William Petruzzo

We invented this game:

One person is “it”. The other players toss a Frisbee to each other. The person who is “it” intends to tag a person while they hold the Frisbee. Or get the Frisbee himself. If someone is tagged while they’re holding the Frisbee, they are “it”. If the person who is “it” gets the Frisbee himself, the last person to touch the Frisbee is “it”.

When someone gets the Frisbee, they are only allowed to take four steps in any direction before they must throw the Frisbee to another player. If a player is tagged while they are empty handed, they are frozen and can’t move in any direction. If a frozen player touches the Frisbee in any way, they are unfrozen and able to move again.

If all players are frozen and the Frisbee is in the hands of the one who is “it”, he wins and the game is over.

Who says we ever get too old for children’s games?

A crew of friends took a trip across the Bay Bridge today to go on an adventure into the woods. I thought it would be fun to bring everyone along with me today. Six minutes of excitement awaits you! Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wEVwEQxCmY]

On a secondary note, I’ve never realized just how bad YouTube compression is, especially compared to the superior but yet unsupported blip.tv. Oh well, make well with what I’ve got, right?

I was keyed into an interesting online bible resource project, YouVersion, by a good friend. I’ve spent much of the day in and out of the software, tinkering with different features and just spending a little bit of time with the currently available “beta” version. After getting a little exposure, I decided it was worth writing a little about.

In short, YouVersion is an online bible and study resource with a focus on community and various types of media contributions. The site is currently being developed by LifeChurch.tv, an online church community. Besides having some reservations about gathering for church meetings online, I am always a proponent of enhancing free bible study tools in order to help all people grow deeper in their faith. Unfortunately, based on what is currently available, it appears the project is walking a dangerous line between relativism and truth. In any case, explore this with me for a bit if you will.

At my absolute first impression, I really hate the name. “YouVersion” smacks of a self-centeredness that people already have a hard enough time shaking, it certainly doesn’t need to be encouraged during their bible study. However, my hunch is that the “You” in the title, is echoing the YouTube generation’s desire to contribute and incorporate their own ideas and efforts into things and so in that sense, the title is apt.

Much like the LifeChurch.tv website, the design is slick. It’s easy to navigate and clearly laid out. You won’t find much in the way of clutter, although due to it’s early development, you might stumble across some bugs. I’m sure they’ll be ironing those out in coming releases.

The site is laid out in two columns. The left column displays the bible text. You can navigate the bible with a collapsible panel on the left, or switch between an array of different translations. Most of the popular translations are available (NIV, ESV, NASB, N/KJV, etc.), as well as some Spanish translations. Switching between them is easy enough and any highlights or notations you’ve made in one translation carry over to others. On the right hand side you’ll find all the extra-biblical content. It’s broken into three tabs: Community, My Content and My Journal. The journal section will allow you to quickly jot down thoughts, although the entries will not be associated with any specific verse. Under the “My Content” heading, you’ll have the opportunity to add your own notations, or link all kinds of various media to specific verses or sets of verses. You’re able to pull in videos from YouTube, images from Flikr, or links to external resources. It appears that eventually, the opportunity to link in your web cam and your own audio will also be possible.

Under the “Community” heading is where things become interesting. Highlight any specific verse in the bible text and you’ll find under the community heading a slew of user submitted information and media. Any time that someone makes a notation or submits a piece of media and marks it public, there it shows up for everyone to see. While sifting through different submissions associated with Genesis chapter one, I came across a Chris Tomlin video, a Matthew Henry and Scofield commentaries and a handful of perplexed bible reader’s thoughts. Also, as of right now, some parts of the bible are extremely scarce as far as user input is concerned. For example, associated with John 3:16, you’ll find a couple dozen entries. But associated with Romans 8:3 you’ll only find a few. This will certainly change in time.

The community section will also allow you to save other people’s comments and submissions for quick reference under you “My Content” section. There is a rating system for comments, as well as a “is this post relevant” link, although it’s not entirely clear what they actually do.

Toward the top of the page, you’ll find some ordinary links: profile, invite, help, and sign out. They’re all self explanatory, but the profile link I believe deserves mentioning. If you click on profile, you’ll find a quick snapshot of your activity as well as six tabs: profile, following, followers, contributions, tagged and starred. Things becoming notably hairy between tabs two and three. Following and followers essentially just mean “folks your watching,” and “folks who are watching you.” However, in the current church climate of widely accepted heresy, there’s something ominously foreshadowing about labeling them “following” and “followers”.

At the very top of the page, you’ll find other sections of the site: bible reader, favorites, contacts, history and groups. None but “bible reader” is currently available for use.

Last year, Bobby Gruenewald, a pastor with LifeChurch.tv, described the project as “[providing] a platform to learn from the experiences and perspectives of others from around the world in a non-threatening and easily navigated environment.” This may very well be the greatest danger of this software. Gruenewald explains that “the application can be used both as a personal study tool and a public expression of user-generated commentary.” While the possibilities really are extraordinary and the idea relatively innovative, man’s heart is desperately wicked and with no actual accountability, the project may simply be a minefield for folks trying to navigate biblical waters.

Truth is not decided by democracy. There are plenty of biblical examples of times when the majority was just dead wrong and often, they paid for it.

I think that the software behind this project has some incredible potential in terms of bible study resources. Perhaps with a qualified staff of content editors or with a huge database of classic and contemporary resources from the well trained saints, it could not only be highly useful but also highly trustworthy. The notations and media linking is clever, even privately useful, but publicly, I believe probably a novelty at best and possibly a dangerous one. We are not dealing with humorous YouTube videos here. We’re not trying to figure out the best way to spackle dry-wall. We’re talking about the word of God and it must be honored.

