear

Of Time Capsules

I'm sitting here staring at an empty blog post for the first time in nearly five years. Same blog, different purpose. Same human, different person. Same operating system, newer MacBook Pro. I never thought this blog would be resurrected, but here we are! It's good to be back composing sentences and paragraphs after the hiatus.

The original purpose of this blog was to fulfill an assignment for M. Shayne Clarke's MCom 320 class that required a blog post every week. The purpose of that class was to stretch our creative writing muscles by forcing us to write something with no prompt or no rubric or specific subject matter. The purpose of this blog now is to continue to stretch the creative thinking and writing muscles that lie dormant in my day-to-day work. Sure, there is a lot of communication in the marketing data science consulting world, but there isn't quite the same freedom to write about critters or wind or french-type fries or music. I also want to have this space to record thoughts and learnings from books I've read, taking after the example of my mother. While the purpose of the blog has changed, the blog name will remain the same in an effort to stay true to my roots.

Coming back to this blog is like opening a time capsule; these posts are snapshots into my life during that chapter of my life, and I have not gone back and looked at these posts in quite a long time. I'm grateful for the good times as well as the challenges that shaped me during this time. I'm grateful for good friends and good wholesome recreational activities pursued in H1 2021. I no longer play competitive ultimate and instead run trail ultramarathons, I no longer am mired in the world of homework and midterms and instead have a salary and a (soon-to-be vested) 401k, and I no longer drive the iconic Kia Soul with the roof rack and instead drive a matching dark grey RAV4 with Vonda's daughter (although I still have the roof rack and have been slothful in selling it on Marketplace).

So here we go! Here's the first post in five years with a bunch of words and no pictures. I never thought I'd say this, but it feels good to be back

Of the Divergence Theorem

I am minutes removed from submitting my final assignment of the semester. It's a good feeling, and now I can dedicate all my time and effort to a some projects and a couple finals. Unlike most semesters where I have a final in every single one of my classes, I don't have the stress of remembering formulas, theorems, and dates looming over my head. Instead I get to take my time making sure I'm satisfied with a project. It's a new thing for me (and likely won't happen in future semesters), but I'm enjoying it.

On this reading day, I'd like to take this blog post to write a few random thoughts I have:

• I enjoyed today's calc 3 homework on the Divergence Theorem much more than yesterday's on
  Stokes' Theorem. I'm more comfortable working with triple integrals for volumes than I am with flux integrals and oriented surfaces
• I have never been as excited about R programming as I have been the last few days when I've had hours to really dive into this volleyball project and learn a lot more about R's little tricks
• A quote I must agree with by my brother is, "Sometimes after a long day, seeing a few people get punched in the head is exactly what you want to see." 
• Here are the videos he was referring to:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3agHc02aPo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUIg27pvBrc
• Falling asleep to a thunderstorm is one of the most relaxing things of all time
• Steph Curry is still Steph Curry but the Warriors' bench is garbage
• Nothing beats a classic Bic 0.7 mechanical pencil
• Actually a good TA who is willing to help and knows the subject matter incredibly well beats the mechanical pencil. Shoutout to Adam Ott and Jacob Miller this semester for being those clutch TAs

It's been a fun exercise maintaining this weekly blog and entertaining all my readers (aka myself) by taking whatever is floating around in my head and slapping it down into actual words on a screen. I'd love to say I'll keep this blog up after the semester, but honestly it's probably very unlikely that actually happens. 

Signing out for the last time,

Log

Of Networking

I never really know what to write about on this blog, and this early afternoon was certainly no exception. I thought about writing about water monitors because this morning I saw a cool video of a massive one climbing shelves in a 7-Eleven in Thailand (see image). I also considered writing about our nearby planetary neighbor the moon (inspired by Kid Cudi's "Man On The Moon" album we're currently listening to). Today I guess I will embrace the business school culture and talk about the golden subject of networking. 

As one who feels like an imposter strolling through the Tanner as a stats major, I have always looked at the term "networking" with some level of contempt. My fellow stats major, blogger, and frisbee teammate and I have had several conversations (full of unfounded generalizations) about how the business school doesn't focus on hard skills but instead on building forced friendships they call "networking." These last couple months, however, I've had a change of heart, and have really learned the value of networking. More than anything I'm just grateful for people with more experience than me who are willing to share their knowledge, time, and advice.

