Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

I’ve been thinking a lot about the horrible air pollution we have here in Utah Valley. Clearly, I’m a part of the problem; my SUV (a sleak new 4Runner, by the way) consumes an obscene amount of gas. Really. I should be ashamed. Or at least I should do something about it. In the postscript of my earth day blog post, I remarked that I had some earth betterment ideas. Top on that list was my desire to reduce the amount of gas I use. I brainstormed the following ways of reducing oil consumption.

• Ride a scooter
• Car pool
• Biodiesel
• Ride a motorcycle
• Ride a bicycle
• Telecommuting

Riding a bike seemed to me the easiest of the ideas. Irritated by another ravishment at the gas pump, I stopped by a local bike shop on the way home from work Friday and picked up a decent mountain bike and a helmet. Today I rode to work and back (six miles each way.)

What I learned from riding the bike:
1- My backside hurts (they tell me it will stop hurting in a few days after it numbs. Question: do I want a numb bum?)
2- My wrists and hands hurt from the downward pressure on the handlebars. Obviously it has been a while since I’ve ridden.
3- It is downhill from home to work. That means it’s a brisk 20 minute ride in, but a brutal 40 minute return.

Did I ride around the cubicle farm at my office once people left for the day? Maybe…

Once again I present this month’s photo randomness from my beloved Canon PowerShot SD800 IS. Which is your favorite pic?

Besides being a naturalist, geologist, and troublemaker, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was also a prolific letter writer. He exchanged over 14,500 letters with nearly 2000 people during his lifetime — with people like the geologist Charles Lyell, the botanists Asa Gray and Joseph Dalton Hooker, the zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley and the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.

Not content with just letters, Darwin also jotted down his thoughts in notebooks. From those writings he published the Journal Of Researches (1839), The Descent Of Man (1871), The Zoology Of The Voyage Of HMS Beagle (1838-43) and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Origin Of Species.

Cambridge University has digitized some 50,000 pages of text of notes and letters and books from Darwin and made them all available online. At this very moment, you could be downloading the text of the Origin of Species.

Among all these scribblings, exists a small scrap of paper upon which Charles listed his pros and cons of getting married. The year was 1838 and Charles, 29, already back from his five year world voyage on the Beagle, was contemplating marriage to his cousin Emma Wedgwood, an attractive woman nine months his senior. Fiercely logical, Charles produced a cost-benefit analysis of the situation. He divided the paper into two columns, “Marry” on the left, and “Not Marry” on the right and this is what he wrote:

Marry

• Children (if it Please God)
• Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
• Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
• Home, & someone to take care of house
• Charms of music and female chit-chat
• These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
• … it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
• Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
• Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
• Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London

Not Marry

• Freedom to go where one liked
• Choice of Society and little of it
• Conversation of clever men at clubs
• Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
• Expense and anxiety of children
• Perhaps quarreling
• Loss of Time
• Cannot read in the evenings
• Fatness and idleness
• Anxiety and responsibility
• Less money for books etc.
• If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
• Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool

He studied the list before concluding, “Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.” Less money for books, fatness and idleness and loss of time notwithstanding, Darwin proposed to Emma and they were married a year later.

Earth Day is an annual reminder of our responsibility/stewardship for this planet. Frankly, we haven’t been doing a very good job. Here in urban Utah, for example, the air quality is far from ideal — in the past eight years, Utah has approached or exceed the EPA standards for PM2.5 (15 micrograms per cubic meter) nearly every year. “Particulate matter is associated with both respiratory-related and cardiovascular effects. For instance, short-term exposures may aggravate asthma and bronchitis and have been associated with heartbeat irregularities and heart attacks. Long-term exposures have been linked to deaths from heart and lung diseases.”

The American Lung Association ranks Salt Lake City, Logan and Provo in the top 10 worst polluted cities in the country, at No. 5, No. 6 and No. 9, respectively. Clearly, there is a problem. The cause? Well, there was that Geneva Steel eye sore that, although happily demolished, has been replaced by other pollutant belching industrial plants. And then there are all our cars, trucks and SUVs which aren’t helping much. And all of that electricity! Provo gets much of its electricity from, get this, a COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT. Are we still in the stone age?!?

Do we care? Well, I know this much, when I go down to Saint George (and its wide open spaces) for the weekend, I can breathe much easier in the mornings. And when you crest the point of the mountain going to Salt Lake City, you can see the thick colored haze smothering the valley. We all inhale that suspended garbage. Every one of us.

So, what do to? Well, we can plant more trees, recycle, use less energy (compact florescents, etc), use renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro), drive less, pollute less (use less packaging), plant a garden, drive a hybrid (or, MUCH better, an awesome electric vehicle.)

But whatever the case, we need to do something. What are you going to do to help clean up this planet? I, personally, have a few ideas I’ll be sharing soon…

Go ahead, click the image. Then place your mouse cursor on the right hand side of the image on the new page.

