Bryan Tarpley

Moving On

2008-01-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Few things honor me more than my relationship with the men and women of Team Arequipa. I love these people, and they are my family. It is a bit misleading, however, to have my blog under their domain name, as I am no longer one of the field workers of Team Arequipa. Therefore, my blog has roosted in a new nest:

Halcyon Flies

Everything's under construction, so forgive the mess and broken-ness for a bit.

Cheers,
b

Peru 3: Liberation

2007-10-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

There is a reason that I have been putting off writing the final installment of my Peru series. We as a family have had to take a step back, take everything into consideration, and make a decision as to whether or not moving to Peru as full-time missionaries is the best direction for us right now. For various personal reasons we have come to the conclusion that the best way to honor God, ourselves, and the mission team is to back off and say "not now." Eralda will be the first to tell you that changing my mind about anything is like turning an oil tanker around with a popsicle stick rudder. Nonetheless, the tanker is turned, and now we must set a new course, which is mostly terrifying.

That being said, I left my last question hanging: "Why in the world would we evangelize among a predominantly Catholic society?" The first answer you will hear from most protestant missionaries is "because the vast majority of the Catholics in Peru are only nominally Catholic." This is a good answer. After all, Paul, the quintessential missionary, was all about bringing people to maturity in Christ.

I would like to offer, however, some additional answers to that question. When George W. Bush sold the Iraq war by claiming we were bringing Democracy to the Middle East, on some level (whether we wanted to admit it or not), something about that idea was appealing. What's so bad about handing control of the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people? Going into whether or not those were actually the intentions of the Bush administration when we invaded Iraq is beyond the scope of this post, as is going into why we are failing at bringing Democracy to the Middle East. The point is, at some level, it felt right. It felt like we were liberating oppressed people. It felt like we were offering the Iraqi people a chance to take control over their own destiny.

That same sentiment lies behind my reasons for wanting to evangelize in Peru. Off to a pretty bad start, eh? I mean, I just compared evangelizing in Peru to the Iraq war. Step back for a moment, however, and ask this question: can you divorce the idea of being a liberator from the idea of being imperialistic? I think you can. It's tricky though.

Not Replacing One Dictator for Another
You can start by being willing to let what happens as a result of your "liberating" happen organically, within the context of the place you are doing the liberating. To help explain this, I will employ a classic missiological analogy. Imagine the idea of "church" and all it entails to the Bible Belt South as a plant. Now imagine uprooting this plant, roots and all, and then plopping it down on foreign soil, hoping it will spread other plants just like it. This represents the imperialistic approach to missions. Now, set what I just described against the idea of taking a seed (the Gospel, without any preconceptions of "church") and planting in on foreign soil, allowing it to grow into something entirely unique and independent. Something appropriate for the context in which it finds itself.

Only Liberating Those Who Want to be Liberated
You must also think very tactfully about how you are going to go about presenting this seed. Are you going to manipulate people? Are you going to short-circuit their freedom of choice by presenting their current religion in a despicable light, and then presenting your own as the exclusive means by which to attain salvation? If so, then in my opinion you are not only taking advantage of people and brainwashing them, but you are also short-changing the Gospel's power to attract people on its own, without your sheisty car salesman tricks. The Gospel doesn't need to be pedaled like snake oil. If you are representing the Gospel in your life and being sincere enough about your love for your neighbor by being deeply involved in their lives, people will be drawn to you. It will be impossible for them to rub up against you in the milieu of daily life and not catch a whiff of that Aroma of Christ.

If I haven't convinced you that you can be a liberator without being imperialistic, then assume for the sake of argument that this is possible. The next question is, do the people of Peru need liberating? The answer to that question is equally tricky.

Peruvians Have Been Historically Oppressed
To the extent that you can judge these things with statistics, the vast majority of Peruvians are only culturally Catholic (nominal) and belong to a low social class (way below poverty level) which has historically made them vulnerable to political oppression and economic extortion.

Politically
For example, when election time rolls around, the best thing a political party can do for itself is go into a poor neighborhood and promise roads, infrastructure, etc. They then show up on election day with buses and cajole every living being in proximity to hop onboard for a ride to the nearest polling booth. Then, once the results are in, that neighborhood will be unlikely to receive diddly squat. The Catholic church, claiming 90% of the population of Peru as its constituents, is a formidable political force in itself. While I would greatly hesitate to say that the Catholic church has sought the oppression of the poor, it certainly hasn't done much in the 500 years it has culturally dominated Latin America to improve their situation (with the exception of the Liberation Theologists, who were mostly censured by the Vatican).

And Economically
Economically speaking, the government appears to be content to let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. What sticks in my craw, however, is the idea that one's petitions before God might be better received if a candle is purchased first. One might be protected by a saint if he or she would buy a statuette of St. Christopher for their car. Even their "pagan" religions are mediated through the purchasing of objects.

Between Peruvians and God
So what is the end effect of this? Standing between the average Peruvian and God are sacred things that must be purchased, particular votes that must be cast. God is just another fee to pay. Whatever happened to "come to me all ye who are burdened and heavy laden, for I will give you rest?"