Only time will tell where this is going to go. Because of the massive emphasis on similar online communities, the potential here is enormous. But will it be a blessing, or a curse? Go ahead and sign up. It’ll only take a few minutes. Maybe you’ll find a very useful tool for your study, or maybe you’ll find a vein of study you really need to stay away from.

It feels something like my life revolves around cooking these days. Much of the time I’m not eating, I’m looking foreword to whatever the next meal is going to be. When I’m cooking the next meal, I’m starting to think about whatever the meal after that will be. I really am kind of a freak. Last week, as you might remember, I posted a painfully boring blog containing a recipe for chicken chili. I don’t really know if anyone was daring enough to try and make it (I hope you were), but regardless, being that summer is starting up soon and it’s time for tons of cookouts and pot-lucks and stuff (I’m not a 40 year old housewife, I promise), we’re gonna continue down this road of culinary and communal delight.

So, before I get into it, I gotta tell you, what I’m about to recommend that you cook is ridiculously good. I don’t use that word lightly. I mean it, ridiculously. If I may, let me demonstrate just how good I think this concoction is. If you look here on the left, you’ll notice my busted nose. Just a tad above that on the right, you’ll notice the bike rack on the back of my car. When leaving the grocery store after collecting all of the ingredients necessary for his meal, I caught that bike rack square in my face. As it turns out, I ought to be more careful when shutting the trunk of my car. I didn’t let that slow me down, no no, I just kept my eye on the unbelievably delicious prize: sweet, spicy, juicy, tender, pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. That’s right, your dream and mine, come true.

Here’s the beauty of this recipe. First of all, it’ll last you a long time. Make it once and you’ll be smooth sailing for a week or so. Second, it’s a manly dish. Third, it’s pretty hard to mess up (You’d probably have to be trying to mess it up). Fourthly, just in case I haven’t driven the point home enough, it tastes freakin’ awesome. So, without further adieu, let’s dive in.

Now, in this recipe I make my own BBQ sauce from scratch, which I think makes the recipe. However, if you don’t have any of the ingredients necessary for it, then you should just go and pick out your favorite bottled sauce.

The trick to really good pulled pork is letting it cook for a really long time. So you’ll need to get things started at lunch time if you want pulled pork for dinner. The pork cooking part is so easy, it’ll only take about 5 minutes to get started, then you can just leave it alone until its done. Here’s what you’re gonna need:

Pork:

• 4 lbs boneless pork (whatever is cheapest)

• 2 cans of beef broth (again, whatever is cheapest)

1. Empty the cans of beef broth into a slow cooker (i.e., crock-pot); if you don’t have one of those, you can just use an oven-safe pot (or a tin turkey roaster) and cook it in the oven. Without doing anything to the pork, put it into the broth. If you’re using a crock put, set it to high and put the lid on it. If you’re using your oven, cover the pot with a lid or tin foil and set the oven to about 250f. Now, walk away for about 4 hours.

2. When about 4 hours is up, fish the pork out of the broth and put it onto a cutting board. It’s gonna look pretty gross right now, so you’d better be okay with that. Using two forks (one to hold the pork still, and the other to rip it apart) shred the pork into little pieces. Don’t worry about being too tedious about it. When you’re done, you should have a big pile of stringy, gross looking pork, like on the left side of the photo below. Dump all that into big bowl.

INTERMISSION

Next we’re gonna need your BBQ sauce. If you’re not making your own sauce, skip this step and move on to the next one.

BBQ Sauce:

Here’s what you’re gonna need for the BBQ sauce:

• 2 cups of ketchup

• 1 can of tomato sauce

• 1 ¼ cups brown sugar

• 1 ¼ cups red wine vinegar

• ½ cup of molasses

• 4 teaspoons of liquid smoke

• 2 tablespoons of butter

• ½ teaspoon of garlic powder

• ½ teaspoon of onion powder

• ¼ teaspoon of chili powder

• 1 teaspoon of paprika

• ¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

• ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper (add a lot more if you like it spicy, try 2 tablespoons)

• 1 teaspoon of salt

• 1 teaspoon of regular pepper

I know, those are a lot of ingredients. Don’t be intimidated. It’s really easy and your measurements don’t really need to be super precise. There’s a few things on that list, you probably aren’t going to recognize and might not have on hand. Namely, liquid smoke, molasses, and paprika. If you aren’t a poor college kid living alone, you probably have the rest of that crap in your closet already. The BBQ sauce takes about 20 minutes to cook, so you might want to start cooking it just before you take the pork out of the cooker.

1. When making the sauce, just take out a big sauce pan (like pictured), put it on medium heat and mix all the ingredients together well. Once it starts bubbling, turn the heat down to low and let it sit there for about 20 minutes. The longer you let it cook, the thicker the sauce will be.

RESUME PORK

1. Ok, so you have your big bowl of gross, stringy pork. Next your gonna dump your BBQ sauce (you’ll need about 2 ½ cups, or around 18 oz) into the bowl of pork. Use a big spoon and mix it all up real good.

2. Next, grab an oven safe pot or tin (if you used your oven to cook the pork the first time, just dump out the broth and use the same pot). Dump your stringy, porky, BBQ-y mess into the pot and cover it again. Turn the over up to about 350f, and slide the pot in. After about 30 – 45 minutes, it’ll be ready to eat.

3. Grab a bun, or just a spoon, and dig in.

I hope someone is daring enough to give this a go. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you share it. I hope everyone is filled and encouraged by the conversations shared over it.