The path of an accountant is very clearly defined: you get an internship at the big four, work there basically as a slave for several years hating your life, and slowly move up the ranks towards partner level or leave at some point to join or start a smaller firm. I guess you have two options: enjoy the thrilling life of an auditor or mix it up and go the tax route. Those are your only options. The path for a statistics major is much more broad and less-defined. You can go the actuary route, the data science route, the business intelligence route, the sports analytics route, the marketing analytics route, or some other random application you conceive. I love having all these options, but I'm getting to the point where I need to narrow down exactly how I will focus my last year of undergrad education, grad school education, and career path. 

There have been so many fascinating people I've learned from of various job types all with a similar background of data/statistics. All of them have provided me with a lot of insight about what my options are, what I'm most interested in, what skills would be useful to develop, and other people who would be useful to talk to. The people whose jobs most fascinate me are connections I never would have found without– yes, I'll say it– networking. My brother referred me to someone who used to be in his ward in San Francisco who currently works for the Cavs. That guy referred me to a guy who used to work at the Pistons and now works for another sports analytics industry. I told that guy I was probably more interested in the business/marketing side of the sports industry and he referred me to his brother-in-law who did marketing for the Wizards. That guy was very encouraging, insightful, optimistic, and willing to make lots of useful connections for me, including connecting me with a guy who does business analytics for the Arizona Coyotes and a guy at BYU who worked for the Utah Warriors rugby team.

Basically my point in this is that people are awesome, full of extremely useful knowledge, and willing to sacrifice a half hour of their precious time to talk to some random kid who is very distantly connected to them. I am grateful for the knowledge gained in the last few months from these 15-20 people who've been willing to talk to me. I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my stats background and know the tools to help me get to that position in the workplace. I hope I can be as willing and able to help students when I am further along in my career.

Of Fries, Revisited

A while ago we discussed together a stirring debate about french fry preferences and doubts about the validity of the public opinion. Today we revisit this theme. I'm not a big fan of Wendy's fries, and I had in my mind that McDonald's had absolutely fantastic fries. A couple weeks ago I had them and I regretfully admit that they were not nearly as good as I had remembered. Are they still better than Wendy's fries? Probably so. But it sparked the question of which restaurant truly has the best french fries. 

With it being March and thus having invested quite a bit of time in college basketball's March Madness (as good as the Christmas season, almost), I thought the best way to determine which restaurant truly has the best fries was to build a bracket and have people vote on the two choices on my Instagram story. I asked people for submissions of their favorite fry places and was hoping for enough to fill a classic 64 team bracket, but I didn't have enough so we went with 32 teams. Seeding was determined by how many people had submitted the particular (more submissions roughly equates to more popularity). 

Here are a couple hypotheses and notes about the structure of this endeavor:

• 
  The goal with this was to narrow down the field enough to go try maybe the top eight and decide for myself
• I predicted that Chick Fil A, McDonald's, and Wendy's would all be in the final game and win despite not actually being that good
• This is obviously a biased study as people see a name and associate it with having good fries
• To standardize this, I only included original fries (no Arby's curly fries or sweet potato fries from Cubby's, or Cajun fries from Five Guys, etc)
  

Much to my disappointment (although not to my surprise), the final was Wendy's and Chick Fil A. Chick Fil A won. A common consensus was that the elite 8 matchup of Five Guys and Red Robin should have been the actual championship. Now I have a much better idea of what restaurants to go to to try their fries. Attached is the completed bracket with the seeding and vote totals for all 2 of my readers if they happen to have interest in this.

On an unrelated note, the "A Rush of Blood to the Head" album by Coldplay is absolutely fantastic. So good,

Of Wind

Today was the first time playing collegiate ultimate against a school other than ourselves since 15 February 2020. We lost that game over a year ago on universe point to then number one ranked Brown University (we passed them that week to become number one before COVID ended our season). After such a long hiatus we were ready for some competition.

We arrived at the fields in South Jordan today to super gusty winds which, as you can imagine, really make things interesting with a 175 gram plastic plate. Almost every tournament in high school was played in gusty winds, and the wind can either level the playing field or really widen the gap between the two teams. Nobody likes playing in the wind, especially when it's 40 degrees outside. Adding to the wind was the fact that we were playing without several of our veteran players and key contributors and we knew our competition was not going to be at the elite level we are used to playing against.  