What Liberation Looks Like
What if instead of a corrupt political figure swooping in to win their hearts, the embodiment of love, sacrifice, and "good news for the poor" became incarnate among them, becoming the hero they desperately need? No longer needing to be mediated through the Catholic church or political parties, they are on a level playing field with the rest of humanity. What if instead of spending their money on candles and desiccated llama fetuses, they pooled together their resources to help each other directly? No longer needing to pay the God fee, their prayers are just as valuable as those belonging to the richest Peruvian.

Peru 2: A Gringo in the White City

2007-08-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier I asked the question "what does a gringo have to do with the urbanization of southern Peru?" And before I answer that question, I'd like to show some ways in which lower class Peruvians have gone about helping themselves without the gold and golden intentions of foreigners.

In order to save money on food, the wives of an entire community will go into the city and knock on the doors of rich people asking for any leftover groceries. With these groceries, they make enough food for the entire community for one day, selling each meal to themselves for 30 cents. With the money collected for the meals, they go into the market and buy food for the next day, and continue this indefinitely, thereby setting up a communal kitchen.

For the week that a certain group of wives do the cooking, their families do not have to pay for the meals, and each week the cooking duty rotates to a new set of wives, and they keep track of this with a kitchen roster.

Another way in which the Peruvians are helping themselves is through what's called a "Wawa Wasi," which in Quetchua means "Child House."

Inside a Wawa Wasi you will have one woman

watching over the kids of the community while their parents go to work.

Lastly, Peruvians help themselves by taking advantage of the fact that thousands of gringos pour into their cities on the way to Machu Picchu or some other local attraction. They all have family back home, and they all feel obligated to buy little trinkets to affirm how much of a world traveler they are.

So aside from buying trinkets, how can gringos help? The answer to this question is complicated. To begin with, I'd like to make a distinction between two different kinds of "help." The first is relief, which is the most common kind of help foreigners like to give. This comes in the form of money, clothing, food, medical treatment, etc. For a rich gringo with more souvenir money in their pocket than what a lower class Peruvian makes in a month, it only makes sense that this kind of help should occur. Ultimately, however, relief is like a temporary bandaid placed on a festering wound. The second and much more rare form of help is development, which is an attempt at dealing with problems more systemically. The Peace Corps, for instance, tries to focus almost entirely on this form of help. It is rare because it requires a large investment of time. It takes the form of education (like sex education in AIDS-torn Africa), training (like showing Peruvians how to purify their water by leaving a bottle of water in the sun all day), microfinancing, etc. Development is the kind of help we would be interested in. One idea we had was to set up a kind of standard for trinket stores so that the customer can be assured that a percentage of the profit is going toward microfinancing. With these finances, we hope to empower Peruvians to open more communal kitchens and Wawa Wasis. We are open to more ideas.

My next post will be about evangelism. Why in the world would we evangelize among a predominantly Catholic society?

Peru 1: White City Story

2007-08-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to explain to someone why you would want to move your family to a foreign country. Especially when you drop the m-bomb (missionary). I wonder what goes on in their head. Do they think I'm a Western Imperialist trying to plant a Republican colony in foreign soil? Who knows. Over the next week or so, I'll be writing some posts and including some pictures in an attempt to explain why it is we are considering moving to Peru to do mission work.

In the Andes it is high and it is cold. The human body is not accustomed to this environment, and so the tourists are advised to chew Coca leaves or eat Coca candy.

I hope I don't have to take any drug tests soon. If breathing in the Andes is hard, making a living is apparently close to impossible. For this reason, the ancestors of the Incas move to the cities. Arequipa is one of these cities.

The reason why Arequipa, Peru is called "The White City" is contested. Maybe it's because the city's most prominent architecture is made out of white volcanic rock.

Others claim that a colonial era census revealed the city to be populated mostly by white Europeans. Either way, the name tells the same story of oppression. Either way, this man, a warrior of the highlands in another life, hews giant volcanic stones from a cliff face with a car axel.

He does this all day, and if he works efficiently, he can make ten of these blocks which will sell for 30 cents a piece. That's three dollars a day when the price is right. When he has time, he will find a piece of land and build a short stone wall.

The purpose of this wall is to claim the patch of dirt it encloses as his own. Over the years, he might take some of the blocks he makes and build a house.

It is estimated that 45% of the people of Arequipa (a city of well over a million people) live like this. This house will be his life's work. He will proudly leave it to his children when he dies. If his children can afford it, they will rent his body a burial plot. The rent is up in 25 years, so if they don't pay up, his body will be exhumed and cremated.

His children will band together with their neighbors and begin petitioning the government to recognize their patch of dirt as a legitimate neighborhood. The city might do this, and might begin offering their neighborhood services like electricity and telephone. If they dig their own ditches, the government might even lay pipe for water.

After another generation or two, this neighborhood might transform into something different.

So what does a gringo like me have to do with the urbanization of southern Peru? Stay tuned to find out...

Bringing Democracy to the Middle East

2007-06-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

Shameless Self Promotion

2007-05-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Any of you folks need any web design work done? I can program custom applications as well. I've got some time on my hands now, and I'd like to take a couple of private contracting jobs to keep me busy.

The Function of Woman

2007-05-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle.

The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament to our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would have never existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to the this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism.

For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks, his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is?

