Author: Source

By Mike Lee / Union-Tribune / Originally published January 6, 2010

Nearly five years after regional water-pollution cops announced a landmark order to clean toxic muck in San Diego Bay, they’re back with a plan that would remove just 16 percent of the sediment targeted initially.

The latest strategy was crafted during months of confidential talks with groups on the hook for the work. It’s expected to cost about half of the $96 million price tag from the original cleanup order, which the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board spent years developing so it could withstand courtroom challenges.

by: Ángel Luis Lara / La Jornada (Mexico) – truthout / 04 January 2010

We live in the era of hype. The word, which bounces and bounds throughout the matrices of our information age, refers to a cultural product that has been so juiced up with marketing that its popularity takes off independently and regardless of its quality. It is the wrapping that matters: the advertisement is louder, more important and more real than what is advertised. James Cameron is the author of the latest, greatest global hype: “Avatar.”

The force behind the bludgeoning impact of “Avatar’s” promotional blitz has been driven by three main factoids: it’s the most expensive movie in the history of movies, it has revolutionized the world of special effects and it was shot in 3-D.

The California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District on Tuesday ruled that a state agency may not pull over and search a motorist on a mere hunch that a lobster might be hidden in the vehicle. The court considered the case of Bounh Maikhio, a motorist stopped by Department of Fish and Game Warden Erik Fleet on August 19, 2007 at 11pm. That evening, Fleet had been spying through a telescope on the Ocean Beach pier in San Diego when he saw Maikhio put something into his bag.

Occasionally news in San Diego affects us at the beach. Here are a few recent headlines of interest to sand crabs, seagulls and smoldering fire pits:

Lawyers Group Honors Judge Boycotted by DA Dumanis

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in town pushing for jobs

City Council declines endorsement of medical marijuana regulations

Court upholds San Diego School District’s right to assure that school construction jobs will employ local residents

By Patrick Goldstein / Los Angeles Times / January 5, 2010

It’s no secret that “Avatar” has been stunningly successful on nearly every front. The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is already the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time, having earned more than $1 billion around the globe in less than three weeks of theatrical release. The film also has garnered effusive praise from critics, who’ve been planting its flag on a variety of critics Top 10 lists. The 3-D trip to Pandora is also viewed as a veritable shoo-in for a best picture Oscar nomination when the academy announces its nominees on Feb. 2.

But amid this avalanche of praise and popularity, guess who hates the movie? America’s prickly cadre of political conservatives.

Originally posted Jan. 4, 2010

by Dickie Magidoff / January 4, 2010

For the New Year I send you all great appreciation and thanks from up here in the north country of California.

For me, reading the OB Rag online is something like having a great reality show or Sims computer game to watch – the biggest difference of course being that, unlike reality shows,
OB is real – and reading about the community good times, the community struggles, the great pictures, the genuine controversies, with real people going back and forth (with some humor) evolving a community perspective dazzling in its texture, inspiring in its purpose, and potent in its action—it helps keep me going in this very conservative place where I live.

By Dwight Garner / The New York Times / December 29, 2009

Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 movie, “The Big Lebowski,” which stars Jeff Bridges as a beatific, pot-smoking, bowling-obsessed slacker known as the Dude, snuck up on the English-speaking world during the ’00s: it became, stealthily, the decade’s most venerated cult film. It’s got that elusive and addictive quality that a great midnight movie has to have: it blissfully widens and expands in your mind upon repeat viewings.

“The Big Lebowski” has spawned its own shaggy, fervid world: drinking games, Halloween costumes, bumper stickers (“This aggression will not stand, man”) and a drunken annual festival that took root in Louisville, Ky., and has spread to other cities.

It’s often assumed that the atheist position on what is politely termed “the holiday season” is one of disregard at best, contempt and annoyance at worst. After all, the reasons for most of the standard winter holidays are supposedly religious — the birth of the Savior, eight days of miraculous light, yada yada yada. Why would atheists want anything to do with that?

But atheists’ reactions to the holidays are wildly varied. Yes, some atheists despise them: the enforced jollity, the shameless twisting of genuine human emotion to sell useless consumer crap, the tyrannical forcing of mawkish piety down everyone’s throats. (Some believers loathe the holidays for the exact same reasons.) But some of us love the holidays.

If you have spent one day in OB, you know about the OB Seagull – a decal logo plastered on just about every car in town. And then some. The creator of the logo – another Ocean Beach artist – has passed away. Donald “Rick” Sorben died on December 2nd, after a brief illness. He and his brother were creators of the OB Seagull Logo, a community icon.

A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves?

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States? Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

by bodysurferbob

I’m telling you right now, if you allow the City of San Diego to remove OB’s fire rings and pits, you will live to really regret it. Maybe not this summer, but a summer or two down the pike. Or maybe the next time your kids ask you to take them to the beach for a marshmallow or wiener roast. Or the next time you have guests from out of town, and you want to do a beach party.

I’m telling you right now, if you let the City take the fire pits out, part of beach culture goes with them. Part of our beach culture will die.

You’re saying, hey, they’re closing libraries, they’re talking about cutting out school sports and music, the City is laying cops and lifeguards off. These are really dire economic times. How can we worry about fire rings?

Editor: It flooded in OB on Monday with the water lapping the doorsteps of a number of Abbott Street businesses, like Falling Sky Pottery, Newbreak, across from the Life Guard station. It does this everytime there are major rains coupled with high tides. It’s not that unusual. Well, the developers of the condos slated for Saratoga Park better be prepared for this level of nature. Here’s a back-ground piece from the San Diego Reader several weeks ago:

By Stephen Scatolini / San Diego Reader / Originally published Nov. 16, 2009

City plans for the development of the parcel of land at Abbott Street and Saratoga Avenue have been approved by the California Coastal Commission, but one important consideration seems to have been given short shrift.