A Tale of Two Stories

Yes, the title is a bit redundant, get over it.

Today, I saw two movies: one in the theater and one on digital video disc. The one that I saw in the theater was the Warner Brothers-banked 'Sucker Punch' and the one I saw on video was Disney's 'Tangled.' Let me just say that, if you had told me at the beginning of the day that I would have seriously liked one of these movies and really disliked the other, I would not have guessed that Disney would be the day's winner. However, this was definitely the case. Let me tell you a little of what I thought about both of these movies.

Sucker Punch

Overview: Just let me say that I'm never seeing a movie that already has the word 'Suck' in the title ever again. I went into the movie not really knowing what the plot would be and I was pretty much disappointed from the moment the plot actually commenced. All I knew about it was that it was a movie about some bodacious babes kicking -A- and taking names, until they ran out of names. This was true to a certain degree, but that plot that surrounded the scenes of trash-kicking babeage was disappointing.

My Favorite Part: The action. There are at least four extended scenes in which the five babes in this movie kick some serious trash. These action scenes have a little bit of something for everyone. There are guns, swords, explosions, killer robots, and a dragon... no car chases though. I amend my earlier thought.

My Least Favorite Part: The resolution. Without revealing too much, the resolution involves a protagonist shift, in which another character takes the lead from the primary protagonist, Babydoll. Also the movie ended with a black screen and a short monologue by the new protagonist. I don't like this. I think this film could have been good, or even very good if the writers had not taken the mantle away from Babydoll and given it to another character, but as it is, it left much of its cinematic tension unresolved. The overarching theme of the movie is that any individual has the power to change his/her life and to win his/her freedom, however I don't think the plot went about it in the most inspiring way possible.

My Favorite Character: Though I really enjoyed the fact that Blondie was one of the few women who wasn't blonde, my favorite character had to be Rocket. She took the primary protagonist, Babydoll, under her wing and was pretty much her biggest fan during much of the movie. Though she had made some big mistakes in her life, she was doing her best to overcome them and to help others escape the circumstances in which they were. Rocket, in a way, is a manifestation of this theme of the story.

Random Thought(s): Babydoll is either left-handed or left-eye dominant. I know this because she held a gun to her stepfather's face at the beginning of the movie with her left hand. She should have killed him when she had the chance.

Overall Grade: C+

Tangled

Overview: I really enjoyed this new take on the classic fairy tale, Rapunzel. There seemed to be just the right mix of comedy and drama with a plot that only sociopaths would dislike. The last animated Disney movie that I actually enjoyed was 'The Emperor's New Groove' in 2000. Tangled definitely broke that streak and has, at least a little, renewed my faith in the Walt Disney Corporation.

My Favorite Part: Outlandish, but well-placed comedy. In one of my favorite scenes, the 'prince' Flynn and a determined horse, Maximus are fighting on a tree stretched over a cliff for a satchel on the edge. The tree ends up experiencing a transverse shear failure (i.e. doesn't bend, just suddenly becomes detached) and falls off the cliff. I thought that was hilarious, but that's mostly because I'm an engineer. There's also a scene in which Flynn is using a frying pan to duel Maximus, who has a dagger in his mouth; classic! There were so many scenes and lines that made me laugh, I could dedicate a blag post or two just to them. The comedy was always well-placed, without detracting from the plot, which, in and of itself, did not disappoint in the slightest.

My Least Favorite Part: The [Romantic] Tension. I'm not going to drop the S-bomb in my evaluation of a Disney movie, that's just a little over the top. Anywho, I felt that the romantic tension that builds between Flynn and Rapunzel developed in a very strange way. Rapunzel seemed to make a totally seamless transition from being deathly afraid of Flynn to being infatuated with him. And likewise, Flynn went from being totally self-motivated, to genuinely caring for Rapunzel with no single, galvanizing event between the two of them. This isn't how things really work, but then again, this is quite literally a fairy tale. And really, I had a hard time finding anything else I didn't like about this movie.

My Favorite Character: Pascal, closely followed by Maximus. Yes, I thought the animal characters really cleaned up in this movie. Pascal, the chameleon, seems to manage to express the intended emotions of the audience without using even a single word. It helps that he can change colors with every mood change. He also seemed to be looking out for what's best for all the characters, though especially Rapunzel, without making many enemies. In short, I wish I could meet more people like Pascal. Maximus is out for Flynn's head at the beginning of the story, but through the kindness of Rapunzel, he comes to make friends with him at the end. Probably my favorite subplot of the movie.

Random Thought(s): "Did I ever tell you that I have a thing for brunettes?" I've mentioned before that I have a thing for a woman with green eyes. Well, to be more specific, I have a thing for green-eyed brunettes with short(ish) hair, because I thought the post-haircut Rapunzel was absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. Significantly more so than pre-haircut Rapunzel. Also, the piano wasn't invented until the 18th century and Mozart didn't live until the latter-half of that century. Finally, this movie cost $260 (m) for Disney to produce, and for that kind of money, it better be that good.



