Suffer The Innocents - Oh, really?

I pick up a copy of San Diego CityBEAT every week (religiously, you could say) and I usually agree or sympathize with the opinions of the editor. Not this week.

Apparently, the regular editor was on vacation so they had a guest "opinion" from Carl Luna today. His editorial, Suffer the innocents: The Diocese's other victims, concerns the liabilities stemming from 150 lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, their filing for bankruptcy protection, and his feeling that his (Mr. Luna's) rights and interests should be taken into consideration by the court:

"But it is my hope that, in achieving justice, the rights and interests of the hundreds of thousands of people who make up this diocese will also be taken into consideration."

Go and read the editorial and then read my letter to the editor:

"WTF? As you've testified in your editorial, you've spent thousands of dollars and hours over the last 18 years building your diocese and now that that same diocese has been found to be harboring and supporting the crimes of its priests, you don't think your diocese should be held responsible for compensating the victims? And your reason for thinking that your diocese should not be responsible is because you are innocent? Are you insane? You and the "hundreds of thousands of people who make up this diocese" are directly responsible for this mess. You funded it, you supported it and you made it what it is today. If you hadn't had such blind "faith" in your leaders, you wouldn't be in this mess. Claiming innocence at this point is just plain selfish.

If you really feel that you are innocent and that you were tricked or misled by your leaders, then leave your diocese and sue the Catholic church to get your money back. Otherwise, quit complaining and own up to your own responsibility for this mess."

For more background information:

• Catholic diocese weighs bankruptcy
• Google News Search for "San Diego" "Catholic diocese"
  

Technorati Tags: religion, news, San Diego, Catholic diocese, Catholic

Movie Catch-up

Kara and I caught two movies at the local all-digital projection cinema this weekend so I thought I would post my thoughts on the movies we've seen in the last year.

First up is the most recent movie, the one we saw this afternoon: Knocked Up. We had both been looking forward to seeing this and it did not disappoint. It was great to see some of the freaks and geeks back together again and Judd Apatow is really good at writing dialog and scenes that look and sound like people we know. I got the feeling, though, that many in the audience didn't quite get "it" with a few of the scenes that Kara and I were loudly laughing about. Maybe it's generational or maybe we're just more in tune with the movie-fan subculture.

Spoiler Alert: The following may contain spoilers, especially if you haven't seen Little Children - read at your own risk

Yesterday, we saw Pirates 3. I liked the first pirates OK but Kara really liked it. The second one... we both thought it sucked. The 3rd one was much better than the 2nd, but that's faint praise. I didn't remember any of the plot from the 2nd installment so I was completely lost for the first hour of this one. The battle scenes (which, is really 90% of the movie) had no excitement to them. The only truly interesting thing in the movie were the scenes with multiple Johnny Depp and even those scenes got tired after a few times. If you haven't seen the second movie, don't bother with the third. Just wait until next year when they show it non-stop on HBO.

Between the two big-screen flicks this weekend, we watched Little Children on DVD. It was an interesting movie, worth the rental, but I don't quite get all the critical acclaim heaped on it. Jackie Earle Haley was great, but I think he got nominated for best supporting actor half because he did a great acting job in both this and All the King's Men and half because his character castrated himself with a butcher knife (see Mel Gibson's career for reference).

On a side note, I remembered Jackie Earle Haley as a child young adult actor in the great coming-of-age movie from 1979, Breaking Away. If you haven't seen Breaking Away, go out and rent it.

Getting back to movies we've seen (past tense), Spider-Man 3 was wonderful. Sure, it's not as good as the second one, but few movies are that good. It's still Sam Raimi, it's still Bruce, and it's still Spider-Man. After the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man was my favorite comic book character growing up and I always loved the marvel team-ups where there were multiple heroes and multiple villains. If I had one complaint, it was that the movie wasn't long enough; there was so many characters and plot points and it would definitely benefit from a LOTR-style extended version (just like the first two LOTR, though not the third which was already too long).