--Virginia Woolf

Happy anniversary honey -- thanks for enlarging me :)

a never can beauty

2007-05-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

it's on the tv. it's a sack and it's floating, caught up on a draft of air. through tinny speakers music plays and you're caught up too. the camera zooms. it's just this plastic sack and some bricks behind it. you pause the movie. the sack holds still, suspended in dead frame. the lack of music is punctuated by the hum of your refrigerator. it's out of context. it doesn't work. it's just a sack.

you feel scared, like it's the music or the way the sack was moving that brought you beauty. you are terrified that beauty depends on violin strings and camera angles. you want to be those things. to stare at the bag and have your mind make it dance, to squeeze a symphony from the synapses. but your head is dry. the fridge is humming. ice crashes in your freezer because a machine is making it.

you walk to your kitchen. your fingers stick to the ice cubes and they clank in the glass. the water you pour inside tastes like metal. you sit down. stare at the glass of the tv. in your head you stare past the glass. see the vacuum tube and the diodes and the circuit board. you follow the cable to the dvd player and worm your way to the disc, to the laser shining on the disc. you become the laser and read the ones and zeros. you decode them. you make the sack dance. you make the music sing.

to your surprise the disc continues well past the movie. the disc has entered the realm of metaphysics, and you watch as the ones and zeros tell you terrible secrets. you want to stop watching, but you are the laser, the unblinking eye, the perceiver of beauty. the disc takes you to the end of time. you watch as the final things are said, and the last light winks out.

it's just you now. the laser. watching for beauty. seeing nothing at all.

Important Medical Breakthrough

2007-04-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

Don't want to take time to address your relationship issues? Comfortable being a masogynist jerk? Want to have your cake and eat it too? Now there's hope! By slipping this pill into your wife's food, you can make her freakishly thin and amorous, no matter how you treat her! Act now and we'll send you an energy pill that will give her enough energy to raise your children, clean your house, cook all your food, and give you all the special attention you need!

One for the Kids

2007-03-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

Rasputin stands behind the lectern, thrusting his arms in the air, making obscure metaphysical statements in the drawl of his Czar era Russian. The audience in front of him indulges in the anonymity afforded them by the light, which renders them nothing but silhouettes to his squinting eyes.

His audience is composed of "The Departed," a society of earth-shakers who, as legend has it, have learned the Name of God, have cursed themselves in defiance of Sheol, and have stolen from St. Peter's grasp the Key to Heaven. Each of them, having faked their deaths or simply disappeared, take comfort in the shadows. Their chairman, an inky blackness in the far corner of the room, would be entirely invisible were it not for the cherry of his cigar, which never seems to burn down.

Each of them sits in shadows, and each of them stands in turn to approach the crystal lectern. According to the docket, Moses is slated to speak next and to deliver a speech entitled "The Backside of God."

Rasputin emits a wheezing cough, takes a sip of water, and then commences to sing the Russian imperial anthem in his grainy voice, as is his custom at the end of his speeches. A whooshing sound is heard above the audience's head, and they all look up. What looks like a heavy mace flies cartwheeling through the air, landing forcefully upon Rasputin's head. A fountain of tissue and brain matter shoots up, and then proceeds to fall wetly like chunks of Baklava onto the heads and laps of the audience.

"Charlemagne you horse's ass!" whines a high pitched nasal voice. Rasputin's headless body wanders aimlessly around the stage. "You know you cannot kill him!" The voice is immediately identifiable as belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, and his shadow is shaking a fist at a shadow behind him. Several other shadows stand and join in raucous protest, and by this time, Rasputin's body has tumbled stump-first off of the stage.

A voice as deep as the ocean booms in laughter, and the all the shadows hush and turn to watch the cigar cherry bounce up and down with each guffaw. The chairman has his laugh, Rasputin flails in vain, and the shadows slowly sit, one by one. None of them make a sound.

Important Definition

2007-03-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

soap turd:
miniscule
unusable
half bar
left frothy
to dry
to be looked at
dejectedly
next morning
to be dropped
more often
than actually applied.

The Last Straw

2007-03-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

I walk in this morning and log into my pretty user interface. I am greeted with a pacifying Windows Vista sound, and though I hear some unusual thrashing coming from my hard drive, I think relatively nothing of it. As is my usual routine, I start up iTunes and Outlook, getting ready to quickly knock out some emails and to settle into my daily routine by listening to the calming sounds of Don Peris's guitar.

I'm half-way through my first email response, when hark! BSD (blue screen of death) hell descends on me: my computer locks up, a blank blue screen rears it's ugly head, and my computer shuts itself off.

Great. My email is gone, and now I have to wait for the stupid thing to boot back up. My morning ritual has been defiled, and my already stressful day has received a sharp pinch.

The computer boots up without complaints, and I log in again, somewhat more cautiously going about my routine. I literally reach for my mouse to hit the Send button on the email I have finally composed, when BSD comes back with a vengeance. You can imagine the strength of will it took not to embed my mouse into the ceiling tile above me.

Repeat this scenario no less than FOUR TIMES. I finally am able to boot up long enough to check the system event log. Lo and behold, the USB drive I have been using as a ReadyBoost device has been throwing no less than 753 drive errors. Vista has taken my perfectly good $40 1GB USB drive and has destroyed it. I can't even get it to format on a different (XP) machine. It is now a worthless piece of plastic.

Sure. I'm upset that Windows has overestimated the ability of USB drives to be used to hold paging files. But I'm even more upset that my computer actually registered the fact that my drive was throwing errors, and yet PROCEEDED TO USE IT as RAM.