Overall Grade: A

Yeah, I definitely would have picked the action-packed, PG13-rated, violent babefest to come out on top at the end of the day. However, if you've looked at my bracket, you'd know that I'm not exactly on a prophetic hot streak.

Y?

I've been thinking about the reasons why I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to BYU for grad school. BYU is cheaper than any other school to which I've applied (as the tools who wish they could go to USC know very well,) and I already have a healthy number of friends there who would be there for the whole three semesters of my grad program. However, there are some solid reasons why I wouldn't necessarily want to go back.

1. There's a reason I didn't get married in 3 years as an undergrad. This negates one of the biggest reasons I would return to BYU: WifeQuest v. 2.0.
2. The Civil Engineering grad program is not in the top half of US News & World Report's rankings. #73 out of 124.
3. Employers hate Mormons. While technically illegal, employers can discriminate against whoever they want, because there's no effective method of quality control.
4. They will have 1, count them, 1 geotech professor. Dr. Gerber is getting canned, so they will only have Dr. Rollins. Dr. Rollins is a quality teacher and researcher, but it's just him.
5. I couldn't augment my list of contacts. Going to a different school offers me the opportunity to get to know more people who know people.
6. I'd like to learn finite element analysis... but not from Dr. Balling. CE En 506 at BYU is a beast because it's taught by Dr. Balling and it's a combined class with continuum mechanics.
7. The Jimmer is a senior this year. If he had one more year, I would be much more likely to go back to BYU just to see the Jimmer Show.
8. There's no spring break. This week is spring break for many universities. Not having some time off is ridiculous. Call it conference prep week if you must.
9. The Beard Code.
10. The CE department doesn't have a coursework only option. Many schools have a master's degree that's just 30 hours of coursework. At BYU, one must complete either a thesis or a project.
11. The Utah legislature passed HB116, though Utah Valley's representative, Jason Chaffetz says that it has no chance of being implemented.
    

There are probably a few more that I may or may not add to this list at some point in the near future. I think this should do if for now.

(Image courtesy of the BYU Alumni Association.)

Edit: [New grad school odds as of 04/01/2011: Oregon State - 2:1, CU Boulder - 3:1, BYU - 10:1, Virginia Tech - 30:1, Washington - 60:1, UCLA - 60:1.]

Bracketology

My bracket(s) for the NCAA Men's D-I basketball tournament, broken down by region. If any readers have their brackets on Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, let me know, and I'll probably join your group.

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change this bracket at any time and for any reason.

You can click on any of the pictures for a larger image.

East

West

Southeast

Southwest

Final Four

The title I've given to this bracket is "2nd Law of Thermodynamics," which should tell you something about my faith in my picks. :P

Edit: [New odds as of March 16th, 2011 at 4:30 pm MDT, CU Boulder - 5:3, BYU - 5:1, Oregon State - 15:2, Washington - 30:1, Virginia Tech - 60:1, and UCLA - 60:1.]

The Moratorium

Ever since about April of last year, I've had the sneaking suspicion that there's a federal moratorium on giving me money. Much like the moratorium on gulf-coast drilling, all donations or compensations of cash flowing toward me have been banned. This moratorium extends to trade as well as wages. Let's examine the evidence, shall we:

• My last "permanent" employment was in April of 2010 with the civil engineering department at Brigham Young University. Though the moratorium may have actually taken effect before this, I was the only one who was willing to TA environmental engineering with Dr. Williams during winter semester, so they had to keep for at least a few additional months.
• Even though I was employed with tαr3eI for a couple of weeks during this winter, the compensation that I received was negligible and they dismissed me well before the January 10th deadline to retain holiday employees.
• I filled out over 300 job applications and got 3 interviews, all of which were within 50 miles of the campus of my Alma Mater. And out of these 3 interviews, zero offers were extended.
• I've tried to sell both my dirt bike and my engagement ring from fiancée #2. The price of both of these was probably under what they're actually worth, but I got about 4 calls between the two of them. (And on a side note, Craigslist is nothing but crime!)
• It's too early to call 'game over,' but universities and civil engineering departments seem hesitant to offer me any sort of funding other than loans. And btw, only getting money that someone expects you to repay isn't sustainable, just try paying off a credit card with another credit card every month, it doesn't work.

This is all granted that my mom has given me money in the recent past, but that's nothing unusual. I wouldn't expect her to stop giving me money now, even if there is a moratorium.

I'm looking at you Obama... What should I do?

