Cynical-C Blog

Letters of Notes has a letter written by Kurt Vonnegut to his father after getting out of the POW camp. (Click the link to read the rest) Too bad he never wrote a book about his experience as a Prisoner of War.

So, I got caught up reading Atlas Shrugged and suddenly it all made sense. I needed to go Galt to save the internets and the world. Then I remembered that Objectivism is dried out and used to fertilize crops in third world countries….

Oh, I can’t lie to you. I caught a cold (or the swine flu. Try telling the difference between symptoms if you’re a hypochrondriac) and when I got back to work yesterday, our internet connection was dead.

So I’m back amongst the tcp/ip connections now and blogging will resume at some point. Thanks for the well wishes and.. PRAYERS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE DAILY ATHEISM?

Was kind of nice being unplugged from the matrix for a little while though…

At least for the weekend. I’m catching a cold and I’m fed up with struggling with this server. I’ve put in another support ticket with Knownhost so we’ll see what happens. If I wanted to spend all day fiddling with software I’d go back into programming and at least get paid for it.

Knownhost’s response:

We can see that the resource usage of the site cynical-c.comis very high in “WHM >> Server Status >> CPU/Memory/MySQL Usage”. The PHP scripts in the site increases the CPU/memory usage of Apache. Also the SQL queries of the site is resource intensive. We suggest you to contact the web application developer/community of the CMS used in the site to optimize the scripts.

Are there any wordpress gurus out there who have any tips. (Yes, supercache is installed) Or maybe it’s time to find a more wordpress friendly host.

What’s for breakfast?

Oatmeal. Instant oatmeal with brown sugar.

From the Washington Post:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Oh yeah, and the money that the church has been using to help the poor?

From 2006 through 2008, Catania said, Catholic Charities received about $8.2 million in city contracts, as well as several hundred thousand dollars’ worth this year through his committee.

“If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer take city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes,” Catania said. He also said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

Christ said: “Show me the tribute money.”They brought him a penny. And he saith unto them: “Whose is the image and the superscription? “They said: “Caesar’s.” And Christ said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

Did Christ think that the money belonged to Caesar because his image and superscription were stamped upon it? Did the penny belong to Caesar or to the man who had earned it? Had Caesar the right to demand it because it was adorned with his image?

Does it appear from this conversation that Christ understood the real nature and use of money?

Robert Green Ingersoll – “About the Holy Bible” (1894)

(First posted on June 22, 2007)

Awwww. They weren’t allowed to play with matches:

To be sure, they planned to burn heavy metal music and smutty movies. But they also had country, gospel, and Christian contemporary music and videos about Jesus in their crosshairs. Most shockingly, they said that they would burn all non-King James versions of the Bible — aka “Satan’s bibles.”

They also announced a long list of “Satan’s popular books written by heretics” which would be burned. And to top it all off, they offered “fried chicken, and all the sides.”

But when the big day came around, a combination of rain, protesters, and a state law against burning paper all conspired against them.

(Thanks Josh)