Going back a few more weeks, I thought Grindhouse was greatly entertaining (more so for RR's Planet Terror than QT's Death Proof), Blades of Glory was, well, another fun if mindless Will Ferrell film and 300 was very good. Speaking of 300, I borrowed the Troy DVD many moons ago from my friend Jim and finally got around to watching it just this past week; it was OK, but 300 was so much better that I think I liked Troy less for having seen 300 first.

Taking a half-step backwards, I wanted to see Stranger Than Fiction last year when it was in theatres but we never got around to it until it came out on DVD. If I had seen it last year, it would have been one of my favorite films of last year. All I can say now is that it was excellent and I highly recommend it. Also, in that same half-step but a little to the side, I miss GOB and Arrested Development. Arrested Development was one of the great TV series and it's just too bad that it couldn't find an audience. Oh, and if you haven't figured out the half-step, it's the two Wills: Will Arnett and Will Ferrell.

Getting back to the movie theatre crawl, Hot Fuzz was OK (Shaun of the Dead was soo much better), Zodiac was excellent, as was Breach. Pan's Labyrinth was also excellent.

If I include DVD watching, Blood Diamonds was excellent while Music and Lyrics By was barely tolerable (we were looking for something light and Drew Barrymore usually delivers - not so much for this one though). Also, we didn't see Cars until this year on DVD and it's the first Pixar film that was not only not excellent, it pretty much just plain sucked. But, after seeing Cars and thinking about just how sad a commentary it is to note that the United States has become a nation of NASCAR and wrestling-loving red-state-necks, made me appreciate just how close we've come to the society visualized by Mike Judge in his under-rated and underseen Idiocracy. (Kara and her mom hated Idiocracy, but I enjoyed it and it gave me my favorite catch-phrase of the year, "Ow, my balls!".)

Going back much farther and into last year, I liked Children of Men, although I thought the cinematography was just annoying and not visionary (as some critics labelled it). And in the battle of Victorian magicians, The Prestige was a much, much, much better movie than The Illusionist, although I will say that I did enjoy both movies. The Prestige would have been perfect except that I was sorely disappointed by the ending. Not enough to not recommend it highly and not enough to spoil it for you.

I could keep on going, but I think I'll stop now.

Microsoft Outlook 2007: Craptastic

I've used every version of Outlook since it wasn't even Outlook (in 1995 or 96, it was Windows Messaging) and it's generally gotten better with each new release. No more.

I upgraded to Outlook 2007 recently because the previous version of Outlook was not correctly interpreting the time for appointment requests that were sent from my coworkers (who use Macs and iCalendar). They'd book a meeting with me for 10am and it would show up on my calendar at 4am instead. Also, the new version of Outlook promised calendar sharing without Microsoft Exchange (we're a small company so we use our ISP's POP3 mail instead of a dedicated email server).

Initially, Outlook 2007's calendar sharing feature worked fine. I could tell it to publish my calendar to our internet web server and I could then use Google Calendar to view that calendar when I worked at a client without my laptop. But then, after a few weeks, I realized that when I viewed my calendar on Google Calendar, it was sorely out-of-date. At first, I thought it was a problem with Google Calendar but I later figured out that it was a problem with the icalendar file (.ics file) produced by Outlook 2007; for some unknown reason, the file produced by Outlook 2007 is now produced in an invalid format that can't be parsed by Google Calendar or any other third-party ics validator (the UID field is broken into two lines which is a violation of the icalendar spec).

So, my primary reason for upgrading Outlook 2007, to take advantage of the calendar sharing features) is no longer working. Add to that, Outlook 2007 has several annoying habits:

• If I shut it down and then hibernate my computer too soon after the shutdown, when I start it up again, it tells me that it "failed to shutdown correctly" and I have to wait several minutes for a fruitless and pointless error check to complete before I can use Outlook again.
• It crashes randomly - for the last crash, all I did was close a Note window and boom.
• It's terribly slow - much slower to start up, much slower to deliver mail.
• I can't delete bad nicknames because the MS article that explains how to do this is wrong and I can't figure out where the new nickname file is stored.
• Because I can't delete bad nicknames, it has this annoying habit of not sending some emails - they get stuck in the Outbox because the email address is invalid but there is no visible warning to me that they're there.

