Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Reconciliation and Friendship in Unexpected Places

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I stumbled upon a really interesting story on CNN.com this morning. In 1987, Gary Wright, owner of a small computer business, reached down to pick up a piece of lumber that was sitting in his company’s parking lot. The apparently innocuous piece of lumber, however, turned out to be a bomb planted by ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski as part of his crusade against technology. Exploding when Wright disturbed it, the bomb blast lodged more than 200 pieces of shrapnel in his body and blew him clear across the parking lot. He was the Unabomber’s eleventh victim in a 20-year campaign that killed three and wounded at least 20.

David Kaczynski, Ted’s brother who provided the tip the eventually led to the terrorist’s capture, has made a point of attempting to contact by phone and/or mail each of his brother’s victims to offer apologies. Most did not reply, and many of those who did replied with anger or, at best, neutrality. When David called Gary Wright, however, Wright immediately told him that it wasn’t his fault and he did not have to carry the burden of his brother’s actions. The two struck up a series of phone conversations, soon their families met in person, and over the years since they have become close friends who tour the country talking about reconciliation.

Proof of the power of forgiveness, and that you can find friendship in the most unexpected of places.

The Best Keyboard Ever Made (Updated x2)

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My first computer—at least, my first serious computer (the used Apple II Plus I played around with for a while doesn’t really count)—was an IBM PC-AT I got from my parents when they upgraded to a Tandy 486. The PC-AT had an 80286 processor running at a whopping 6mhz, had 1mb of RAM, and ran MS-DOS 5.22. It was on that computer that I learned many of the skills that stick with me to this day. At the time I longed for one of those fancy new Windows machines, since all my friends had Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), but I am very glad to this day that I cut my teeth on an old-fashioned command-line based system. Being comfortable with telling a computer what to do with a keyboard comes in very handy, especially when working with Linux or utilizing the advanced functions of a Mac or Windows machine.

Even if you’re not an old CLI-jockey like me, the keyboard is one part of the computer that gets nearly constant use. It’s the part you actually touch the most. Despite its important role in computing, the keyboard is often an afterthought—both to the manufacturers who produce them at the lowest possible cost using the cheapest possible components, and to the users that seem content with whatever keyboard came with the machine.

Read more . . .

Obama to be Presumptive Democratic Nominee (Updated)

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Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has won a majority of available delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Obama will likely be facing Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the November general election. McCain has been the presumptive Republican nominee since gaining a delegate majority in March.

The Associated Press reported this morning that Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) would concede the Democratic Nomination in the race for the Presidency to Obama this evening, however Clinton has not yet conceded the race and does not intend to do so today.

Obama is the first African American to win a major party nomination for the United States Presidency and, if elected, would be the first non-white president.

Update 6/9/2007: While I have left the original entry intact, as a matter of policy I will no longer refer to Senator Obama as an ‘African American’. Obama is, in fact, biracial. His father is Kenyan; his mother is an American of European descent. Thus, Obama is properly neither ‘white’ nor ‘black’. He is both. This does not change the historic nature of his presumptive nomination, as he remains the first minority or biracial person to win a major party nomination and, if elected, he would still be the first non-white president. That said, referring to Senator Obama as ‘black’ or ‘African American’ is at-worst inaccurate, and at-best incomplete.

[As an aside, this issue is fairly important to me, since Melissa and I are a biracial couple and any biological children we may have in the future would be biracial—half European American, half Chinese American. The media should not favor one part of a person’s racial makeup over another, and neither should biracial or multiracial individuals.]

Photos from Harrisburg, PA

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Hello from Harrisburg, PA! Melissa and I are celebrating our third anniversary by visiting the Pennsylvania state capital and nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania, for an extended (4-day) weekend. We drove up yesterday to the hotel (which is in Harrisburg) and have enjoyed a day of visiting Indian Echo Caverns, checking out the sights here in downtown Harrisburg, and having a fancy-schmancy celebratory dinner at The Forebay.

Tomorrow we’re planning to visit the Hershey Gardens, the Hershey Museum, Hershey Chocolate World, and finally the Hershey Park amusement park. Should be fun. In the mean time, read on to see bunch of pictures from here in downtown Harrisburg.

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Remembering ‘Black Tuesday’ (and the ‘Right of Return’)

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Today was the anniversary of one of the most vicious conquests in history—the fall of Constantinople (and the Byzantine Empire) to the Ottomans on May 29, 1453.

On this day in 1453, the conquerers were extraordinarily brutal. Historian Steven Runciman notes that the Muslim soldiers “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit.” (The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.)

What’s incredible about this, if you ask me, is the Muslim double-standard. One of the central arguments of the Palestinian side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that Palestinians who left (willingly, mostly) during the foundation of modern Israel should have a ‘right of return’ to come back to the property they abandoned in the 1950s. Okay; I’m willing to entertain that notion. But then the Christians descended from those who left the Byzantine Empire when it fell to Muslim invaders in 1453 have a ‘right of return’ too. Turnabout is fair play, right.

Read more about this history, and its modern context, via this informative entry at Jihad Watch.

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.