Too heavily restricted? I think so.

Well this is sure a nice topic, being that I would spend my whole life outdoors if I could. I love being outside and spending time in the great outdoors. Anything from fishing and hunting to four wheeling to just going for a run, I like doing it. Since I like being outside, I obviously have opinions about different aspects of the environment. My views though, are not necessarily what we can do to preserve the environment but the fact that there are too many restrictions placed by the government that prevent us from being able to fully enjoy the outdoors. People have become so preoccupied with protecting the environment that it is nearly impossible to find a place to take advantage of the outdoors. There are so many restrictions placed on us and so many places that are restricted to use that one has to travel to the middle of no where to find a place to play.

I understand that it is important that we protect our environment from being over used. I am the last person that wants to see our environment destroyed by people being careless. Without these restrictions, the outdoors would be at risk for this very thing. It probably wouldn’t be long either for that to happen either. It is important therefore, to protect our environment and place restrictions on us, as users, to accomplish that. Though I can see why people want to place such restrictions, there is such a thing as placing too many of them.

All of the guys on my dad’s side of the family go pheasant hunting each year. We used to go down to central Utah by Green River. We would load our guns and our 4-wheelers and head down for the weekend for a little bit of fun. I remember the first year we went down there, we looked and looked for different spots to go riding but everywhere we turned, there were posts notifying us that these places were restricted. We asked all of the locals and looked at all our maps but felt that it was a hopeless cause. After all of our searching, we finally found a few trails where we could ride. The catch, we had to stay on the designated trails and there weren’t very many trails to stay on. If you’ve been to central Utah, you know that there is nothing there but dust and sagebrush. I am so confused as to why people insist on protecting that land. No one ever goes there to admire its beauty and to be honest; it’s really not that beautiful at all. I would just like to be able to go down there and ride my 4-wheeler around and not worry about whether it is protected and if I am going to get in trouble by the law or not. All of that worrying makes it really tough to be able to admire the outdoors.

I love National Parks and feel lucky to live in Utah where we have 5 of them. I enjoy going there to take in the beauty and to hike the trails. I too feel it is important to protect such treasures but I feel the government tries to protect to many pieces of land. I have a cousin, whose family owned land in southern Utah; thanks to President Clinton, they are no longer able to use it. Clinton, towards the end of his tenure and under pressure from environmentalists, deemed that part of Utah as the Escalante National Monument. Because of this, they are no longer able to use their land and worst of all, no one ever visits the monument. The land is now just sitting there, not getting used.

I am glad that we protect our environment so that we can enjoy its beauty but I feel that we sometimes take that protection too far. We have been restricted so heavily, just to enjoy the outdoors has become a cumbersome thing.

ESA reform

I chose to analyze the article written by Ike C. Sugg, “The Endangered Species Act Must Be Reformed.” Just by reading the title it is obvious that Mr. Sugg is against the Endangered Species Act and what it stands for. Throughout his argument he gives multiple examples showing how the ESA has punished us as human and failed to protect those species that are supposedly protected by the act. Mr. Sugg makes use of different emotional appeals to try and persuade his reader to his view. He tries to make us feel sorry for those who were wronged by they Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), but doesn’t stop there. Once he has us feeling sorry for what happened, he turns our emotions against the FWS. He attempts to persuade us to his view by portraying the FWS as the bad guys who wronged these people in many different ways. He uses this moral issue to aid him in his goal; persuading us that the ESA should be repealed or at the very least, reformed.

Mr. Sugg starts by comparing the U.S. environmental establishment to the “kings, queens, feudal lords, and dictators” who, “used to decide who, if anyone, could use which resources, for what purpose, at what price, and to what extent.” He explains that those kings of the past determined everything. They had complete control over everything within the bounds of their kingdom. They could control what people did what resources they use. He states that the U.S. environmental establishment is now trying to do that exact same thing. They are turning in to their monarchial ancestors sharing their same view and desiring that same power for complete control. He blames them for wanting to control the citizens of the United States and what they do with their land. He is against this, because that is the exact opposite of the values by which this country was established. People emigrated here to escape that kind of rule. He blames this want for complete control for the rebellious nature of the farmers and ranchers who are against the ESA.

He then goes into different situations in which different farmers were punished for using their own private land. The FWS came in and fined and punished these landowners for supposedly invading on the land of endangered species. Not only were these landowners fined, but also they were forced to discontinue any use of their lands for agricultural use. These land owners suffered huge economic losses as well as being fined as result of the banned use of their land.

Mr. Sugg uses these two different approaches to attack the same thing: our emotions. In the part where he relates the government to the monarchs of the past, he tries to get at our resent to those who try to exercise complete control over us. No one likes to be bossed around and told what to do. He then tries to make us feel sympathy for those people who suffered do to those restrictions placed by the FWS. I feel he was extremely successful in the emotional attack. The stories may be completely biased but the average ready wouldn’t know any different and would mostly likely side with the farmers who were punished. I sided with them after reading the stories and want to get revenge on the FWS and I wasn’t even the one that they punished.

Mr. Sugg for the most part is very effective in the way in which he presents his argument. He is easily able to reach our different emotions to persuade us to see the ESA from his point of view. Though there are some inefficiencies, such as not defining what a success of the ESA would be or what it means for a species to recover, his article was fairly well written and efficient in trying to turn us against the ESA.

Y park?

There are many things of which I have an opinion on, I just can’t figure out which of the many I want to write about. Those who know me would say that I am very opinionated. I’ve got an opinion on just about any topic there is.

As I’ve thought about the many things here at BYU that bug me, I’ve decided to write on the parking situation. I thought about writing on the ever-popular topic of the honor code, but I feel it’s just like beating a dead horse.

