Reader's Forum Roundup

It's the moment you've all I've been waiting for: the BYU Newsnet Reader's Forum Roundup! Except they now call it Letters to the DU Editor, but whatever. It's been years since Bricks changed its name to Club Sound...or In the Venue...or something...but I still insist on calling it Bricks.

Heather Sabin from Federal Way, Washington, writes:

Students at BYU need to be more friendly! I didn't think friendliness made a difference until a friend told me that mine made her think twice about suicide. She is creatively endowed, but in other areas lacks ability and grace. She seemed satisfied with her poetry and galactic novels, but was really depressed. The severity of the situation eluded me until I learned she had planned to commit suicide. She told me my kindness and friendliness made her think twice.

Ok, before you knock yourself out talking about how kind and friendly you are, take a second to think about what you just wrote: She is creatively endowed, but in other areas lacks ability and grace. Uh, thanks for pointing that out. I hope your roommate doesn't read the editorial page.

And speaking of not reading the editorial page, Jeff Hill of Centennial, Colorado, writes:

To all of those that are having problems with the required religion classes, I have a few suggestions. First, if you haven't been able to receive an A grade in every religion class you've ever taken, maybe a university education isn't the best option for you. Second, if you don't like the religion classes, maybe our church isn't the best option for you. And last, if you don't like the editorials being written, maybe reading the editorials isn't the best option for you.

Thanks for clearing that up. I knew I should've dropped out of school after I got that B in Old Testament...

And finally, from Paul G. Jaehnert, the voice of reason from Vadnais Heights, Minnesota:

The largest contributing factor in high drug prices is advertising and promotion - about 37 percent of the price we pay. Costs of research and development for new drugs doesn't even approach that percentage, since a huge part of the research going into the development of new drugs is performed by our National Institutes of Health (NIH). About $25 billion of taxpayer money goes to the NIH each year, much of which is spent on research for new drugs. It's the pharmaceutical industry's advertising, promotion and excessive profits, not research and development, that drives up costs. . . . It's time to rein in the pharmaceutical industry drug cartel and their congressional co-conspirators.

Ever notice how drug commercials always have really attractive people holding hands and laughing and flying kites on the beach? Who can watch those without thinking, "Wow, cancer is the greatest disease ever!" And if that's not enough, the pharmaceuticals also try to convince you that you need a drug for everything. Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? Hate your job? Can't cook a decent omelet? Well, we have a drug for that! Instant profit.

You're so special

So a coworker of mine was telling me how she's going to Tucson this weekend to attend one relative's high school graduation, and another relative's middle school graduation.

Wait a minute, I said. Did you just say middle school graduation?

The concept is foreign to me. Since when did leaving eighth grade count as some kind of amazing achievement? I mean, you don't even get to leave your parents' house like you do when you graduate from high school, or get to have your own place like you do when you graduate from college. You just get to move from one school building to another one across the street. No one should get a diploma for that.

Sure, it's great to encourage your kids and help them build confidence...but middle school graduation? It's things like this that contribute to the whole culture of praise, entitlement, and inflated self-worth that surrounds kids these days. They also deserve to eat peanut butter whenever they want and send text messages to their friends whenever they want. What's next? Here's a reward for getting out of bed in the morning?

It's like that cell phone commerical I hate—the one with the mom who has to dress up like a taco for a job she clearly despises so her lazy kids can keep on sending dozens of text messages every day? Don't worry, kids, instead of taking away your cell phones or asking you to contribute to the cell phone bill every month, we'll just sign up for this new plan that will add an extra $50 to an already hefty expense. Give me a break.

2 Questions for David Stern

I guess it's more like 2 topics to discuss with Stern, since each will likely end up having several questions that I think fans of the NBA deserve to have answered.

