Taking a Trip to Italy

I'm off to Italy on Friday. It's my first trip to Europe, so I'm a bit excited. I'm coauthor on a paper being presented as part of a conference at Bocconi University in Milan next Monday and Tuesday. Yeongmi is coming with me and we'll be spend two days in Florence and three days in Rome after the conference is over.

The whole thing happened rather suddenly. I was intending on skipping the conference, but funding appeared at the last minute. Should be an interesting ten days. Leaving on the 9th, returning on the 19th.

Not Just Another Rainy Day in Seoul

We've had some wild weather here in Seoul in the past 24 hours (Tuesday & Wednesday).  Thursday update - Looks like it will continue today, already raining heavily this morning here in Anam, near Korea University.

I got soaked to the skin on my 10-minute walk up the hill to my apartment Tuesday afternoon, but at least I am alive.  Things were much worse in my neighborhood Wednesday morning.  I wore my rain gear and my waterproof  hiking boots on my walk down the hill this morning, but the boots didn't do much good.  The waterproofing just kept the water inside.

Comparing Yeongdo in 1980 with 2011

I served in the island of Yeongdo as an LDS missionary from May through November of 1980.  I served with Glenn Leewright, Peter Stewart & Jed Hill as companions.  Other missionaries that lived in the same house at the same time were: Chris Morin, Jim Falconer, Dan Mitchell, Charles Cook & 김학수.

I went back this week with copies of some of the photos I took then on my iPhone.  I went back to many of the same places and took photos of what they look like today, after 31 years.  Here a some of the comparisons.

Train from Provo to Denver, January 2011

Back in 2005, when I first came to Seoul to teach, I met Eddy Berry, a professor at Utah State University.  She told me about taking Amtrak from Salt Lake City to Denver and I decided if I ever got the chance I was going to take the trip too.

Since the annual American Economics Association Meeting were in Denver this last January, I decided that Yeongmi and I would get there by train.  The trip was a lot longer than driving, but the scenery was fantastic.

Korean Baseball Game

On Tuesday I got to attend a baseball game here in Seoul.  The Korea University ISC staff arranged for the professors to attend the evening game between the Dusan Bears (the home team) and the Lotte Giants who are from Yeongmi's hometown of Busan.  Our seats were on the 10th row or so, in the 3rd-base section with all the Giants fans.  We were in the lower section, right below the stage set up for the Giants cheerleaders.  Yes, they have baseball cheerleaders.  And yes, they need a stage.

Trip to Ulleungdo, July 2011

Ulleungdo is a small island 75 miles off the east coast of Korea. It is a fairly popular tourist destination in Korea, though the island only holds about 2000 tourists at any one time. The native population is about 8000. The name Ulleungdo is based on Chinese characters and it means “Island of Tree-Covered Hills”.

Crack Canyon 2011

I'm in Korea now teaching and in my spare time I'm trying to catch up on my blogging.

This last April and May I made two trips to Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Reef.  The first was on April 14th with my family: Yeongmi, Alan, Joan and Joan's friend, Sophie.  The second trip was with the ventures in our ward on May 6th and 7th.

A Nifty Way to View Rock Art

I just discovered Photosynth, a photography software package and online gallery from Microsoft. It turns out to be a really good way to display rock art. It stitches all the photos together for you, and allows you to zoom in on details. The whole panel or gallery of rock art can potentially be linked together and it gives you a good context for seeing how the whole is laid out, while still allowing you to look at the details if you wish.

I put up several "synths", but a good example is the one from the Grand Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon.

Camping and Hiking at Muddy Creek, April 2010

Last April during Spring Break I took a group of friends and family down to Muddy Creek in the San Rafael Swell. We drove down on Thursday, April 8th after my classes were over at BYU. The group was myself, Evan, Lynn, Jarom, Alan, Joan, Sophie White, her brother Zack, and my colleague, Mark Showalter. We took my truck and Yeongmi's CRV. We met Sophie's dad, Johnny, in Salina on the way down.

Backpacking to Neon Canyon, May 2010

Last May, my brother Kendall, my son Evan, and I backpacked into Neon Canyon for three days and two nights.

Neon Canyon is a box canyon tributary to the Escalante River and is accessed from the Egypt trailhead off of the Hole in the Rock Road, south of Escalante, Utah.

Trip to Horseshoe Canyon, October 2010

I have fallen far behind on this blog, so here is an attempt to report on a trip from last fall.

I went with all four of my children and my son-in-law to Horseshoe Canyon during the Fall break for the local (Alpine) school district. Lynn, Joan and I did this hike back in September of 2006 on one of our Daddy-Daughter Campouts, but my camera was in the shop and we only got mediocre photos. This time, I took the digital SLR and a tripod. We left home on the morning of Friday, the 15th, and arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 p.m. We hiked down into the canyon and visited all four pictograph sites: The High Gallery, the Horseshoe Gallery, the Alcove Gallery, and the most impressive one, the Grand Gallery.

Petroglyphs in Provo Canyon

I went hiking near Johnson's Hole in Provo Canyon with my son, Alan, on Saturday and we finally found the petroglphys there. Back in Fall of 2005, my neighbor, Don Roberts, and I hiked through the same area looking for them, but couldn't find any. I've been through the area again several times, but never stopped to look seriously.