Considering the wind, personnel, and competition factors, I was worried we were not going to show up mentally to play. A tendency of our team (and honestly probably any team) is to play to the level of an opponent. If we know we are a far better team than the other squad it's easy to not play our hardest and instead mess around and play sloppy. Today we were crisp and dominant and won both games 10-2 (over BYU Idaho and BYU b-team). We played hard, didn't have many turnovers, and controlled the tempo of every game from the first pull. Even though those teams are no Brown, Pitt, or UNC, it was great being able to go at it against some other teams than ourselves. Tomorrow should be another good day of dominant ultimate. 

To Jacob Miller (if he still reads this), we ran 3-3-1 and 2-4-1 zones force backhand (going upwind and crosswind) to trap them on the downwind side and force lower percentage looks. We had the wing mid play really shallow to stop the chisels and handler movement and that shut them down. Lots of long points but zero breaks by the o line on Friday and only one Saturday against Timpview (who we beat 13-3).

Update: Saturday we went 4-0 over Timpview (high school), BYU Idaho again, Lone Peak (high school), and a group of players from the Logan area. Feels good to be sunburned again. 

Of Critters

This post is dedicated to small animals. Today as we enjoyed the warm sun in hammocks, the question was presented about the difference between worms and nightcrawlers. We learned that the term "earthworm" is sort of like the term "mouse." While we know what a mouse is, are we aware that there are several different species of mice with differences in size, appearance, diet, range, etc? The same goes for earthworms. When we use the term "worm" we usually refer to red worms also known as compost worms, They are known for being small, red in color, and excellent for use in compost heaps. Nightcrawlers, however, are more grey in color and can grow up to 14 inches long. Also known as dew worms, nightcrawlers are often seen at night when there is condensation on the grass and it is cooler outside. If you want to learn more about the fascinating difference between these underground allies of ours, visit this page. 

Now let us turn our attention to the boxelder bug. Boxelder bugs get their name since they're always hanging around boxelder trees. They are black beetles that can fly around if they so desire. You can tell it's a boxelder bug because of the way it is, and also since it has an orange x on its back. People always lose their minds about boxelder bugs ("Get it away from me!!! Please!!! Help!!!") but they don't do anything. They can't bite you and they can't sting you but they're just sort of there in the way. I suppose they're a pain as they congregate in huge groups and randomly just show up and cover patio furniture and whole sides of houses. 

Another fun critter is a snake. Snakes are highly underrated creatures and are quite fascinating if you think about them. Their ability to traverse such variable terrains at rapid speeds without limbs is astonishing. Most snake species you'll run into around Provo, Utah are nonvenomous and aren't trying to bit your hand
off. Because Aptive texted me this week trying to recruit me to spray pesticides this summer (hard pass), here is the weekly blog photo of a snake and an Aptive shirt. 

Celebrate the warm temperatures by going outside and appreciating all the underrated critters that are emerging after another cold winter.

Of Corn Doggies

Today I'm just going to write about a few different random things that really aren't related to each other at all besides being correlated in time. Yesterday was 50 cent corn doggy day at Sonic so you know we took advantage of that. Three of us went to the Sonic in Provo and they told us they were out of corn doggies which was very disappointing. We went to another Sonic and they granted our request for 11 corn doggies which were joyfully consumed. I think Arctic Circle still might have the edge in the corn doggy department, but 50 cents is a deal that must be taken advantage of. 

Partially stemming from the prior discussion of french-type fry preferences (see Of Fries), I've decided to make a 32-team bracket to help determine what local restaurant has the best fries (at least per people's opinions via an Instagram story poll). I've asked for submissions and have more than enough for 32 but not for the full 64-team bracket. Most people who've sent in submissions have said McDonald's, so I'm curious if they'll remain on top after all 31 matchups. I had their fries a couple weeks ago and I was actually sort of disappointed. Perhaps there will be another future post about fries – either regarding the people's choices of best fries or after having tried the best fries ourselves to see if my Instagram following has good taste in regards to fries.

Last night CHI had Provo Rec all to ourselves, which was a joyous occasion. There were games of basketball, volleyball, pickleball, and even some spikeball going. Volleyball is such an interesting sport because I've watched it for years so I know a lot about the intricacies about the game (positioning, tactics, rotations, etc) but I've never really played it. I played on Jordan High's club team for one year, but none of us had ever played before so it was pretty low quality volleyball. Since I know the game so well, I naturally assumed I'd be able to step out on the court and play at a high level. It was kind of fun actually performing way under my own expectations and not being "the guy" on any of the teams I was on. I knew where to be on the court, but my sets were not as buttery as I hoped, my passing could have been better, I tipped too often instead of getting a solid swing on the ball, I completely whiffed on a balls perfectly set to me, and I think I had maybe one block the whole night. It gave me a whole new level of respect for the skills and the athleticism of collegiate volleyball players. They're just at a completely different level, and it'll be fun to watch them in person tomorrow night. 