First topic: What is the league doing to prevent NBA teams from putting some unimportant player in a game to start an "altercation" to get important players to take a few steps off the bench? I read one ESPN columnist suggest that if that happened, it would be really obvious and the NBA would sniff it out and punish the team accordingly. My response to that would be: it just happened. No punishment for the Spurs and they got exactly what they wanted. In a league where the head coach has an extremely high salary and extremely low job security, there's a lot to benefit from having a couple of important guys on the opposing team sit out. Especially when winning a series may mean that a coach gets to keep his job. Also, it'll always be easy to find someone in America who's willing to accept a $1 million per year pay check to be a professional fan who's willing to start altercations on call. So what is the NBA doing? I see nothing being done and that's a problem.

Second topic: How can a player be punished for another player's action? David Stern's initial response to this would be that Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were punished for their own actions because they got off the bench. That's true, but that's not entirely why they are being punished. So I would have to start off with the incident involving Duncan in the 2nd quarter. If Jumaine Jones would've punched Elson in the face after they got tangled up, would Tim Duncan have been suspended? If the answer is no, I would call Stern a biased Spurs fans that's using his power to give his favorite team the best chance at winning. If the answer is yes, I would say why is Duncan being punished for the actions of Jumaine Jones? Duncan didn't do anything differently, but if you can call it an altercation, he gets punished. The same thing goes for Amare and Diaw—they were running to help Nash when it was a flagrant foul, not an altercation. When it became an altercation, they ran back to the bench. So why are Amare and Diaw being punished because Horry and Bell and other players on the court escalated it to a so-called altercation?

If he can't answer those questions well enough to satisfy the fans, he should be removed from his duties as NBA commissioner and he can take Stu Jackson with him. The NBA is headed for a downward spiral, and eventually some star in their prime will get frustrated enough to sign with a European team that's willing to pay NBA money for the recognition they'd get.

Way to be consistent, David Stern.

I wanted to criticize David Stern before this suspension came out, but I wanted it to be official. Horry gets a 2 game suspension, and Amare and Diaw each get one game. The NBA, several years ago, decided to come up with this rule that basically states that if you're on the bench and a fight breaks out and you step onto the court, you get an automatic one game suspension.

First, let me give you the prevailing argument for the suspension, then I'll explain why it's wrong. People say that you need to be consistent with suspensions. If you let Amare off the hook, how could you suspend someone later for coming off the bench? I understand that argument, but it's not accurate, it's not fair, and they need to change this rule, or at least the way they enforce it.

How do you enforce it in a future incident if you don't suspend Amare? That's easy. If players have a normal reaction to a fight, then remember (or have coaches help them remember) the rule and go right back to the bench without escalating the conflict or having any contact with players on court, then don't suspend them. Otherwise, you have the right to suspend them (assuming you actually want to keep this rule at all, which I don't).

Now let me tell you why this decision can potentially hurt the NBA. In playoff basketball, when you play the same team several times in a row, it would be beneficial to have a non-contributing player with no other purpose than to start fights. If some unimportant player on your team, (aka Robert Horry), decides to toss a player to the floor and can get a 3 second reaction from any player on the opposing bench (aka Amare and Diaw) then you win. The opposing team loses two good players for one game and your team loses one crappy player for two games. I know most head coaches aren't smart, but they can all figure this one out. I'm not saying this is what Horry or the Spurs had in mind with this play, but I can't completely rule it out either. That's beside the point, though. The point is, the team that was clearly in the wrong is being rewarded.

This goes way beyond sending in a "goon" to start a fight with the opposing team's best player, because in that circumstance, the player being attacked would have to throw a punch or participate in the fight in some way to warrant an ejection. These guys have been punished, essentially, for taking 3 more steps than they should have. According to the league, those 3 steps are worse than kicking an opposing players Achilles or kneeing the opposing player in the nuts.

During a similar situation in the second quarter, when a player from the Spurs dunked and landed on a player from the Suns, they got tangled up and it looked like it could escalate, Tim Duncan got up from the bench and took a few steps onto the court. How can you punish Amare for taking a few extra steps and not Duncan? Probably for the same reason that if Duncan gets ejected for laughing about a call, the ref gets fired. But if a ref ejects Baron Davis for clapping at no one in particular there's no punishment for the ref. I'm not saying that Duncan should be suspended, and I'm not saying that the ref that ejected him didn't deserve what he got. What I am saying is, Amare should not be suspended either, and the ref that ejected Baron Davis should've been punished.