That’s the question I asked Dr. Stephen Covey tonight. His answer, given with a big smile, “being married to my wife, Sandra.” Then he paused, his expression quickly changing, “She is having back surgery this Wednesday, will you include her in your prayers?” I assured him I would.

I chatted briefly with Covey after a talk he gave on “Six Events: The Restoration Model For Solving Life’s Problems.” He spoke about four basic human needs (Live, Love, Learn and Leave a Legacy), reminded us that life is short and provided two questions for conflict resolution:
Q. Would you be willing to search for a solution that is better than what either of us has proposed?
Q. Would you be willing to agree to a simple ground rule? No one can make his or her point until they have restated the other person’s point to his or her satisfaction.

The A/V guy was not having a good day and the video projector for Covey’s presentation refused to function properly. Still, Covey had all of his slides memorized and was able to recite them effortlessly. That’s pretty impressive. Strong work Dr. C.

Several years ago I was reading through a hymnal and remarking that nearly every song contained unfamiliar words. A few days later, with the help of my brother, I identified all of those words and set out looking them up in an 1830 period dictionary, the OED and Webster’s Unabridged in order to create a Hymn Dictionary. I typeset the book and sent the manuscript off to LDS publishers.

To my dismay, all the publishers were very uninterested in my idea. I’ve come to very much dislike publishers. I’m sure there is a special place in, well you know where, for those people.

With the advent of micropublishing, the time has come to at last finish the project. For that, I’d like your input on the title:

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Who said there wasn’t drama in the BOM?!? Here are a few of my favorites:

• 10- Night Attack — While enemy is asleep, sneak inside their city (Alma 62:23)
• 9- Bait and Bash — Use kids to attract attack, and then beat them down from behind (Alma 56:30)
• 8- Now You See me, Now You Don’t — Split your army in two divisions, hide and wait for the enemy to get in between (Alma 43:52)
• 7- No Soup For You! — Lay siege to the city and intercept the provisions (Alma 57:10)
• 6- Improv Everywhere — Knock off main guy, put on his clothes and impersonate him, make off with the goods (1 Nephi 4:7-11)
• 5- Drunk ‘n Dash — Get guards so drunk they pass out, then bolt (Mosiah 22:7-10)
• 4- Come Out and Fight Like a Man — Decoy opposing army out of key city, then sack it (Alma 58:21, 52:24)
• 3- Have Some More Wine… — Send strong libations to guards. Once they’re out, slip in and arm the prisoners (Alma 55:8-16)
• 2- Midnight Javelin Toss — While enemy sleeps, sneak into tent and toss a spear into him (doesn’t work if you’re angry) (Alma 51:34, 62:36)
• 1- Perfidy 101 — Make a secret surrender pact with opposing army to become second in command, poison the general, return home, stab the king, marry the queen! (Alma 47)

The American Dream, for many, is to get fabulously wealthy (without working too hard for too long), and then to spend one’s days in a lazy life of luxury. So… how do you know when you’ve arrived? That is, what does it cost to live extremely well? Fortunately, our friends over at Forbes keep track of the cost of typical rich-people items, they’ve even named the index CLEWI (Cost of Living Extremely Well Index.) As you might imagine, it roughly follows the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI), in that when the CPI goes up, so does the CLEWI. As you can see in the chart, however, the CLEWI has been rising more quickly than the CPI in recent years. That’s bad news, really, because it means that you’re trying to hit a moving target. Oh well, let the rat race continue! Here are a list of items included on the CLEWI, their prices and the percent of recent change in those prices.

• Natural Russian sable coat (Maximilian at Bloomingdale’s), $225,000, 18% change from 2006
• Bill Blass Ltd. classic silk dress, $1,975, 5%
• Gucci Loafers, $445, 9%
• 1-year tuition at Harvard, room, board, insurance, $45,620, 5%
• Two tickets, eight performances Metropolitan Opera, Saturday night, parterre box, $5,760, 6%
• 1 kilo Imperial Special Reserve Persicus Caviar, $9,800, 0%
• Dom Perignon, case, $1,679, 8%
• Steinway & Sons concert grand Piano, Model D, ebonized, $107,100, 4%
• Face-lift from American Academy of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, $17,000, 17%
• 1 oz. Joy Perfume, by Jean Patou, $400, 0%
• Thoroughbred Yearling, average price, Fasig-Tipton Saratoga summer sale, $289,310, -11%
• Learjet 40XR, standard equipment, certified, 7 passengers, $9,032,000, 3%
• Sikorsky S-76C++ Helicopter, VIP options, $11,775,000, 7%
• Rolls-Royce Phantom, $340,000, 2%
• Patek Philippe classic men’s Watch in gold (Calatrava), alligator strap, $19,200, 9%