Boo!

So last month my friends and I were watching a couple of youtube videos by a group called mega64 including this and this. We came up with the idea that for Halloween we should be the ghosts from Mario and follow people around on campus, hiding our faces when they looked at us. Steve, Hyrum and I brainstormed about it and Steve and I worked on the boxes from Wednesday to Friday morning, and they looked awesome. We went all over campus, including the law library, Wilkinson center, and the Eyring, Clyde and Benson buildings. Here's a look at what went down.

Sometimes we chased friends

Sometimes we chased strangers

The Fire in the Dragon's Belly

I want to make sure everybody's aware of a great man who won the Nobel Peace Prize today for his outstanding fight for freedoms in a country hell-bent on keeping them from the people. This man would be Liu Xiaobo. He is preceded in winning this award by others like him who were defamed by their own country as terrorists and criminals (Yassar Arafat and Nelson Mandela). In 1989 he was in the United States when students began gathering at Tienanmen square. He decided to go back to join the movement. While in the airport a man asked him, "What do you think you'll do to help?" He didn't know, but he knew he had to go, and he came out of the incident as one of the leading figures of the movement, which earned him international acclaim but also a two year prison sentence. Nearly 20 years and two prison sentences later he authored Charter 08, which is a document addressing grievances to the Chinese government for human rights. This earned Liu an eleven year prison sentance, yet even greater international acclaim. I'm really happy he was honored as a Nobel Laureate today-I think it will make the human rights problems in China more of an issue on the international scale. Yet at the same time, the Dragon has become a monster of sorts. Their economic power has made them such a worldwide power player that other economies are dependent upon them to the point that there is no leverage that could pressure them to allow their people greater freedom. Whatever change occurs in China will have to be internal. Not some college professor at the University of Beijing, not some peasant's lawyer with a multi-billion dollar class action suit, and not religious following of a hundred million Chinese, but only a persuasive voice inside the party, that will only come to power, probably by Godfather-type action taken against the leaders of the party. Whatever does end up happening in the future, Liu Xiabo will be heralded as a hero for freedom.
On a separate not, when people like Liu win the award it really puts to shame certain laureates who win the award after doing jack squat for freedom, peace, or fraternity between nations (see 2007 and 2009).