Shoeman spent the last few weeks collecting materials to build a forge outside and melt sheets of copper down to pour into a mold for a desk weight. He spent the morning melting the copper down to molten metal (very impressed he succeeded in that task) but then the crucible was too hot for the tongs. The tongs would bend as he tried to extract the crucible to be able to pour into the mold. He's going to collect a few more materials and give it another shot soon. Needless to say, it's always exciting to see what ideas this fine roommate comes up with, and highly entertaining when he actually goes through with them.

Of Statistics

Today's blog post is dedicated to my wonderful, faithful friend named statistics, or "stats" or "bae" for short. As is the case with any of these writing exercises disguised as blog posts, this post will focus on whatever subject happens to be on my mind on Thursday evening or Friday morning. 

I'm currently working on a project with the BYU volleyball team. In different interviews and conversations with friends and enemies, I've been asked what exactly my project consists of. I want to practice giving a concise response that explains the nature and extent of the problem in terms a normal person would understand, so here is an attempt:

An important metric to look at while analyzing team performance is serving performance and efficiency. A common, yet ineffective way to accomplish this is by looking at the number of service errors and aces. While a good step, it's hard to really see how effective a server is by the number of serves that immediately end the point since the majority of the serves stay in play. Each serve and serve receive is graded. We're focusing on serve receive grade, meaning the player on the opposing team who makes contact with the ball after the serve is graded on how well he passes a ball. 

Using data from about 48000 games from 2016-2021, my job is to sort all the serves in to buckets on if they were perfect passes, positive passes, average passes, incomplete passes (ball goes all the way back over the net), poor passes, failed passes (service aces), or if there was no serve receive grade (service error). What we're looking for is called the first ball side out percentage, which is the percentage of times the receiving teams wins the point on that very first possession. We want to find the overall first ball side out percentage for men's volleyball, as well as the expected first ball side out percentage for each of those serve receive buckets. 

When the pass is perfect, the setter is in perfect position to run the offense. He has the option to set the pin hitters, set the middle, set a back row attacker, or dump it himself. However, with a poor pass the setter is off the net and his options are basically reduced to setting the pin hitters. With fewer options, the serving team has a better idea of where to set the block, how many blockers to send, and allows the remaining defenders to properly position themselves to dig the ball and continue the point. 

Having the coefficients for each category will allow for in-game analysis of serving performance. Using only aces and errors, it is hard to tell how effective a player's serving is with, for example, high numbers in both aces and errors. Are the 3 aces worth 4 free points from service errors? Hard to tell. However, since we expect the FBSO to be lower on poor passes than on perfect passes, we can get a good read on how truly effective these servers would be. Despite not having an ace, a player could have a very low expected FBSO. This tool provides coaches with better service indicators to enable them to be able to properly instruct players to either continue with the same serving strategy (speed, location, serve type, etc) or make adjustments to be more effective. 

As part of this project I'm also pulling out the expected FBSO for individual players. This will allow coaches to see how their players stack up nationally on the service efficiency spectrum and to be able to provide their players with individual benchmark goals to work towards. 

It's been fun watching the volleyball games this season in a new light. Understanding the impact of a good or a bad serve receive has really opened my eyes to why these numbers would be so useful to have as a coach. I'm grateful for STAT 495 R, Zach Knowlton, and BYU Men's Volleyball, especially Devin Young and Giuseppe Vinci, for the opportunity to do this project.

Because pictures are fun, here is one from Devin's senior night when he was still winning the MPSF as a player, not as a coach.

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.

Of Bears

This morning I received a Marco Polo from my three-year-old niece asking me if I like bears. I do like a good bear. In my opinion, bears are one of the more underrated animals out there. They're such unusual predators because they aren't sleek or sneaky or crafty. Bears are large, strong, and surprisingly fast. I don't understand how they're so fast because they don't look efficient at all when they run. I can't quite get a read on these fascinating animals. What do bears think about? What's hidden beneath that all that thick fur?