I'm just hoping that Microsoft hurries up and delivers a service pack that fixes these problems soon.

The Cutek Blog

Not much there yet, but it's a start.

A Real Live Atheist in the Congressional Foxhole!

He's probably not the first and he's probably not the only current U.S. Representative to be an atheist, but Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) is the first to admit it publicly. This is great news and I can only hope that more politicians will follow his lead. I don't know anything about his politics or his effectiveness as a leader, but admitting that he "does not believe in a supreme being"* makes him a hero in my eyes.

From Americans United The Wall of Separation: Stark Statement: Congressman Says He Has No Belief In A Supreme Being

My photo on Boing Boing!

I was reading through the Boing Boing posts this morning in Google Reader when I came across a familiar photo. Apparently, Games for the Brain uses Creative Commons licensed Flickr images in a game they call "Rotate". It's similar to those little puzzle games where you push the squares around but, in this version, you rotate the squares in place.



Here's the image they used in the Boing Boing article next to my original, uncropped image posted on Flickr:







Boing Boing: Game made from CC-licensed Flickr photos



Technorati Tags: Flickr, Creative Commons, Boing Boing

Snippy's is gone

Snippy's Tavern Wall (IMG_5580)
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

Snippy's was an old dive bar across the street from our old house in South Park. It was purchased about a year or so ago by Sam Chammas, the same guy that owns the Whistle Stop. It had been closed pretty much since the purchase and the rumour was that the place was going to be remodeled and reopened. And, that's what appeared to be going on for the last few weeks.

Then, about a week ago, they tore all the stucco off the building and exposed this great old cigar ad. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed a picture. And, it turns out that taking its picture was a good idea... today when I walked by, the entire building had been torn down.

Snippy's is no more.

I imagine that they're planning to rebuild something on that spot, but it's really too bad that this piece of Americana is gone.

Vacation Photos... Lots of 'em

Kara and I took our first trip to Europe since 2003 with a two-week trip to central Europe this past October. We stayed six days in Prague, two days in Bratislava, and five days in Vienna. We had expected that it would rain during our trip, but we were very pleased to encounter no rain whatsoever. Also, the temperature was great for the first week and only a little cold for the second week.

We had a wonderful time on our trip and I especially loved Prague and I would love to go back again some time. There was just so much to see in that charming city and it was very tourist-friendly. Although Bratislava didn't have as much to offer as Prague, it was a great place for a short visit and it served as a nice rest between the bigger cities. On the other hand, Vienna was a bit overwhelming. It's a fascinating city with lots to do, but perhaps it had too much to see and do and we really didn't know how to take it in for such a short visit. Also, unlike Prague, Vienna wasn't nearly as English-speaking tourist friendly; my assumption is that if your national language is spoken only in your tiny country (as it is in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia), you have to provide translations in English, but if your national language is German (as it is in Austria), you don't have to worry about tourists understanding things as much. In Prague, virtually all signs and directions were available in both English and Czech, but in Austria, English was rarely seen (except on menus).

I took more photos during this trip than I ever have before -- over 1800 -- and I just recently finished uploading most of them to my Flickr site. You can view them in my photostream or you can view them in the sets that I've created:

Central Europe 2006 (1627 photos)
Kunsthistorisch es Museum 2006 (123 photos)
Slovak National Museum 2006 (77 photos)
Melk Abbey 2006 (147 photos)
Wachau Valley and the Danube 2006 (170 photos)
Austria 2006 (812 photos)
Vienna 2006 (611 photos)
Slovakia 2006 (242 photos)
Prague 2006 (493 photos)
Karlstein Castle (80 photos)
Prague Marionette Theatre (19 photos)
The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (57 photos)

Why I'm not a Democrat

I switched party affiliation several years ago from Democrat to Green because I saw the writing on the wall — Democrats were becoming more and more like Republicans. I don't agree with everything in the Green platform, but they're much closer to my own views than the Democrats are.