What are the Odds?

What are the odds of having your house hit by a meteorite? Obviously it depends on the size of your house and the elevation and probably a whole bunch of other factors, including the length of time we're talking about. Suppose the odds are 1 in a 1000 over your lifetime. Personally I think this is probably too high, but maybe not.

What, then, are the odds that you would be hit six times? that would be 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in a quintillion. What are the odds of having one person in the world so afflicted by meteorites? With a total world population of 7 billion this turns out to still be approximately 7 in 1,000,000,000. Having something like this happen at random seems very, very unlikely to put things mildly.

Radivoje Lajic, who lives in Bosnia, has just had a sixth meteorite strike on his house. He claims that these are not random occurrences, but rather the work of aliens who are targeting him. Given the odds above, perhaps he is correct. At least it seems unlikely this is random. The aliens bit does not necessarily follow logically, but it is consistent with non-random meteor bombardment.

Lajic has put his money where his mouth is. He "has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment - which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands."

For the sake of science, I think Lajic should move into a new house and see what happens. If the new house gets hit, then the aliens are after him. If the old one gets hit, then maybe they are showing displeasure with its architecture or something. If neither gets hit...? Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

What I'm Reading

Recently Finished
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Course of Empire by Eric Flint & K. D. Wentworth **** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Poker Bride by Christopher Corbett *** - History
Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle *** - SciFi/Fantasy
Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Egyptians by Cyril Aldred *** - History
more detailed reviews later if I have the time

Reading Now
Dracula by Bram Stoker - Fantasy/Horror
Ancient Peoples of the Great Basin & Colorado Plateau by Steven R. Simms - History/Anthropology

In the Queue
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly - Horror/Fantasy
Bunch of stuff by H. P. Lovecraft - Horror/Fantasy
Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations by Paul Blustein- Current Events

A Classic of Rock Video

From the German version of the Disney Channel

Compare it to the original version here.

Political Culture is ....

The best description I have heard of partisan politics (broadly defined) today -

"This whole “debate,” if we can charitably call it that, is a mess of straw men, hypocrisy, stupidity, and reflexive defenses of one’s own tribe. It has nothing to do with fairness, journalistic ethics, or the immorality of dragging the reputations of innocents through the mud in an attempt at scoring political points."

From Michael C. Moynihan's article in Reason.


Peggy Noonan had a great op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Shirley Sherrod mess that is well worth reading.

The whole episode was ugly and tragic, but if people will listen to Sherrod's message, maybe it wasn't a total loss.

The Marshmallow Test

Sit a child in a room with a marshmallow. Tell the child they can either eat it or wait and get another one. Leave and film them. This is what you get. Very entertaining, in large part because we can all relate to the torment the child is going through.

The New Yorker has an article on these tests discussing how success at delaying gratification as a child is a good predictor of success later in life.

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution via Arbesman.net.

What's Wrong with This Screen Capture?

This page links to an article about a Vietnamese mail order bride who was killed by her Korean husband a week after she arrived in the country.


What is wrong with the page? It's the ads, stupid!

A Weekend Trip to Nanjing

I just got back (to Seoul where I am now) after spending a weekend (Thursday evening through Sunday morning) in Nanjing. I taught and the whole family lived there during the 2000-01 academic year. We arrived there at the end of August 2000, so it's been almost 10 years.

I traveled there with Ed Monsour, one of the two people I went to Mongolia with last summer. Tom Doherty, the other traveler was planning on coming, but his visa didn't work out (More on that below).

Some quick thoughts on Nanjing now versus Nanjing when I was there. First, the city is much more modern and feels a lot bigger. There is an 89-story building on the north side of the Gulou traffic circle, for example (information here). The city has a lot more car traffic and a lot less bicycle traffic; and much of the bike traffic is now motor scooters, which were rare when we were there. The city is also brighter. More storefronts with neon or lighted signs. And a lot more small storefronts than I remember from before. Though, this could be because we were staying in a different part of town.

Neon Canyon in May

BYU lets out in April and I am done teaching for the academic year. My son, Evan, and I are off to the canyons of the Escalante again. The Alpine School District is still in session until the end of May, so this outing will not involve my younger kids.

Rather than head back to lower Coyote Gulch (for the 4th time since last April), we are planning on visiting Neon Canyon and the slot canyons in the upper part of Coyote Gulch.

We will be heading out on a Thursday early in the morning and the plan is to make it to the trailhead at Egypt and hike the 3 to 4 miles down to the Escalante River to camp near Neon Canyon. We'll explore it the next day, along with Ringtail Slot and then hike back to the truck. The hike is detailed nicely here. Details of some possible technical canyoneering (which we will not be doing) are available here and here.

We'll car camp somewhere along the Hole-in-the-Rock road on Friday night and head to the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch to visit the slot canyons there. There are four to visit, Dry Fork, Peek-a-boo, Spooky Gulch, and Brimstone Gulch. Further downstream from Brimstone there is also some rock art, which we may visit if we have time.