Barack and Mitt: My view

I am sick of reading people's political post on Facebook so I refused to make any. However I do have some things to say therefore I am writing this blog post. First of all, I have not decided who I am voting for yet. I am leaning one way, which will be clear soon if it's not by my profile pic, but I am still undecided.

Wanting to head in different directions

I was accused recently of being biased for Obama which is probably true.

Why?

Maybe it's because of some t-shirts I have from the 2008 campaign. But there are several reasons. First, a little bit about my personal experience. I grew up in Cambridge, MA and as a result I went through a very liberal school system. I also grew up, and still practice, as a Mormon. (To see read more about this odd combination see several old blog posts). 

Personal

My family lives in the same stake (regional church area) as the Romney family. The closest interaction I had with them was that Matt and Tag, the two oldest sons, were leaders in my youth group while they were attending Harvard. My brother and I both had wonderful experiences with them, where they helped us learn and develop good character and Christ-like attributes. 

Mitt was also the Stake President (regional leader) from 1986 to 1994. I don’t really remember this very well because I was too young but there is one experience that has been recalled several times in my family. A teenager was trying to administer the bread and the water on Sunday in Church, which happens every Sunday. He had dyed his hair blue and Mitt did not allow him to participate even though he was dressed appropriately. The handbook for the Church says something to the affect that young men should be well groomed and clean. It could be argued that blue hair means not well groomed but my family does not agree with that. Soon afterwards he stopped coming to Church.

I have no personal experience with Barack. The closest I can get, is that we both like similar music; the Roots, Common, Mos Def, etc. If you like the Roots, Jimmy Fallon, or Obama check this out:

Governing

I have in some way or another been governed by both Mitt and Barack. Mitt was Governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007. During this time period I was senior in high school, went to BYU (Mitt's Alma Mater), and was serving a mission for the LDS church in Mexico City, Mexico. So for the majority of the time I was not there and therefore did not experience much of his term. 

I did however feel some effect. My mother works for Boston Public Schools as an occupational therapist. She is a member of the Boston Teachers' Union and gets health insurance through the schools. Most have heard about the health care system that was instituted in Massachusetts while Mitt was governor. I think it was a good thing. I also know that to help pay for it my mom's insurance was changed from an awesome coverage, Tufts, to a less awesome yet still good one, Blue Cross Blue Shield, however she had to pay more money. More money for worse coverage didn't seem like a great plan to me. 

Barack has been president for almost the last four years, during which I have been living in the country almost the whole time. 

The health care bill he spearheaded made it so that I could be on my mom's health insurance for an extra year, despite being married. Despite what Mitt said in Debate #1, there is no way they would have covered me being over 25 and married had it not been for the health care bill. Also, my wife, almost 24, can be on her parents insurance for 2 more years. 

Over the last several years I received funding for my undergraduate education that I do not believe would have been there if it had not been for the Obama administration. This assistance made it easier for me to survive and enabled me to afford to get married just over a year ago. Also, I was truly grateful that Barack helped end the war in Iraq, a place we never should have gone in the first place. I believe it was a waste of lives and money.

So one of the republican slogans is something to the effect of "Are you doing better than you were 4 years ago?" 

My answer is yes. 

I realize this is not true for lots of other people but I have seen many improvements in my life over the past 4 years, some of them thanks to the current administration.

Projection

I believe both Mitt and Barack truly love America and want to make it a better place. However their ideologies and solution techniques are quite different.

I think if Barack gets reelected he will still keep trying to do what he's been doing. He'll probably be more aggressive, as all presidents are in their second term. 

I think if Mitt gets elected he will try furiously to balance the budget, which is not an easy task. Say what you want about the ethics of what he did, he was a good business man. If anyone can do it, he's probably the right guy. But at what cost? Big Bird is enjoying a revival of popularity because of Mitt's comments about PBS in Debate #1. PBS will not be the only victim. Mitt said that for every program he will ask "Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it." If not he will get rid of it.

The question I ask myself is do I trust him to make decisions about what is critical? Is health insurance critical? Are support programs for the poor (or "pa-or" as Mitt kept pronouncing it in debate #1) critical? I know he said school funding is critical but what schools? Elementary schools? High schools? Colleges? Tuition assistance programs? How about science research funding? I would like there to still be a budget for  my master's program next year and my PhD program after that. Is that critical?

I still haven't decided between the two candidates but I'm leaning.

Postseason Celtics vs. Red Sox

First of all, you must understand I love the Celtics and I love the Red Sox. Having grown up in Cambridge, I've been going to games for both since I was little.