Perhaps as an isolated incident this would be an acceptable "oversight." And as a programmer, I understand the frustrations that change inevitably brings with constantly changing technologies. What I don't understand is how Microsoft spent 5 years to develop an Operating System less stable than Windows 95, and then forced all of their partners (like Dell) to sell their new machines with Vista pre-installed. What are we as consumers supposed to do? Just wait two years for Microsoft to get its act together before purchasing a new machine? I am a private contractor who develops ASP.NET applications which require Microsoft's shiny new resource hogging VS2005. Two years is not an option for this developer.

Microsoft, I am ashamed that I recently spent my tax return on purchasing a new PC laptop which came pre-installed with Vista. I am embarrassed for having defended you all these years to the Macintosh community. I hereby declare never to develop another ASP.NET web project. I hereby declare that my next computer (which unfortunately will be several years from now) will run Linux or Macintosh. You have lost another customer due to your foibles.

This is Bryan Tarpley, formally reputed to be a private ASP.NET gun-for-hire, signing off. Can you say PHP? I can. All day long.

Neon Bible

2007-03-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

The Arcade Fire has released the best album I've heard in 5+ years. I don't possess the kind of language or knowledge to legitimately critique an album in print. I do, however, have ears and sensibilities, and this album resonates with me on so many levels.

For those of you interested in the progress of my root canal, here's a reductive update:

I have discovered that I have the strength to conquer sin. It is a lie that man is incapable of resisting. No one is perfect, but each of us, by virtue of being made in the image of God, has been given the strength to resist temptation. This is why we are held accountable for sin (why Christ's gift on the cross was necessary).

I have discovered that my life is riddled with sin. I once made a list of the "big" sins in my life. I said "man, if I could just beat that, I would have it made." Now that I'm on the other side of that list, I can laugh at myself, because I'm looking at a whole new ballgame. I'm looking at sins that are much more embedded and harder to uproot. Things like losing my temper, laziness, etc.

I have discovered that I am gifted. I take pride in the gifts God has gifted me with. I design webpages. I write code. I write poetry. I write short-stories. I write academic papers. I write music. I talk about God. I teach. I do all these well.

I have discovered that I am wasteful. I throw away the gifts I've been given on goofy things because I am lazy.

I am afraid of prayer. The throneroom of God scares me. I approach him reluctantly. I feel filthy and unworthy in His presence. I'm also lazy.

That's it mostly. If any of you have advice for dealing with any of the issues I've mentioned, hook me up.

Fixing GoDaddy

2007-02-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

OK, another boring post.

GoDaddy is who we use for our hosting, and for the most part they've been cheap AND reliable.

For some reason, however, on February 20th, 2007 the bottom fell out of the custom applications I had written in ASP.NET 2.0, each of which used ODBC to connect to the MySQL databases provided by GoDaddy. I kept getting the following nasty error every 5 queries or so:

ERROR [HYT00] [MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver][mysqld-4.0.27-max-log]MySQL server has gone away

After scouring the internet and wasting three seperate tech calls with GoDaddy, I finally figured out what the deal was.

Apparently something changed (I suspect via Windows Updates on their servers) which broke ODBC's ability to maintain connections with MySQL. I finally tried the MySQL Connector for .NET and it completely fixed the problem with very minimal changed to my code. The MySQL connector has to be recompiled in order to get it to work with GoDaddy's server. Here's instructions I found from here:

Well, I tested it and sure enough, it works now. So thanks again to Alek and the Godaddy Hosting Team for taking the time to add support for the MySql Connector/Net provider under .NET 2.0.

As mentioned, I did have to place the recompiled assembly in the /bin folder to get it to work, but that is easy to do. For those who haven't already done so or haven't read about it elsewhere, this is how I recompiled the MySql.Data.Dll assembly.

I first downloaded the Connector/NET 1.0 provider from the MySql site: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/1.0.html

The Connector/NET provider (binaries and source code) were installed to the following location on my hard drive: C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Connector Net 1.0.7

I then went into the \src folder and noticed they provide you with solution (.sln) and project (.csproj) files for Visual Studio, so I downloaded the free version of MS Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/default.aspx

I opened the solution file with Visual Studio C# 2005 Express (I think VS did some conversion to the solution to open it in the new version, no biggy) and simply added the following to the AssemblyInfo.cs file:

using System.Security; // I added this after at the end of the 'using' section

[assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers()] // I added this at the end of the 'assembly' section

Clicked 'Build'->'Build Solution' and voila, it built the new assembly.

I located the new .dll file in the C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Connector Net 1.0.7\src\bin\net-1.1\Release folder. I know it recompiled it to the 'net-1.1' under \bin, but I don't think that matters - it seems to work for .NET 2.0 as well. If somebody knows differently, please let me know - I didn't see anywhere within VS Studio to change the compile for 2.0 specifically...

Anyway, I placed this recompiled MySql.Data.Dll in the /bin folder on my website and everything seems to be working now. I didn't have to change anything in my web.config file, just used the connection string Godaddy provided to me and tested a few queries, everything is working as it should now.

Once I referenced this freshly compiled .dll in my project, I simply replaced any references to System.Data.Odbc.Odbc with MySql.Data.MySqlclient.MySql, and compiled my project. Problem solved.

Again, not very interesting reading material, but I spent some good time on this and decided to share with the world.