[New Grad School Odds: CU Boulder - 2:1, Oregon State - 5:1, BYU - 5:1, Washington - 20:1, Virginia Tech - 30:1, UCLA - 60:1]

sqrt(Evil)

Holy crap, I forgot how much is actually costs to be a perpetual student. I made a spreadsheet of how much it would actually cost to go to grad school for a semester. I actually counted monthly expenses and then multiplied by 4, but that's a technicality. The moral of the story is that I can't afford this S#1+. Also the difference in tuition between BYU and CU Boulder is only about $3500. The difference between $42,000 in total debt and $30,000 in total debt is mostly negligible. I ask all 3 people who read my blag to pray that I get funding... I could really, really use it.

Yeah, seriously...

Edit: [New odds effective 12p EST 03/11/2011, CU Boulder - 5:2, Oregon State - 4:1, BYU - 5:1, Virginia Tech - 15:1, Washington - 20:1, and UCLA - 30:1.]

Nova Zeelandia

With the recent passage of HB116 through congress in the great state of Utah, I've been thinking of what I can/will do if the nation I've called home all my life goes straight to hell in a hand basket. I love the United States of America, but with the recent infections of liberalism into our political philosophy, I fear the end may come in my lifetime. I won't go into great detail, since I already have in this blag, but the purpose of a government is to protect the rights and welfare of its citizens even if that means denying those same rights to non-citizens.

Before we get too far into this, allow me to express that I do recognize the irony of emigrating from a country because it has too loose of immigration policies. I can appreciate immigration in many instances. However, these instances always involve the immigrant holding some skill or asset that would be valuable to the receiving nation, not just because they feel sorry for him or her. Additionally, I believe that all immigrants should be required to meet strict language standards before immigrating.

In the recent past, I've contemplated immigrating to Switzerland if things really started to suck in the United. Since I speak French, I would have probably moved to the Geneva area and tried to learn what German I could while I was there. Switzerland has, until recently, been a fairly prosperous and homogeneous nation that had some of the most relaxed gun control measures on the earth. However, recently, Switzerland has fallen victim to the same liberal ideals that are infecting the United States. Switzerland has allowed an influx of immigrants from both north Africa and the Balkans. Naturally, this has led to increased pressure to enact gun control measures and has made Switzerland no different, and possibly even worse off than the US in this respect.

I have also been contemplating another option: New Zealand. New Zealand has a fairly strict immigration policy that requires prospective immigrants to provide something to the country. This can come in the form of a skill that is in shortage in New Zealand (like civil engineering) or in straight-up cash. With the recent quake that rocked Christchurch, and the associated geotechnical damage that went along with it, I feel pretty confident that I could offer a useful skill to the country of New Zealand. They also require a strict set of English standards that require all prospective immigrants to actually be conversational in English before moving in. The country is also pretty well homogeneous, with about 70% of its residents being of European decent, the approximately 25% of Asians and Polynesians assimilating very well, and the remaining 5% being either multi-racial or identifying simply as "New Zealander." New Zealand strikes me as a country that is well united across cultures as opposed to one this is divided by them. Additionally, as trivial as it is, the political parties are correctly colored in my mind. The National (conservative) party is blue and the Labour (liberal) party is red. Ever since I started going to BYU, I've been conflicted around election day when I was looking for states to light up red.

Now for the bad news. There are a few things about New Zealand that I just wouldn't like. First of all they drive on the wrong side of the road. I really wouldn't want to relearn how to drive just because Kiwis decided to follow Britain and drive on the wrong side. Also, like most of the rest of the world, they use the metric system. As I've mentioned on this blag before, I really don't like the metric system and I don't think I'd ever really get used to using it. On a slightly more serious note, New Zealand has some pretty serious gun control going on, even though they're probably on the lighter half of the world scheme. Pretty much any hunting rifle or shotgun would be legal to own without any sort of permit. However, pistols are only allowed to be used in government-approved shooting clubs and must have a barrel of about 4 inches (10 centimeters) or longer. Also, any gun that can accept a magazine that holds more than 7 rounds requires a police-issued permit. You know how many permits the police are issuing these days? A big, fat goose egg, zero. This functionally outlaws any sort of assault-style weapon. On the whole, I'm not a big fan of New Zealand's gun control laws.

At the end of the day, things are moving in a progressivist direction in the United States, but they aren't that bad just yet. The gun control laws in this country would have to get a whole lot worse to cause me to want to move to any other country. I love this country too much to leave it for a minor infraction of my personal political philosophy. However, I believe this country is headed in the wrong direction and if it continues in that direction, I might just be headed to New Zealand or some other country that I find suitable.

Now for some good, old-fashioned entertainment. Caution: this video does contain a pair of expletives.