Second, you must understand I'm kind of weird. I'm graduating from BYU in August in Math. So sometimes I notice things that go unnoticed by normal people. But I couldn't hold this in any longer.

So check this out:

The postseason Celtics have gone, starting April 29th against Atlanta, 11-7. The Red Sox since that day have gone 16-19.

The nights the Celtics got those wins eleven wins, the red sox went 5-6.

The night the Celtics got the seven losses, the Red Sox went 4-3. They were 4-1 after the Atlanta Series losses.

Now I'm not saying the Celtics can't win if the Red Sox win but I won't be crushed if they lose when they play the Orioles on Thursday because I really want the Celtics to go to the NBA Finals.

I realize I could have done a better statistical analysis on these numbers but I don't think that would have strengthened my point much, if at all, and I've got work early in the morning. So whatever.

There is some small trend here and I know correlation doesn't mean causation but still...

Either way,

Go Celtics!

I Learnededed

Introduction

This class has been quite an experience. From the initial confusion as to what it was really about to the dispersed bits of confusion for grades being assigned, for what most of the time seemed like, arbitrarily. Overall I feel like I learned a good amount. It has not been Econ 110, the largest amount of learning I have had in one class, nor has it been Spanish 321 (RM Spanish), absolutely no learning. I feel like the greatest thing I have developed from this class is the ability to use the internet in a better way. Honestly, I have not changed what I use on the internet, except adding and using Google+ and actually writing in my blog, but I have changed how I use the internet.

Through this class I have developed the ability to use the internet to learn, connect with people, and share my ideas. I also learned through my class blog that people want to read what is trendy. My most popular blog post was KONY 2012 because I wrote it right as the Kony video went viral. This is interesting because I also learned through my assigned book, The Information Diet, that journalism is changing from being informative to telling people what they want to hear, which I think is very bad.

Nonetheless, I digress. I have really enjoyed this course and feel like I have reached a great level of aptitude on all the learning outcomes.

Here are the highlights of my learning under the learning outcomes sections:

I Invite Peoples/Woohoo for the Event

Pre-Event Report:

I like to invite people to things.

I did it for two years on my mission for the LDS Church, inviting people to come to church and read the Book of Mormon. I used to invite girls to go on dates with me. And now I've invited people to the "Digital Citizens Unite!" Event.

How did I do it?

First, I wrote a blog post explaining the event to people and invited them to come. I posted the link on facebook and google+. It got 16 reads so somebody might show up or check out the live streaming because of that.

Digital Citizens Unite!

So if you've been following my blog for the last four months I've been trying to connect past history to today's digital world. I've been doing this for my Digital Civilization class, a class at BYU that fulfills a general education requirement. It has been a pretty cool experience.

Half way through the semester we decided (well the teachers decided and we had to do it) to write a ebook that combines a bunch of ideas that have been developing over the semester. It was hard. We have a beta release of the book but it still needs a decent amount of work in order to be a good final draft.

We're having an event to present the ideas in the book on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 7 pm MST. If you're interested you should come. It's in 251 of the Tanner building on BYU's campus. If you don't live in Utah or are too lazy to get off the couch there will be live streaming available at digiciv.byu.edu.

I am part of the Arts chapter. I wrote some stuff that I thought was interesting. I put some of the ideas in recent blog posts.

We're presenting our ideas in the form of a poem with live and digital music, live and recorded dancing, and accompanying graphics. It sounds kind of weird. It is kind of weird. But it should be pretty good and it'll only be five minutes.

Each chapter of the book gets five minutes to present their ideas and these are the groups:

• The Arts
• Business
• Education
• Government
• IP & CC
• Inquiry
• Openness
• Science
• Ebook Team

The order is yet to be determined. It should be fun and there will be refreshments afterwards.

Whether you come or not, I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog and maybe even learned something. 

The Arts: One on One

Many of the arts can be learned easily through the diverse outlets available through the digital age, whether it be Youtube, Adobe, Paint, Garage Band, or something else. An argument could be made that this means that traditional arts education is unnecessary but this is not true. 

The problem with these digital learning resources is that there is no feedback, no personal criticism, which is essential for learning. 

The Arts: An Annotated Bibliography

I tried to find people who were interested in the arts and especially with education. I used some regular Google searches, fiddling with different key words, to find groups that fit this category. These were my findings:

http://www.arteducators.org/
http://artsusa.org/networks/arts_education/default.asp
http://www.yea.org/
http://www.ijea.org/

I also thought about people I knew. Being a music minor, I have had contact with some professors in the music department. Here are a couple of them:

Luke Howard

Eric Hansen

Claudine Bigelow

I also did a search on Google+ in order to find thought leaders without much success. So I used the library to find a book and used that to find people.