Fixing Vista

2007-02-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

For all of you who read my blog for the good stuff, I apologize that there hasn't been much of that lately. In the mean time, here's some boring stuff.

Vista has proved to be a much more likable OS than I originally evaluated. Once UAC is turned off, it runs without the annoying pop-ups, and contrary to the Mac ad, the important pop-ups still come up. That being said there are still some things I've had to do to get the thing running correctly. One of them is getting Flash to work.

Because I was upgrading, I already had Flash 9 installed. In IE7, however, none of the flash stuff was playing. The weirdest thing was that everything worked fine in Firefox. Long story short, the way to fix this is to go to Adobe's website and download a Windows uninstaller for Flash (http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html#uninstaller). Once you run the uninstaller, go back to the Flash website and run the Flash install again. Voila! Problem solved.

Sorry this is minutia and probably doesn't seem very blog worthy, but I spent a good amount of time researching this problem and I felt it was worth while to share.

The Vista From Here

2007-02-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

There is now conclusive evidence to the fact that I am a masochist: I just upgraded to Windows Vista.

Before you write me off as a complete moron, here were my justifications/explanations at the time:

I took a backup image of my hard drive, so I can always go back.

I am the Systems Administrator, and I need to do some beta testing.

I am a complete sucker for eye candy and novelty.

What I forgot to account for was the fact that I am an inexorable force once I get my mind stuck on something. I have pounded away since Tuesday at this, and "going back" is not an option. Out of fear that my struggles might be in vain, I have decided to share my victories (few though they be) so that should any of you brave souls endeavor to follow suit, you will be armed with the wisdom gleaned from my mistakes.

Victory #1
I have gained this glowing pearl of wisdom: DO NOT UPGRADE FROM XP. The trouble of hunting down all those CDs and setup files is NOTHING compared to the hell of wrestling your computer into a state of functionality. If you do decide to upgrade for some ungodly reason, BE SURE TO TAKE A FULL BACKUP OF YOUR HARDDRIVE. I fully recommend Acronis True Image 10 for this task.

Victory #2
The first thing I noticed when I booted up was that Internet Explorer 7 hangs and then crashes. To fix this, hit escape when you open IE7 to stop it from loading. Go to Tools->Internet Options, go to the Security tab and uncheck "Enable Protected Mode." Not sure what protected mode buys you. It bought me a pile of doo doo.

Victory #3
Every bloody time I tried to move or delete a file, or even run a program, I got an incredibly annoying series of warnings. Save yourself precious time and click on the Control Panel->User Accounts. Click on "Turn User Account Control on or off," and uncheck "Use User Account Control." TRUST ME.

Victory #4
For some unholy reason my sound card started getting all crackly and staticy whenever Windows tried to play a sound. WARNING: this is a symptom of the fact that you are not running the correct sound card driver, and this will result in the Blue Screen of Death. To fix this you need to download and install a Vista friendly driver. At work I'm running a Dell, so I typed in my service tag and downloaded all the drivers off their site for Vista.

Some random observations:
The sidebar is a mockery of something useful. I mean COME ON! How hard is it to have a Quick Launch toolbar on your sidebar? Apparently it is impossible. There is an "App Launcher" gadget, but if you keep a collection of shortcuts in a folder which you then drag and drop onto the App Launcher, they look like trash and the stupid shortcut arrow takes up half of the icon space. Ugly and useless.

Aero is pretty nice. It can almost be too kitschy(sp?) at times, but it's definitely a huge improvement over XP's interface.

ReadyBoost is really sweet (it allows you to stick a USB drive into your computer and use it as extra RAM), but don't think that just because you have a USB 2.0 drive that it is qualified to be used for ReadyBoost. I have a Cruzer Mini 1GB and it works great. I have a Memorex TravelDrive 1GB and it does not pass the test to be used for RAM.

Overall
Once the turbulence of upgrading has been passed over, I feel like Vista will be a significant improvement over XP. The problem is I felt like I was relying on my Tech Bench skillz to even get the thing to work. If you are not tech savvy, DO NOT ATTEMPT to upgrade. You might can get away with a clean format/install, but remember to download Vista friendly drivers as soon as you can or else you'll be in a BSD inferno.

how sin feels to me

2007-01-26T15:57:00.001-08:00

these trips to the bottom
where the dwellers
have
no one to call
bottom dwellers
they live in cellars
they eat the soil
and crunch it between
earthworm teeth
and they're lively as
salamanders
blind though they be
they squiggle and tumble
over each other
to get to you
to give you one
greasy kiss
if not careful they'll
bore their way inside
like spagetti through
sucking lips
and live there chuckling
in your belly
while you take them
back to the surface
but the trick is
they've tied themselves
to their dirty friends
so you either
bring them all
or take one more trip
back
to the bottom

Root Canal

2007-01-18T13:14:00.001-08:00

There is a reason for my recent silence on the blogosphere. The last month has been truly introspective. Whether it was because my mother needed someone to dog-sit for her (which means I spend nights away from Eralda as the dogs wake Jack up with their barking), or because I've been deathly ill and had to stay in bed (I got strep-throat and a stone in each kidney at the same time), I've spent plenty of time alone.