With the recent election, I was happy to see that the Democrats had taken Congress, but after reading "The Kids Are All Right" by John Cook in Radar, I'm not so sure that anything has changed. As the article states:

They're pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Jesus—meet the new class of Democrats

Technorati Tags: politics democrat republican green

The Most Dangerous Toys

I only wish I had some of these toys.

Oh yeah, there was an election, wasn't there?

Some thoughts on Tuesday's election:

Schwartzenegger was re-elected. I voted for Peter Camejo, the Green candidate. Eh. I didn't really follow or care much about this election, but I'm not surprised that the unwashed masses voted for the movie star.

Actually, of all the top California state officers up for election, only two candidates I voted for won election: Jerry Brown (Democrat) for Attorney General and Steve Poizner (Republican) for Insurance Commisioner. Coincidentally, those two elections are the only ones (for top California state officers) where I didn't vote for the Green candidate. Oh, and my local Assembly person, Lori Saldaña (Democrat), whom I voted for, also won re-election.

For U.S. Senate, I voted for Todd Chretien (Green) against incumbent Dianne Feinstein (Republican) and I voted for incumbent Susan Davis (Democrat) for her House seat. Both incumbents won, but that's expected when there was no real controversy for either election. I have a strong distaste for Feinstein, especially regarding her seeming disregard of the 1st amendment (re: funding of California Missions and her sponsorship of a flag-burning amendment), but also for her willingness to cater to Republicans. But, it could have been worse - at least the Republicans didn't win.

For all those congressional elections that I couldn't vote on, I'm glad that the Republicans were swept from power, but I don't expect much out of the new Democratic leadership. By making promises before the election to not pursue impeachment proceedings against Bush, they've shown that they are willing to ignore our constitution and let Bush and his administration get away with their crimes. My only hope is that they plug the leak of our civil rights, if they don't have the balls to revert the damage already done.

Moving on to the propositions, I voted with the majority on 1A, but my No votes on 1B through 1E (all bonds) were countered by a population that apparently thinks that money grows on trees. My opposition to almost all the bonds on the ballot is not because I don't think that the projects they fund have merit; it's because I think that approval of bond measures sends the wrong message to our elected representatives. I am so disgusted with California politicians because part of their job is to figure out how to spend our tax dollars but, instead, they pawn this job off to us. Like Libertarians, I believe that bond measures are bad, but unlike Libertarians, I also think that our state taxes are too low. We should be able to fund the projects that need funding and I want my elected representative to actually do some work and figure out how to best spend my tax dollars. As it is, special interests push these bond measures and the ones that win are the ones that have the best advertisements. It's simply disgusting.

I voted for the $2.60 per pack cigarette tax (prop 86) and for prop 87, a tax on oil producers to fund alternative energy research and production, but both propositions lost. I am heartened, though, by the 48% and 45% Yes votes on those two measures. However, of all the propositions, prop 85 was the one I cared about the most - I am very happy that this "parental notification" measure failed, although I hate the fact that San Diego county voters voted in favor of it.

Speaking of San Diego, Jerry Sanders got his way with propositions B and C, both of which I voted against, but the fools that keep trying to put a commercial airport at Miramar lost on prop A, which I also voted against. I live in the flight path for Lindbergh field and would love to see that change, but anyone that thinks that the military is going to give up Miramar is chasing windmills. The better location to replace Lindbergh field, in my opinion, is Brown field, but our local politicians proved themselves gutless when that option was put on the table.

I had a gum graft today

Two years ago, I had a molar extracted and a bone graft in preparation for a dental implant. Long story short, the first implant failed, the second implant required an additional bone graft, and what should have taken less than a year took a year and a half. But, finally, after 18 months, I received my new tooth.

That was 7 months ago.

Yesterday, I went to my dentist's office for my regular cleaning when the hygienist noticed that the gum on the buccal (cheek-side) of my implant was "interesting". Interesting is not a good word to hear from a dentist. It seemed to be a bit swollen and there was a fistula. So, they referred me back to my oral surgeon to have it checked out.