GS Warriors are the Swampcoolahs

There's plenty of reasons to like the Golden State Warriors. For one, they just accomplished the greatest upset in NBA history. They also play a fast paced, entertaining style that's easy to enjoy. Their star player has an amazing beard. They have a player who consistently shoots free throws like this. The fans where bright yellow shirts that say "We Believe." They have no center and up to 4 guards on the floor at any given time. Charles Barkley hates them.

During game 2, I realized the real reason why so many people like them. And that is because they are the Swampcoolahs. Reggie Miller pointed this out during the game after Baron Davis threw up a pretty crazy shot that went in somehow. Miller said, "There's no such thing as a bad shot when you're a Golden State Warrior."

From the words of Reggie Miller's mouth, the Golden State Warriors are the Swampcoolahs.

Jesus Camp

Last night we watched Jesus Camp, a documentary about an Evangelical summer camp that teaches kids to love Jesus and hate liberals. At first glance it's easy to talk about how crazy and brainwashing the Evangelicals are. After all, the leaders screamed at the kids to feel the healing blood of Christ so their sins would be washed away, then encouraged them to yell out jibberish while in some scary emotional high, which left most kids in tears. They also taught them that evolution is not based on science, but is a belief that the liberal school system was drilling into their heads, as if every day at school they are being told that creationism is stupid.

After thinking about some of the things that I saw, I realized that many of the problems I have with Evangelicals, I also have with Mormons. I'm not sure why this crossover exists, but for some reason many Mormons and Evangelicals have the same faulty logic. One focus of the Evangelicals in the documentary is that we are at war, specifically with the Muslim religion and we have to train our kids to fight against this. I also have heard this same line of thought with Mormons, and I think it's racist and wrong to think of Muslims as our enemy. Another thing that was brought up several times was they inferred that this generation of kids is some sort of chosen generation, saved to fight evil in these last days. Mormons had been spreading similar rumors around, even attaching names of general authorities to made-up quotes, until the First Presidency came out and told people to stop doing it. This kind of goes along the same idea that we're at war--the Evangelicals seemed to relish the idea of war and loved to think of themselves as being strong enough to fight it. This kind of attitude seemed completely contradictory to any of Jesus' teachings in the Bible. The next resemblance is the attitude of Evangelicals that the way to make yourself better is to pray, read the Bible and go to church. Not to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and accept others even if they're different than you. When I was young, I knew that any question in Sunday school could be answered by saying, "Pray, read your scriptures and go to church," when none of those things actually directly help anyone. So my problem is, Christianity is raising a generation focused on doing things that aren't actually helping anyone except for, arguably, themselves. The sick aren't being healed, the homeless aren't being sheltered, the mentally ill aren't being accepted or treated, the poor working class aren't being represented. With all these major problems going on in the world and billions of people needing aid of some sort, the Evangelicals decided to focus their efforts on protesting abortion in Washington by putting red tape with the word "life" written on it over their mouths. They prayed fervently for a righteous government that would turn over turn Roe vs. Wade. They desperately want these unborn children to have a chance at a life. Once given this chance at life however, Christians seem to be the last to help those who are born into poverty or other hard circumstances. They reject a nation that supports welfare and will fight to keep these poverty stricken people from having access to any form of birth control. Big businesses that they support through their conservative votes will gladly take advantage of the poor working class, using loopholes and lobbyists to keep wages and benefits ridiculously low. But the liberals are the evil ones because they are abortion supporting murderers.

This generation of Christians seems to be more focused on putting themselves above other people because they have the truth, rather than helping anyone in any way. In my opinion, Christianity, and maybe organized religion as a whole, needs to be completely revamped or completely abandoned. I spend three hours at church every Sunday and the only people that may get helped from it are members of the Mormon church because I pay money to a fund to help members. Other than that there's not much that my time or efforts at church or church activities go to actually helping people, which is what I always thought Christianity was supposed to be about.