Time alone for Bryan has traditionally been a scary thing. Being an only child growing up, I was forced to seek companionship inside my own head. I had the most vivid menagerie of imaginary friends! There was Paul, my sidekick who was (almost) as good of a ninja as I was, there was Victoria (my wife) who constantly needed my protection, Tip-O-Hare (who manifested himself in reality as a large stuffed bunny), and the list goes on. Somewhere along the line I became jaded with these friends, and began ignoring their appearances on the sidelines of my imagination. I wonder if part of the reason I hate being alone is because I'm afraid of their ghosts.

Ever since my falling-out with imaginary friends, alone time has consisted of distracting myself with whatever quick and easy waste of time available: surfing the net, eating, surfing the net some more, TV, movies... it doesn't matter really, as long as it doesn't involve being alive.

I don't know if it's maturity or what, but I find myself less able to let idle moments be spent dying silently of doing stupid things. I've been able to force myself to invest more of this time in reading good books, writing, coding, or playing the guitar. The payoff has been great. I feel much more... creative.

What is conspicuously missing for a missionary bound for foreign lands in little over a year, however, is any mention of spiritual pursuits. Sure, I read the Bible -- I have to, as I'm teaching classes at Church. Sure, I sneak prayers in the crevices between activities, but where are the intentional seekings of the presence of God? Absent. Why?

The Why, I am coming to find, is a very personal Why. It is a Why that is deeply rooted in who I am, who I'm afraid I am, and who I'm afraid to become. The Why, most simply, is fear in the face of God. People can be managed and shown what they want to see. God, however, is the awl that drills inexorably to my core.

So forgive my absence for awhile. I'm undergoing a (sometimes painful) Root Canal of the soul. I will be faithful to my friends, however, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you still haven't caught up with Web 2.0 and you're still manually visiting each blog you read, do yourself a favor and save the five precious minutes it takes you each time you check.

Resolution

2006-12-31T16:58:00.000-08:00

the hour nears
and with trembling hands
he begins to fold me
like a sheet
to be made small
to be slowly eaten
digested
or exfoliated
he pops me in his mouth
like a communion wafer
and i let his saliva
enclose and begin
to break me down
but i'm smiling
and from the gaps in his teeth
i watch the fireworks explode
because this is the new year
and he -- my consumer
is the new me.

The A List

2006-12-30T14:46:00.000-08:00

Lego had just come home from the groomers (who had basically shorn him), and he was shivering like a coke addict. This is when I decided that our dear puppy needed an extra layer. WalMart, I thought, would surely cater to my modest pet clothing needs. They no doubt have mountains of variety for poochy pullovers.

Thirty minutes later, I stared dejectedly at the selection in front of me. Apparently only female dogs get cold (or only females own Shih Tzus). Reluctantly, I pulled the manliest one I could find off of the hook and beeped it hurriedly through the self-checkout lane (I would be insane to let a cashier see this).

Now we have one warm, sexually ambiguous Lego. With all that bling on his back, it's no wonder he belongs to the A-List ;)

Call me Ishmael, Says the Book in my Lap

2006-12-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

The book topping my reading list over the break was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. There was apparently quite a bit of hype surrounding this book when it was published. In 1991, in fact, Ted Turner awarded Mr. Quinn half a million bucks (the largest sum ever awarded to a single work of literature) because it offered "creative and positive solutions to global problems." My buddy Aaron Milstead gave me a copy, and he wasn't the first person to recommend me reading it once I mentioned that I'm writing a story about Cain. I went ahead and read it, and the following is my critique. Do not read any further if you have any intention of reading it.

The protagonist of the book reads an ad in the paper: "Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The teacher ends up being this telepathic gorilla named Ishmael who reminds me very much of Beast from Xmen. As any guru worth his salt would do, Ishmael leads the protagonist through a maze of mysterious questions whose answers build on each other and eventually form an understanding of why the world sucks and what to do to fix it. Here is the gist of Quinn's solution:

To begin with, Quinn divides the world into two classes of people which he names the Leavers and the Takers. The Takers are those of you reading this blog. Any "civilized" person who relies chiefly on agriculture bought in a store is a Taker. A Leaver is a person who relies on nature like a hunter-gatherer, or who grows only enough food to sustain their needs, and doesn't impose their way of life on other creatures.

These two classes exist because they each are enacting a different story. By story, Quinn means metanarrative, or that which explains our origins, the present, and our destiny. The Taker's story, Quinn argues, is based primarily on the book of Genesis, in which Man takes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Quinn equates "the knowledge of good and evil" with "the presumption to decide who gets to live and who gets to die." Man then considers himself capable of deciding that civilized man gets to live (and expand), and that everything impeding this expansion (including nature) should be brought under submission (or die). This program of expansion, according to Quinn, is against the laws of nature, and will ultimately lead to the downfall of man, if not the extinction of all life on the planet. Hence, the Genesis account is really about Adam deciding he will expand beyond his needs (take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), and this will lead to his death (severance from the tree of life). He goes on further to say that the conflict between Cain and Abel is actually a conflict over those engaging in the agricultural revolution (Cain) and those who were animal herders (Abel).

The Leaver story is:

The world was not made for man.

Our origins were evolution.

In order for evolution to take place, species must obey the laws of nature (not take beyond what they need).

There are all sorts of species just waiting to gain self-awareness if man would just quit breaking the laws of nature and allow evolution to continue. Then man can evolve into something else and the other species (the dolphins, etc) can thank us later for letting them evolve.