I've always wanted to see a bear in the wild. I've seen deer, moose, rodents, foxes, coyotes, beavers, otters, numerous species of fowl, but I've never seen a bear or a gator in the wild. One time I was on a hike in the Tetons with my young mens group. There was a group in the front and a group in the back. I started out with the back group and then decided to catch the front group. At some point between leaving the back group and catching the front group a bear walked across the trail in between me and the back group and I missed it! If I would have just chilled with the group in the back I could have achieved one of my life dreams. Alas, it was not meant to be. 

In preparation for tonight's blog post, I watched several videos on bears, specifically black bears. I watched a video of a bear in a tree getting tranquilized, falling out of the tree onto a trampoline, and bouncing way into the air and onto the grass. I also watched a video of a bear chasing a skier all the way down the hill and a compilation of trail cam videos of a bear waking up from hibernation. Today I took a much-needed nap in the classic nap spot. Unlike most other days where I just kind of just lie there, today I was out cold. I had no idea where I was when I woke up and it took me like a half hour to come to my senses. It took me a while to snap to and start being productive again. Likewise, it took the bear days and days to finally fully wake up and leave the den for good Watching the video of the bear slowwwwwwly emerge from hibernation made me realize that maybe we aren't so different than bears. Though we live different lives and can't even communicate with each other, I feel like there's a lot that can be learned from our bear friends. 

Of Feet

Before beginning this highly anticipated second blog post, I feel the need to explain the name of the blog to the maybe three people who will ever actually see these words. Brigham's Buckets is the name of my fantasy basketball team. In the four years I have participated in fantasy basketball my team has taken last, first, first, and last, respectively. I started out this current season by losing three games in a row but the boys came through clutch and got that dub for me last week. 

Today I had an appointment with the foot man to get my ankle checked out. I sprained the inside (medial) side last week at practice and it's felt good despite a ton of swelling, but it's great to have full confidence now knowing that it isn't broken. The foot man made a few comments and observations that really cracked me up:

• "Looking at your foot it's a miracle you've had an athletic career at all!"
• "Is your other foot flat too?"
• There is a bone spur in the ankle
• One bone is way bigger than it should be. It's the bone that attaches to the tendon that supports the arch which would explain the flat feet
• One of the bones in my ankle/foot is misaligned by 45 degrees
• Another possible bone spur on the ball of my foot
• "You have probably the flattest feet I've ever seen"

I never knew that so many things could be wrong in a single foot (not even including the ankle sprain which originally brought me to the Provo foot man). I am so grateful that I haven't had foot pain besides the occasional rolled ankle at practice. I'm grateful for the gift of flat feet that I received from my grandpa, it is truly the gift that keeps on giving, ha. 

For reference, here is a footprint (mine) of a person with no foot arch. Next week I'll have something more exciting to talk about than a visit to the foot man.

Of Mullets

One of my favorite songs is Good Morning by Kanye West. It's a good song, and one that is gracing my ears as I type these blessed words on this blog, and in case my mother is reading this, it is the clean version, don't worry. As I thought about what to write about on this occasion of this first required blog post, I think of beginnings. Each time Kanye sings "good morning," I think of the beginning of a new day or the beginning of a new era or the beginning of a semester. People start out new years or new semesters with plans, schemes, visions, hopes, etc, and though it's been years since I've made a list of resolutions or goals at the commencement of a new year, I often find myself with a new energy and a new plan of attack for those new periods of time. The extra week of winter break gave me an opportunity to really catch my breath and actually be excited for a new semester. I was able to read a book for pure enjoyment rather than by assignment for the first time in years. I loved the ideas I learned from Mindset, and would highly recommend it. I'm taking this opportunity to think about several new things that I hope to exploit to my advantage this coming year:

• A new schedule that provides me with big blocks of time to be productive and get a lot done. 
• New people moving into the ward to become friends with
• New skills obtained in classes to increase my qualifications for future jobs
• New vision of where I want to go with my stats background (not so much the actuary path as the business/marketing route)
• New additions to the CHI ultimate team
• Some new dinner options I became aware of/learned to make over the break

It's going to be a good time. A month ago I began the process of growing out a mullet. Why? Who knows. But it's actually starting to come in now and yesterday I convinced two of my roommates to join me in my endeavors. One of them got it cut yesterday and it looks dang good. So by the end of this semester of blogging you know we'll be looking good. 

Since I want to practice adding pictures to these posts to spice things up, here's a picture I snapped after practice yesterday at 7:35 am.