Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent
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Melissa and I love cruises. Our first was our honeymoon—a seven-day Alaska cruise on Holland America Line in 2005. Since then we have tried to go on a cruise every two or three years. So far, our longest was a fourteen-day cruise for our tenth anniversary in 2015—back to Alaska on the same ship from our honeymoon.

We ended up on a charity cruise to New England and eastern Canada in 2016, then had a big non-cruise trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2017, so we took it easy for a couple years. But 2020 was going to be a big travel year; we got our “TSA Precheck” and “Global Entry” cards and everything. It would start with our embarkation on a fourteen-day Hawaii cruise in April.

That cruise was in the second round of cancellations by Norwegian Cruise Lines in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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April Fools Site: Robots Only; No Humans

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For April Fools Day 2022, Off on a Tangent became a “robots only” website that required you to fail a “CAPTCHA” test before viewing the site. You can see the prompt and how it worked by clicking here. Here’s the message that appeared on the site:

For security reasons, Off on a Tangent is now a “robots only” website. Human use of the site is prohibited. I’m sorry that it has come to this.

Visitors attempting to access the website will now be given a security prompt and will have to disprove their humanity by failing at least two “CAPTCHA” tests before being granted access.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Random Photos

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I need to make posts of my “random photos” more often. It has been almost five years since the last one, and so I’ve built up quite a backlog. Sorry.

If you’re friends with me on Facebook you very well might have seen some of these before. Some are just “artistic” photos, some are cute or weird pics of my pets, and some are just funny or unique things I’ve found while I have been out and about. Enjoy.

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Biden to Nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court

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Ketanji Brown Jackson

President Joe Biden (D) will nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. Jackson is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Jackson would replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced last month that he intends to retire at the end of the court’s current term. Breyer is part of the court’s “liberal” wing and an advocate of the living constitution school of jurisprudence. Jackson is also generally considered to be a “liberal” judge, so her nomination is unlikely to shift the ideological balance of the court.

Jackson worked as a law clerk for Judge Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, for Judge Bruce M. Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and for Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. She has also worked in private practice.

In 2009, Jackson was nominated by President Barack Obama (D) to serve as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and she was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate. In 2012, Obama nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and she was later confirmed by voice vote. Biden nominated Jackson to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2021 and she was confirmed in a 53-44 vote.

The U.S. Senate is likely to hold hold hearings and a vote on confirmation some time in the coming weeks and months. The U.S. Constitution charges the Senate with providing “advice and consent” on presidential nominations to the Supreme Court.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.