That same afternoon (still yesterday), I saw my oral surgeon and he was perplexed. After a brief discussion, it was decided that, perhaps, some bone graft material was trapped in the gum and the best solution would be to cut open the gum, clean it up a bit and stitch it back together. So, I scheduled my appointment for the next morning (this morning) and left with a feeling of dread.

So, I arrive at my appointment this morning, the assistant prepares my gums with some topical numbing agent and I'm brought into the surgical room. My oral surgeon administers some local anesthetic shots and begins digging around in my mouth. Luckily, I couldn't feel a thing during the whole process.

Afterwards, the doctor explained that my strong gum tissue had receded around my implant and had left behind only weak gum tissue, no bone graft material had been found, but that he had taken some spare strong gum tissue from just to the right of my last molar on the same side and placed it over my implant where the tissue was missing. This is known as a gum graft. He also placed some putty over the grafted gum and surrounding tissue to protect it while it heals. He then sent me home with painkillers and instructions to come back in a week to have the putty removed and to not chew on that side of the mouth until then.

The numbness has worn off and, luckily, I don't feel any discomfort or pain. So, I consider myself lucky and I hope that this is the end of my implant ordeal.

Don't Be Sending Me That Holocaust Denial Shit

I received five copies of a spam email from someone named Michael Crook with the subject line, "DENY THE JEWS HOLOCAUST! IT DIDN'T HAPPEND!" in my Inbox today.

First off, if you want to be an anti-Semite, you go right ahead, but if you want to convince someone else to be an anti-Semite, you might want to at least check your email subject line for misspellings.

Second, why the fuck would someone send me this? Do I come across as someone that would believe that the Holocaust didn't happen or that Jews molest children (one of the claims in the email)? I'll assume that the sender was a Christian, so I'll advise the sender that if they want to assault the Talmud for it's content (the email claims that the Talmud condones "sexual contact with young children", they should read their own x-rated bible for great tales of depravity. No, wait, for that matter, they should read The X-Rated Bible: An Irreverent Survey of Sex in the Scriptures by by Ben Edward Akerley, which I personally own and enjoy.

For the record, yes, the Holocaust happened and, yes, genocide still happens today all over the world. I have no reason nor desire to deny that the Holocaust happened. If I have anything against Judaism, it's the same thing that I have against Christianity - they're both based on the false assumption of a supernatural god and, as an atheist, I am naturally opposed to god-based religions. But, I don't deny their acts or acts perpetrated against them.

I don't know how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust for being Jewish, but I don't deny that 5 million, 6 million, or even 11 million are all possibly correct figures. But, even if it was only 1 million Jews or 1,000 Jews, it was still a tragedy.

I certainly don't agree with Judaism or Christianity on the terms of their "faith", but that does not mean that I subscribe to the beliefs of extremists that deny the Holocaust.

Ding Dong, George Stevens is Dead... and Tower Records, too

Not surprisingly, news about San Diego ex-City Councilperson (and Reverend) George Stevens death didn't make it to Central Europe three weeks ago, so I didn't find out about it until today. I was waiting for my fish taco and sashimi salad order at Blue Water Seafood Market & Grill—excellent, as always—when I picked up a copy of San Diego Voice and Viewpoint as something to read while I waited. There on the front page was the news of George Steven's funeral. "Wow.", I thought first. "Good riddance", I thought next.

Mr. Stevens, you see, was not only a Baptist preacher and ex-politician, he was also an idiot who regularly played the racist card while he was on the San Diego City Council. And, after he was termed out of office and his successor was indicted for corruption (but died before trial), he tried to run again for city council for his disgraced colleague's (and his old) spot. Luckily, we were spared another dose of religion and racism when he lost the race (no pun intended).

No, I don't mourn for Mr. Stevens, but I do mourn for something else that died while I was on vacation in Europe. Well, actually, it didn't die yet, but will die in mid-December (probably). Tower Records was sold to some entity as part of a bankruptcy auction and their first act as new owners was to announce liquidation of and closure of all their retail locations. Apparently, the Tower Records web site will remain, but that's it.