The parking situation for undergraduate students is something that has frustrated ever since I started here at BYU. To put it simply, there really isn’t any parking, at least in the right spots. The majority of people tend to park on the south of campus, whether it is on the streets or in on of the parking lots. The reason is simple. Most of the lecture halls here at Brigham Young University are located on the south side of campus. It is more convenient for us, as students, to park on the side of campus where most of our classes are. In my situation for example, my classes are all on the south side. I do have a class in the JFSB which, though it’s more to the middle of campus, is still closer to the parking lots on the south side of campus.

Have you ever looked for a parking spot but couldn’t find one? Then you tried the streets of Provo and still couldn’t find one? I know it has happened to me. Imagine that you live in a house south of campus and the only place for you to park is on the road. Now imagine that you come home and there is no place in front of your house to park because every spot on the road is taken for the next 5 blocks. “Why?” you ask yourself. Again, the reason is simple. The lack of parking spots forces students to find the next best thing, an open spot on the side of the road. Who knows, that “open spot” may be your spot right in front of your house. I know that I have resorted to the roadside parking when there weren’t any spots in the parking lots. I’ve even gone as far as parking in one of the church parking lots with big signs forbidding any parking for any reason other than a church affiliated one. I justified it by telling my self that I was going to BYU and that should be church affiliated enough for me to park there.

There are those who will say that there is sufficient parking for the undergraduate student body here at the university. Well this is true when you take into consideration all the parking at the Marriott Center and LaVell Edwards Stadium. I’ve driven by those lots in the middle of the day and it’s true, there’s plenty of parking there. In fact, there is rarely anyone who occupies the Y lot at the stadium. It just isn’t logical to park there for someone like me who has all of his or her classes on south campus. Though there is ample parking, it just isn’t located in the right spots.

There are multiple solutions to calm the frustration that is shared amongst many of my fellow BYU undergraduate students. I feel that the most feasible solution would be to build a parking structure in one of the existing parking lots on south campus. It could be done during the end of winter and spring and summer semesters when there aren’t as many students on campus. I have seen this done at other universities and it seemed to me to be a good idea. BYU could charge for parking permits to help fund the building of a parking structure.

The parking situation for Y lots is a definite problem here at BYU. Many students become frustrated due to arriving late to class because they couldn’t find a parking spot though they left 30 minutes early just so they wouldn’t be late. There are many solutions to this problem. Why no one picks one and does anything about it, the administration only knows.

Well, what do I want to learn?

Well, to be honest, I am taking English 150 because it’s a GE and if I want a little piece of paper at the end of all this that says my education is worth something, then I guess I have to take this class. If only I’d have passed my English AP test in high school. I know it sounds like a bad attitude and that assumption is probably right, but when it comes down to it, I do like to study English. It’s more the grammar nonsense that I always hated in high school. I probably should have paid better attention then I’d at least be able to speak properly. Writing papers, I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I enjoy it. I do my best writing at about 10:00 pm. That is when things just flow out onto the paper. It usually has to be the night before it is do as well. That’s really when I excel in writing.

I guess that might be one thing I would like to learn during the course of this semester, to learn to write a well-written paper at a time other than the night before it is due. That is what I am trying to do right now. I can only hope it works. I like the art of writing and want to improve my skills at it. I want to be able to manipulate a sentence in a way that it does not come off as just plain and ordinary. This, like most things, comes through practice. That’s where I run into a problem. Writing to me sometimes just feels like busywork and I stop caring about what I am writing. Passion is an important aspect of writing and I have been able to learn that already this semester.

In high school I thought I spoke English fairly well. I could talk to an adult and never really had struggle for words. Then this thing called a mission happened. I went to Paraguay where they speak two languages: Spanish and Guarani. Some spoke only Spanish, more spoke only Guarani, but most spoke a mixture of the two. If you were on the border of Brazil then they would throw Portuguese into the mix just because they could. Well here I am a year off my mission and I still have their custom of just mixing the languages together. One would think that by now I should be able to speak, but I cant. I constantly find myself looking for the right words and screwing up my grammar as I speak. This semester I want to get a better hold of the English language in both written and spoken form.

Many times when I write, I find myself beating around the bush. In everyday life, I’m not like that at all. Just about everyone I know will tell you that I am pretty straight forward and like to tell it how it is. I want to learn to become more precise in my writing. I want to be able to express my ideas more clearly and completely without having to go to Canada and back to do so. Sometime being verbose is a good thing, other times its not. For those times that it isn’t, I want to be to the point while being able to fully express my views and opinions.

These are just a few of the things that I would like to learn this wonderful semester in English 150.

My life in a nutshell

Well it all started on a dark and rainy night. Alright, so it didn't but I figured I'd give it shot. It did start on September 18, 1984 for me here in Orem, UT. I was just born here but lived happily in a trailer house in Riverton, UT. Everything was going great when our poor little trailer house burnt down due to an electrical fire on December 26 at 3:00 am. Most of our things were salvaged but the house sure wasn't.
We then moved down the road to South Jordan, UT where I have lived the rest of my life. My parents are Wade and Annette Newman and I have an older brother, Curt (25), and two younger sisters, Sara (17) and Chelsie (13). I am 22 and returned from my mission a little over a year ago to the Paraguay Asuncion North Mission. I loved every minute of it, ok, every minute might be pushing it a little, but it was awesome. I played football and lacrosse in high school. I was in the A'capella choir. I have played the piano by force since I turned 7, but now I love it. I graduated from high school and left on my mission. Here I am now in my third semester at BYU where I am majoring in Chemical Engineering. You don't have to tell me I'm crazy, I know that already.
So there's my life, extremely exciting I know.