The War on Drugs: An interesting debate!

Ron Paul, radical as he is, once again comes off at the voice of reason. He does seem to get a bit nervous with that last question though, hehe.

These colors don't run!

Here's the flag, just before I took it down on Tuesday afternoon. Every day the national anthem is played twice on BYU campus, at 7:35am and 5:25pm, to coincide with the raising and retiring Old Glory. As an ROTC cadet, "color guard" is one of my duties.

But I consider it a privilege.

The aptly-named Fox News Channel

Despite all the controversy surrounding them, I love Fox News.

Why?

All female Fox News anchors are...foxes! Here's a few of


Courtney Friel:



She's got a BA in political science from SDSU...and before joining FNC, she hosted a GameStop/EBTV segment about upcoming videogames (where I'm sure she appealed to the show's target demographic, hehehe.)


Patti Ann Browne:



She holds a BA (Fordham University) and an MA (New York Institute of Technology) in communications.


Jamie Colby:



Wow. She doesn't look half-bad for a 49-year-old. She's an academic prodigy too: started college at age 14, and graduated from law school at age 22.


Marianne Silber:



She's an alumna of Bellarmine University, though I'm not sure if she holds a degree.


...and, of course, my heroine Julie Banderas:



Wow, what a babe. I've blogged about her before.



In all seriousness folks, you don't need any significant journalistic credentials to be a talking head. You just need to look good, sound good and be able to read off a teleprompter. It's a different story when you're a news channel personality, meaning a person who actually has to sit around a table and discuss issues in a talk show setting...but as in the case of Miss Banderas, we've seen that one Fox News babe had the brains and spirit to trounce a media jackal.

Cannon Crew!

Every BYU home game, the Army ROTC brings a 75mm cannon to the stadium to a fire a (blank) round every time BYU scores. Check out the George Q. Cannon (it's named after an LDS Apostle):



Also, the Cannon Crew cadets run out and perform push-ups according to however many points BYU has scored.

I was lucky enough to be on the Cannon Crew for this game:



Firing the cannon is something that really riles up the crowd, and they always count along with us when we perform push-ups. Today BYU's opponent was USU. BYU has beaten USU every year since 1993, and this year was no exception...however, USU did put up a good fight and made quite a few interceptions.

Coolest thing of the night...the guest of honor, who fired the George Q. Cannon to open the football game was none other than Senator Orrin Hatch! That's right I got to meet Orrin Hatch!

Land Navigation Baby!

Last week we spent Saturday at Vivian Park, a vast tract of pristine wilderness nestled deep within the Provo Canyon. It's a popular destination for campers and backpackers...and it's also the site of the an Army land navigation course.

Here's how land navigation (or "land nav") works: first, they give you a map and a sheet with coordinates. You have to use your compass to find the points. On each point, there's a sign with a "code" that you have to enter in your sheet, showing that you've found the point. Simple enough? Here two of my fellow cadets are plotting their points and determining where they should go:



Once that's done, we're off:



Perhaps the biggest challenge of landnav is keeping track of how far you've walked.

We only managed to find one of our points (though I'm sure we were close for several others!) But, the scenery of the park itself was breahtaking!



Isn't that lovely?