The People's Republic

This last Friday I went up to the People's Republic of Boulder for a visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder and their Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) grad program. Even though the city of Boulder is one of the most liberal cities in the United States, full of hippies, stoners, and homosexuals and is practically the opposite of Provo, where I got my undergrad, I really enjoyed my visit there. The CEAE program is perennially ranked in the top 25 of civil engineering graduate schools, and I can see why. In no particular order, here are some of the things that I liked about Boulder and the University of Colorado at Boulder:

• It's close to home. The location is totally out of control of the university, but it's important nonetheless. I grew up in the Denver/Boulder area and have made many friends nearby. It was good for me to live 500 miles away from my parents during my undergrad. I really enjoyed not having them looking over my back all the time. Now that I'm 22 and will be 23 when I start grad school, I'm not too worried about their hovering because we both realize that I'm an adult and I'm mostly capable of functioning on my own. It would also be nice to go back to my parents' house when I run out of food.
• The centrifuge(s). The University of Colorado at Boulder CEAE program has a 400 g-ton centrifuge that can be used for geotechnical modeling. The centrifuge spins around, applying a load greater than the acceleration of gravity, but always perpendicular to the model ground surface. This is incredibly useful for research and makes the University of Colorado at Boulder the center for small-scale geotechnical modeling research. They also have smaller centrifuges that are useful for smaller projects and instruction.
• Dr. Dashti. Professor Shideh Dashti is a geotechnical professor at CU Boulder who specializes in geotechnical earthquake engineering. On a side note, she is also the skinniest woman who I've ever seen; probably a dress size 0. I could almost touch my thumbs and middle fingers around her waist at the narrowest point, but that's tertiary. The real reasons that Dr. Dashti could influence my grad school decision is that her research comprises the exact kind of things that I would like to work with and she is an active member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI.) I talked to her about EERI and she said that she would love to start a student branch at CU Boulder if she had a student who was will to spearhead the group. Not only would this be a fabulous opportunity to learn, but it would look really, really good on the resume. Dr. Dashti was also one of nicest people I've ever met and one can tell that she enjoys what she does.
  
• The rest of the faculty. While I was there, I met 3 other members of the faculty and have corresponded with one more via email. The three other faculty that I was able to meet were Drs. John McCartney, Richard Rigueiro, and Dobroslav Znidarcic (who is very Eastern European.) They were all very personable and passionate about their research without taking themselves too seriously. For the civil engineering grads out there, they all kind of reminded me of Dr. Richards at BYU. I also emailed Dr. Ronald Pak after the visit since he wasn't there at the time and he seemed like a pretty cool guy as well.
• The administration's attitude toward alcohol. Granted, it hasn't always been this way, but the school administration tries to discourage alcohol use as much as they can. After CU Boulder was jacked up a few years back for NCAA football recruiting violations involving alcohol and loose women, the administration has taken a much more conservative stance on alcohol consumption. As with many other universities, the students don't exactly share this view. In the civil engineering computer lab, I found a drained six pack of Coors in the recycle bins (like I said, liberals.) However, the CEAE department was not handing out beer, like another University that I've recently visited.
• The campus looks familiar. Much like the campus of BYU, CU Boulder has a mountain backdrop and very few roads crossing campus. The campus was also built like a hospital, (on a funds-available basis), which means there's no easy way to get from one end of campus to the other. While at BYU I kind of got used to a campus that felt this way, and I like that aspect of CU Boulder. The campus does not totally resemble BYU, since the university requires all buildings to be covered in at least a certain proportion of red sandstone. The buildings all kind of look the same. However, I'm okay with this inasmuch I won't have to find buildings other than the engineering center all that often.
• The football stadium. I've rooted for CU football off an on for a while now, and I really like the stadium in which they play. In a way, it's like coming around full circle.
  

To be fair, I will also make a list of things that I didn't like or that are still unknown.

• As previously mentioned, the buildings all looked the same.
• The engineering center is a deep, dark labyrinth in which each department gets its own wing.
• There may or may not be any Mormons. I've heard good things about them so far, but visits to the institute and Boulder single's ward are in order.
• People may or may not actually stand up and cheer at football games. The student section looks good on TV, but that might not reflect the actual situation. Sadly I will have to pick a grad school before the next football game for any of them.

What this all adds up to is that I would be very excited about going to CU Boulder if I got funding there or if I failed to get funding anywhere else. Even though CU would be more expensive than returning to BYU for tuition, I think it would be worth it if I could actually find a job outside of Utah when I graduate. To the chagrin of my friends at BYU, the only way that I can see myself returning is if Dr. Rollins can get me funding by April. Additionally, the passage of Utah HB116 through the state congress makes me even less excited to return to Utah, but we've already been there and done that. If I was to make odds right now, I'd say CU has a 2:1 shot, 4:1 for Oregon State, 10:1 for Virginia Tech, 12:1 for Washington, 18:1 for BYU, with the remaining 90:1 chance going to UCLA.

We'll just have to see how it goes.