The answer to all of what's wrong with the world, Quinn suggests, is that we preserve the Leavers that are left on the planet and try to learn from them.

I'm not going for accuracy with the reading above. If some of you who have read Ishmael want to correct me on any points I've missed/misconstrued, bring it up in the comments.

My critique in a nutshell, negatives first:

The panacea Quinn puts forward here is too simplistic. Obeying the laws of nature is a good thing, but I see it as only a part of the problem that Quinn is trying to address. Although he admits that his solution doesn't address things like "ethical" issues, I'm afraid the ethical issues are tangled up with everything else. He is guilty of a kind of dualism that seeks to seperate our "physical existence" from our "spiritual existence."

Quinn is way too idealistic when it comes to Leaver societies. Anthropological debates on the subject have gone back and forth, but there's data out there showing that Leaver societies are no more well adapted than we are to our environment.

His reading of Genesis is far removed from exegesis. He his appropriating a myth for his own purpose, which is fine, but he needn't be pretentious about it. One of the problems with his reading of Genesis is that he sets Cain up as representing the agricultural revolution against Abel who represents animal herding. According to Gen 4:20, however, one of Cain's descendants (Jabal) actually invents herding. He also relegates Eve to some metaphor for overpopulation. He seems to be sentitive to gender issues elsewhere in the novel, but I'm afraid he missteps here.

He swallows evolution whole and doesn't attempt to problematize it (e.g. Darwin's Black Box and the other issues which recently fueled the Intelligent Design craze). Also, in order to support the Leaver story, he makes the statement that there are species all over the planet on the verge of evolving into self-aware beings. I would like to see where he gets this data. Also, if the world is not made for humanity, how does he explain that we are the first to attain self-awareness? He seems to write this off as just chance.

The message, however, is a politically true message. I mean that in the sense that while not the most holistic solution to the problems facing the world, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Quinn did a great job of conveying the idea in such a way that anyone could "get it." Though perhaps annoyingly slow on the uptake, the protagonist takes his time learning these concepts, giving us plenty of time to digest them.

What better way to convey deep truths than from the telepathic mind of a half-ton gorilla?

The Jocket

2006-12-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

Today, my friends, I am a setter of trends, a breaker of the laws of pant. I bring to you a vision of things to come: THE JOCKET. Yes, the handsome man in the picture beneath these words is indeed me, and yes, that brown splotch I'm pointing at is a gateway to tomorrow. Even our dog Lego was atounded.

So how did this wonderment come about? Allow me to expound. Last night we were sitting on the couch watching Il Postino, and it occured to me that this little poet is frequently bereft of a medium on which to record his miracles of verse. And so BEHOLD! The Jocket sprang forth from the heavens and struck my imagination like a spring loaded Rock'em Sock'em robot punch!

It was deviously simple. Take a pair of pants that doesn't fit, cut out a square, and sew it on a pair that does fit. The trick, of course, is making that square the perfect size for a journal. Journal + Pocket = JOCKET!!!

So where did I learn to sew so well? I didn't. Eralda's mother is a wicked wicked seamstress. She pumped this sucker out in like 20 minutes. Little did she know that with every thread loop she was forging a legacy. Her hands will go down in history as the hands belonging to the first Jocket jockey! How joyous! To commemorate the birth of the Jocket I penned a pleasing poem:

sea change

this prayer leaves from lips
calloused by courser words
they return to me; every utterance
wriggling like tape worms
at the lobe of my ear

so i send these words
Christ words
savior words
hoping that
though they be
but drops of iodine
in the blackest sea
they might turn
the whole thing red
that crimson waves
might drown the dead

that these paper boats
i send aloft
might find their berth
in a gentle cove
of an island where
what drives me
what finishes me
is an infinity, Lord,
with you.

The Fountain

2006-12-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

Color us movie snobs, but there are few movies the Tarpleys consider worth adding to their DVD collection. Recently, we forked up the dough to go see The Fountain. We went hesitantly, fearing that yet again we would be let down by a movie who's trailer looked awesome.

Let me tell you that The Fountain is the best cinematic experience we've had since seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Here's why:

The cinematography is wicked. We spent a lot of time zoomed in on people's faces, which might have been bad if the acting was sub-par. Instead, we experienced emotions as they rolled like thunder clouds across the faces of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Each scene is deliciously colorful. And who would have thought that watching the sillouhette of Jackman as he performs Tai Chi in outer space would be strangely moving? I sure didn't, but it was.

I mentioned the acting above. It was superb. For those of you having a hard time picturing Jackman without an adamantium exoskeleton, let me tell you that he pulls it off masterfully.

The plot is intricately interwoven. It is delicate, and if you don't pay attention and listen closely, you will miss things. This, however, seems to have been done intentionally. You will walk away feeling like you could perform several disparate "viewings." In the end, however, the power and the message of the story is clear.

The soundtrack is eery and gorgeous. If you have any desire to go see this movie, be sure NOT to check out the soundtrack first. Part of the experience is being exposed to the original score as the movie progresses. After the movie, buy the soundtrack. Unlike most original scores, the tracks are between 4-7 minutes long and have great "relisten" value.

Much like the first Matrix movie, there is a significant amount of philosophy lying just beneath the surface. It's fun trying to decode Biblical, Mayan, and Buddhist references.

