Matt’s Blog

After moving down to Salt Lake City from Logan (Utah) a few years ago, my friends asked me if I thought it was warmer down here. I really don’t think it is, but almost everyone I know claims it can be as much as ten degrees warmer in Salt Lake than in Logan. I think it happens because Logan tends to have snow on the ground all year and occasionally will have extremely cold days. But my contention was that on average, the temperatures were pretty much equivalent. The last time I fought about it I promised I’d look for some data and post it here:

Temperature Comparison

It’s a bit hard to tell from the graph (if I had been right I might’ve been motivated enough to overlay the graphs), but Logan does look generally 5-10 degrees colder. I guess I’m eating my words again, not the first time, could someone pass the salt?

I practically came running home from the Banff film festival this year.  It was so impressive I wanted to get some of it down, but of course, all the great things that it made me think of are gone now.  For those who have never been, Banff is a festival for films about the outdoors.  You mostly see great expeditions and fantastic stunts by such incredible people.  And the films are extremely well filmed.

I was able to go both nights this year and I’m really glad I did.  The first night was great, but there was a little too much x-games type of thing going on.  There was one beauty though, called Asiemut about a French couple who biked from Mongolia to India.  Not only was the trip prodigious in nature, but this couple was just so in tune with it.  They knew just what it was about, and why they were pushing themselves so hard.  The human spirit is just so incredible, and I forget sometimes what we are capable of.  It really makes me feel ashamed of my own life sometimes when I see these types of experiences.  Thankfully though, no one is out there alone, and it’s really humanity achieving such heights, not just one person.

Tonight the films were even more impressive.  Honestly it’s hard to get all this out.  I don’t even really understand what seeing these films does to me.  It just inspires me such that I can’t even put it down.  Just make sure and check it out, here’s a link: http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/festivals/2007

You might have to google a bit to find out where it’s playing in your area, but it will be worth it, I promise.  Especially if you’re into the outdoors.

Last weekend some friends of mine graciously had me along for their yearly tradition of building a giant paper mâché dragon which we parade around town to celebrate the Chinese New Year.  We garner many strange looks, along with a few cheers of encouragement.  Some years we get kicked out of establishments, others we don’t.  But it doesn’t matter.  This year was just as much fun as any other.  It’s good to have friends who are willing to do weird things.  I get sick of watching movies.

I also learned to bend a note on my harmonica.  I’m still terrible at playing the thing, but bending was a lot of fun to learn.  Once you start doing it, it comes so easy.  None of the tips I read online really helped me though.  What I finally did to get it working was to whistle, starting at a high pitch, and then lowering it (without the harmonica).  Once I had done that a few times, I just did the same thing into the harmonica, and it worked like a charm.  So, for those players out there who want to bend, ignore all the tips about “blowing down” (whatever that means) or moving your tongue back in your mouth (that is part of the movement, but not all).  Just whistle and pay attention to what you do inside your mouth, then do the same into the harmonica.  It’s easiest to draw hole four, and don’t use the tongue blocking method to produce the single note, use the whistle method instead.  That will get you better sounding notes in the long run anyway.

The Sea Inside is a film that not only is extremely well directed, but brings up important ethical questions about euthanasia.  I find myself torn with the final verdict of the film.  Our medical advances allow us to stave off death for so long, it seems almost that we’ve outgrown ourselves, and find difficult decisions that we don’t know how to answer.  Of course, growing as a society demands that we make such decisions in the best way we can.  This is definitely one decision that we haven’t made yet.  There may be laws in place in many countries, but how well they serve society is difficult to measure, since cases are few and far between.

The debate over euthanasia brings is interesting because it brings under question what we consider to be an individual.  In a society so centered around individual rights, I’m surprised that we are so against it.

Does an individual truly have the right to his own life?  What of the community that helped create that person, what of those left behind?  Yet most of us will never experience a life such as Ramon’s, thus we lack necessary perspectives to make wise decisions.  It’s a difficult decision that we may not find an answer for.  We cling to life so dearly, when some don’t want it.  We fight to stave off death, indeed the prospect of death can be a terrible burden for a conciousness.  To cease to exist is unfathomable.

I’ve often considered what I would do if I lost the use of my body.  Would I wish for the same fate as Ramon? or more like the priest, think of life as more than just running and jumping.  Evololution didn’t really provide us with the tools to make that kind of decision.  An individual is nothing under the great machine of natural selection, indeed death is the very gears in the mechanism.  There are some decisions that we may not be able to make, and how we deal with those will be very telling of our society.

I’m as big a fan of Douglas Adams as the next guy (count the words in this post if you want to find out how big) but in this case I’m referring to the annual science fiction symposium held annually at BYU.  It’s coming up next weekend.  Check out ltue.org for more information.  Sadly the website this year says no costumes or weapons, which is generally the best part, hopefully everyone quietly ignores that (not that I condone such behaviour, especially on BYU campus).

I’ve written about Neil Young before, and I’ll do it again.  I happened to finally see the film “Neil Young: Heart of Gold.”  It showed at Sundance last year and I was up there, but I didn’t get a chance to see it.  So I finally got it from Netflix.  The film is just a few short interviews of him and a few of his bandmembers before a concert they put on at Ryman Auditorium, followed by the full length concert.

Honestly, I didn’t care too much for most of the music.  The music isn’t what I like about Neil Young.  What I like is the man, I love a person who can just follow their passion, wherever it takes them.  Granted Neil Young’s took his into fame and riches, but he followed it nonetheless.  Even now that he’s old and his voice is giving up, he still sings.  And you can tell he loves it, because that’s why his music is so popular.  He’s one of those artists that can really transmit emotion through music.  His stuff isn’t just catchy tunes, it’s really transmitting feelings and thoughts and perspectives, just as good art should.  That’s why you can’t classify him into one genre of music, he’s all over the place, folk, rock, even down home country.  He doesn’t need a genre, or to be marketed.  The music alone is enough.