I will admit that, except for 2 DVDs that I bought today at 30% off, I haven't bought music or movies from Tower Records in many years. But, prior to the internet and prior to my discovery of used CD stores, Tower Records was my place to buy records and cassettes from when I first started buying music in the early 80s until the early 90s when I finally bought a CD player. I didn't buy CDs there that much, though, but I had (and still have) a huge collection of cassettes, most of them bought from Tower. And, even when I couldn't afford to buy music, I still browsed the aisles at Tower for hours, going through the import section, title by title.

In the age of the internet, it was inevitable that Tower would die. Why buy something at Tower for the full MSRP when you could buy it online or used for much, much less? I don't buy music as much as I used to (and I certainly don't buy DRM-saddled music, like that available from iTunes or any other buy-a-song-not-an-album places), but it was nice to know that, if I wanted to, I could browse through a Tower Records and, if not buy their overpriced product, at least find something that I could look up online and buy at a lower cost later.

I will miss Tower Records. I will not miss old George.

Minor Pet Peeve

I have a pet peeve about pizza places and other restaurants that let you call in your order. If you have a web site that lists your phone number and menu, why don't you put the phone number on the same page as your menu? You get this right when you send out your coupons in the postal mail—the phone number is printed right there on the circular—so why can't you get this right on the web?

I admit it's minor, but still, I hate having to keep one tab open with the menu and the other tab open with the phone number.

My new Halloween costume - Crikey!

Read all about it: South Park mocks Steve Irwin's death  

Personally, I think it's hilarious. And I love the fact that the ray is still attached. 

Thoughts on the CNN Iraq Sniper Videos

I was in a hotel room in Vienna this week when I saw the CNN footage of Iraqi snipers shooting U.S. military personnel and I knew it was a subject that I wanted to blog about as soon as I got back home. When I saw the video, several thoughts came to mind. First, I thought it was about time that the mainstream news media finally reported on the true face of war. War is not pretty, people get killed or maimed and showing just how vulnerable American troops are when they are sent in to any war is what the American public needs to see. My next thought was, "Shocking? How can CNN think this is shocking? Hell, all that the insurgents are doing is the same thing that American soldiers do. How is the "enemy" using their snipers any different from us using our snipers? There was even a retired military officer saying the exact same thing - that the insurgents are using snipers because it works and we know it works because we use snipers as well. Plus, our smart bombs that we used extensively at the start of the war are essentially snipers with huge bullets - the atack comes from an unseen enemy. Why would anyone be shocked by this footage?

Of course, no one with any intelligence that cares to think about the consequences of Bush's illegal war on Iraq would think that this footage is shocking. Which is why its no surprise that CNN's decision to air the footage has been widely condemned by Republican leaders and conservative talk show hosts (see news story), which is exactly what I found when I got back home today from Europe.

On a side note, now that I'm back, I've downloaded the over 1,800 photos that I took during my vacation to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria from my camera to my computer and I'll be going through them and uploading the best to Flickr and blogging about the trip later. Stay tuned!

Kids These Days

Teen Mishap (IMG_3629)
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

So I'm driving home through the neighborhood and this scene caught my eye. I rushed home, grabbed my camera and came back for this photo set.

According to a friend at the scene, two 16-year old kids decided to make a run to 7/11 for a Slurpee. They were on their way back, heading down this alley (probably too fast) when their right front tire caught the anchoring cable for the telephone pole. The car rode straight up the cable and got stuck there. The kid sitting down was the driver.

Incidentally, I was a member of the South Park Action Council when the mural on the wall was painted. SPAC sponsored the mural.

Wow, he really is everywhere!

ZABA search for JESUS CHRIST.

My favorite part is the bottom of the page:

Can't find JESUS CHRIST? TRY THIS DATABASE

Background Check on JESUS CHRIST www.PeopleLookUp.com 20 Year History

Schmapped for Flagstaff

Schmapped for Flagstaff
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

I just received word that 8 of my photos on Flickr have been included in the Schmap Flagstaff Guide. Cool!

I've created a photo set with the selected photos and added a link to download the Schmap Player and the Flagstaff guide to my sidebar.