Biggest upset ever!

Not only did the Warriors upset the #1 seed, they did so in a seven game series (never before done by an 8 seed) and they won the clinching game on their home floor (also never before done by an 8 seed). There have only been two previous 8 over 1 upsets in NBA history since they moved to the 16 team format in 1984. The first was Denver over Seattle in 1994, which likely could've been the Sonics' back-to-back championships instead of Houston's if they had a best of 7 first round like they do now, but I guess we'll never know. The second one barely even counts because it was in the shortened season due to the lock-out in 2000. In both of those cases, they came down to the last possession of game 5 to be decided, in the first case there was an OT in game 4 that Denver edged out to force game 5, then another OT game in to allow Mutombo to scream on the floor holding the ball. The other one was decided by Allan Houston's shot that seemed to bounce around forever as the buzzer sounded.

This series was much different. Not only did the Warriors beat the Mavericks 4 times instead of 3, but they seemed to look like the team that had 67 regular season wins. No time in this series did I ever think, "Dallas is really the better team here." I don't blame it on Don Nelson's big brother syndrome (you know, the big brother always wins no matter how much better the younger brother is) either. I do give Don Nelson a lot of credit, even though I've complained about him ruining the Warriors forever in the mid-90s. He's completely redeemed himself in my mind--just by treating his players better he gets better production from them. Read what Matt Barnes has to say about his coach. So not only did Golden State beat the Mavs with a game buffer (4-2 in the series) but they did so in a 111-86 blowout. This will mark the first time that an MVP will have to take a break from vacation to receive his award since the 16 team playoff format started (assuming Dirk gets MVP).

I also think something should be said about the officiating in this series. Mark Cuban has been known to complain about the refs, but I don't think he can say with a straight face that the refs favored the Warriors. Just looking at the first half of this game, it seemed to obviously favor the Mavs. In the only two games that the Warriors lost the refs seemed to favor the Mavs. Baron Davis got thrown out of game 2 for a combination of two bogus technicals. The first was for trying to play peacemaker in a mild confrontation between the two teams. And the second was for clapping, not saying a word, just clapping. Then in game 5 Baron Davis was given his 6th foul while GS was only down by 1, because the ref thought Davis was trying to foul. But when you look at it, Davis didn't even touch the Mavs player. The refs getting rid of the leader of arguably the most dependent and emotional team in competitive games is the only reason the Mavs got a win.

Nobody gave the Warriors a chance going into the series even though they proved they could beat the Mavs. Even after a surprising game 1, many still predicted the Mavs in 5. After proving they belong and going up 3-1, still people were saying the Mavs would show they are the superior team and come back to win in 7. Now the Warriors move on and the Mavs go home for a long summer.

Indie rock music is the new pornography

During TNT's coverage of Game 4 between the Warriors and Mavericks, Charles Barkley once again demonstrates his struggles with geography:

I love Baron Davis, love Don Nelson . . . [but] Golden State as a city sucks.

Anyone remember when they gave Barkley a map of the world and a list of countries to identify? I can't recall the exact details, but he did something like place Bolivia in Europe.

Anyway, the NBA has come a long way since its lame-o "NBA Cares" Rob Thomas days now that they have the New Pornographers as the voice of the playoffs. Maybe Carl Newman figured that it couldn't be any worse than selling out to the University of Phoenix. Which can't be any worse than selling out to the Outback Steakhouse (Of Montreal), Mitsubishi (Flaming Lips), M&Ms (Iron & Wine), Nissan (Modest Mouse), UPS (Postal Service), or Cesar dog food (Magnetic Fields). And no, I'm not making the last one up.

I guess I don't really mind, since we all have to make a living somehow. It's just kind of weird.

(By the way, Carl explains the whole University of Phoenix thing in a pretty amusing interview with Pitchfork that you can read here.)