Hollywood has unfortunately labeled this movie as SciFi. If you're not a fan of SciFi, let it be know that this is more of a cerebral romance/philosophical epic. If you are a fan of SciFi and/or action movies, be warned that there is little of this. But you WILL NOT be bored. You will feast your eyes upon:

Mayan Indians

Franciscan Monks

Conquistadores

A Grand Inquisitor

Brain Surgery

Space Travel

Er... Botany

DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS of this post if you have not seen the movie. I am going to post my "viewing" of the movie. If you have seen it, I'm curious to see what others thought.

Disappointment

2006-12-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

as i walked up to it
the statue proffered something from its hand
no one else was looking
and statues don't proffer everyday
to get to it i had to wade through fountain water
slipping on pennies
getting jeans wet and so too my shoes
it was taller than me
so i climbed up
on one statue foot
and as i reached up
the hand released to me
what i had quested for
turns out it was just
a stick of gum
i guess i expected excalibur
and i told the statue it was a jerk
what did you expect, asked the statue
and it told me
as if i didn't know
that its heart was made of stone.

Jargon

2006-12-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

I've always believed in the idea that fields of study - whether we're talking Biology, Physics, Marketing, Conflict Resolution, or Papier Mache - all suffer from a kind of blindness. It's a blindness that can be blamed on jargon. As an undergrad, you feel pressured to choose a major. From there, the bulk of your learning experience is the molding of your brain to think in terms of your chosen field. This is most evidently done through the learning of a new sub-language, a matrix of jargon used to rapidly exchange ideas specifically relevant to that field. For instance, having been a computer science major, these two sentences make perfect sense to me:

"Dude, the reason your code is hosed is because you're trying to instantiate an abstract class. Polymorphism requires that you first inheret from that class, extend that class, and then try to instantiate."

The effect on people left outside of this jargon game is a sense of awe and wonder that you speak in such elevated language. The reality is that someone who was a highly formative contributor to the field came up with a concept which was then, for the sake of efficiency, given a fancy term which encapsulates this concept. This fancy term is nothing more than jargon, a vacuum bag compacting an ideology down into a nice, portable word.

Collapsing ideology down into jargon is useful for having conversations with people inside of the field. Unfortunately, this jargon becomes a barrier to the outside world which inhibits the influx of any radically new ideas. Equally damaging is the fact that if one aspect of the ideology comprising a particular jargon word is flawed or incomplete, it becomes difficult for a field to change direction. The flawed concept is part of their vocabulary and literally becomes how they think about a problem.

Western dualism is a perfect example. Ingrained in the way we speak is this divide between body and soul, subject and object, epistemology and ontology, eternal and transitive. This subject has been fascinating for a couple of centuries now for philosophers and artists.

What if the original concept on which all of this jargon is based is flawed? What if instead of two isolated entities in dialogue, we are comprised of a core similar to the idea of the Imago Dei which then extends up through socially constructed layers in order to manifest itself perceptually as something individual and entirely unique? The language of dualism becomes a hindrance to understanding this new concept. It is not some complicated relationship between body and soul, it is something altogether different. In this new model we are both "one with the universe" and completely unique.

Regardless of how accurate the above model is, it serves to illustrate that jargon can make it difficult to think out of the box. So what's the solution? In a word: Wikipedia. Whenever someone contributes to Wikipedia, they are (or should be) writing to someone they assume is outside of their field. There is an act of translation, an unpacking of jargon. Wikipedia can then act as a portal or common area for every participating field. Ideological blindspots can be pointed out, and new ideas can be injected into incomplete concepts.

I'm not saying we need to get rid of jargon, but by exposing the concepts hidden and locked away by jargon, people from the outside can directly learn and critique, thereby increasing the probability of things like:

A company working on ATM cameras stumbles upon a possible exception to one of the laws of thermodynamics.

An Israeli restaurant owner comes up with the world's most elegant algorithm for machine translation.

Capitalism Sucks

2006-11-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Top Evils of Capitalism
It replaces motivations.
It presents an illusory concept of "need."

Motivation Replacement
I have come to discover this phenomenon because I have been concerned of late with the idea of communal academic writing. I'll not go into why I'm so interested in this idea, but what I have discovered is that the biggest obstacle to, say, co-authoring an academic article, is the fact that most universities do not count an article with multiple authors for tenure, or if they do, they only count the first name that appears. In this philosophical era where the idea of one person's subjective perspective being anywhere close to reality is laughable, trying to address this by working with someone else seems like common sense. The problem is that when a professor goes to write an article, the motivation of furthering knowledge or providing a more accurate perspective is replaced by the motivation of getting tenure and providing a unique perspective which (accurate or not) will generate a lot of buzz.

Illusory Need
I have been supporting a household of 5 people now (my wife, 6 mo old son, and my in-laws) for less than $40K. We indulge quite a bit in eating out and traveling. Where is this hyper-inflated desire for a high paying job coming from?

A Thought
How about getting a job that just pays the bills and gives you the opportunity to do scholarly work for the correct motivation?

Obstacles to Said Thought
* No access to academic databases. Can you say EBSCO? Not unless you're attached to a University.
* How many people present papers at the MLA conference as independent scholars? Probably close to the amount of people who cross the Atlantic without a boat.
* If you can't find a job that allows for reading, etc. during the day, you have to cut into family time to do research. How is this any different though from grading papers at home?