Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Is Romney a Christian? Does it Matter?

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Mitt Romney

Back in April, I addressed the issue of President Barack Obama’s (D) eligibility to be president and his religion. For the whole story you should head over there and read it, but the short version is that Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen (and thus eligible to be President), he isn’t a Muslim (unless you are basing your opinion on traditional Sharia law), he’s apparently not much of a Christian either (as far as I can tell), and we don’t have a religious litmus test for presidents here anyway so it doesn’t matter all that much.

Even so, religion is a perennial issue in our presidential elections. President Thomas Jefferson’s (Democratic-Republican) opponents excoriated him for his unorthodox beliefs. President John F. Kennedy (D) was criticized in some circles for being a Catholic. President George W. Bush was made out to be some kind of hyper-right-wing evangelical Christian (even though he was, in fact, raised in the Episcopal Church and is now a United Methodist—both center-left ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations). Most presidents and presidential candidates who have held even slightly unorthodox religious views have been forced to discuss their faith in the public sphere.

This is understandable, to a point. The religion that one chooses—and we all do, at some point, choose what we are going to believe—gives us some insight into a person’s character, how they make decisions, and what values they subscribe to. These are valid matters to consider when evaluating a candidate for political office. But nobody is (or should be) automatically disqualified because of what they believe or don’t believe in the abstract, or because of what particular religious body (if any) they claim membership in. We should only consider a candidate’s faith, or lack thereof, insofar as it speaks to their character and informs their public policy decisions.

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RIM’s System is Broken

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My Old BlackBerry

I used to have a BlackBerry—the ‘Bold’ 9000. I liked it quite a bit and, for its time, it was a fine phone. I very seriously considered replacing it with another BlackBerry but decided to give Palm another chance with its WebOS operating system. After Palm’s implosion, I ended up choosing Android.

Born out of the two-way pager universe, Ontario-based Research in Motion (RIM) always had a different approach to phones than its industry peers. When they were on top, they were up against three competitors whose phone operating systems all came from PDAs—Palm, Microsoft, and Symbian. The iconic BlackBerry phones from the era before the iPhone were simpler and less powerful than their competitors’ phones, but they were incredibly reliable and easy to use. There was no stylus to juggle with, no touchscreen to smudge, and a keyboard that was a true pleasure to thumb-type on. Once you got the hang of the trackball, it was a clean and efficient way of getting around the interface.

Unique among smartphones, and likely a holdover from their two-way pager background, BlackBerry phones are very reliant on RIM’s data center. Every other smartphone I’ve ever owned or used—ones running Palm OS, Windows Mobile 6, Palm WebOS, Google Android, and Apple iOS—communicated directly with the Internet, either over the phone network or a local wifi network. When I go to log into my corporate email on my Motorola Droid, or when I go to the CNN web site, those connections go directly from my phone, to the network, to the destination.

BlackBerry phones, however, send most of their network traffic through the RIM data centers. On a BlackBerry, your phone’s email app is connected via your phone or wifi network to RIM’s data center, which then connects to your email provider. Your phone is not directly communicating with your email service. When I had my BlackBerry, even basic Internet browsing all went through the RIM data center . . . though my understanding is that newer BlackBerry phones don’t have this problem.

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A Matter of Perspective

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I recently read an article titled ‘10 Misrepresentations About Climate Change‘ on Southern Fried Science. The article’s author, ‘WhySharksMatter,’ made a valiant attempt at being balanced, and I applaud him for that. Five of the ‘misrepresentations’ were on the so-called ‘skeptic’ side of the climate change discussion, and the five others were on the climate change ‘believers’ side. Unfortunately though, the article still has a number of flaws.

‘Misrepresentation’ number 1 is somewhat accurate, although the data is presented in a very slanted way. I’ll come back to this shortly.

‘Misrepresentation’ number 2 cites one particular study about how many climate scientists agree on human impact on Earth’s warming, but doesn’t address any of the actual scientific evidence. More recent studies are finding that much of our climate change dogma is inaccurate or dead-wrong. For example, one study found that CFC’s (largely outlawed in most countries now) and cosmic rays are the primary sources of warming, not the CO2 ecological boogeyman. Another found that even if CO2 were responsible for serious climate change, the problem is only half as bad as we thought . . . because nearly half of all human CO2 emissions are gobbled up by plants. So thanks, SUV drivers; you’re helping to keep the world’s plants well fed! Both studies, and countless more where they come from, point to very serious gaps in our scientific understanding of Earth’s changing climate.

This leads to ‘misrepresentation’ number 3. The author claims that ninety-seven to ninety-eight percent of climate scientists agree that humans are responsible for the warming Earth. Well, this may be true, but that doesn’t bode well for those scientists. In light of an increasing stream of studies (like those I cited above) that are chipping away at the long-standing dogma, and the lack of observable evidence for the dire consequences warming was supposed to bring, it’s looking more and more like they’ve been had. As we spend more and more time studying our impact on the Earth, we keep finding that the Earth is pretty capable of adjusting to nearly anything we’ve been able to throw at it. The seas aren’t rising. The number and severity of natural disasters isn’t increasing.

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Steve Jobs Dead at 56

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Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., died earlier today at the age of 56. Often described as ‘mercurial,’ Jobs has long been known for his demanding creative leadership at Apple, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential technologists of the personal computing era.

Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Inc. in 1976, which had early success with the Apple II personal computer. In 1984, under Jobs’s leadership, Apple introduced the groundbreaking Macintosh personal computer, the first computer for the consumer market with a graphical user interface, mouse, and 3.5″ floppy drive.

Forced out of the company he founded just one year after the release of the Macintosh, Jobs went on to found NeXT Computer—a niche manufacturer of workstation computers for the academic market. While NeXT was largely unknown in the consumer market, its products were very cutting-edge for the era. The NeXT workstation, a magnesium encased cube, is reminiscent of later Apple designs. The first ‘world wide web’ server on the Internet was hosted on a NeXT workstation, and many technical elements of the NeXTstep operating system are still present today in Apple Mac OS X and iOS.

While he was CEO of NeXT, Jobs purchased The Graphics Group—the computer animation division of Lucasfilm—and renamed it Pixar. For a period of time it sold high-end graphics hardware to other companies, but Pixar’s success came about after it produced Toy Story, its first animated feature film in partnership with Disney. Jobs was CEO of Pixar from 1985 until it was purchased by Disney in 2006, and he was still Disney’s largest individual shareholder at the time of his death.

NeXT was bought by Apple in 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he had co-founded in 1976. He quickly returned to the CEO position and spearheaded the development of the iMac, Mac OS X (which was based on NeXTstep), the iPod, the Power Mac Cube, the iPhone, the Apple TV, the MacBook Air, and the iPad. Each of these products, even those that did not see broad success in the consumer market, had disruptive impact and wide influence across the tech world. Much of Apple’s success and influence stemmed directly from Jobs personally, who was known as a demanding, micromanaging leader who would agonize over the smallest details to ensure that the final products were both beautiful and easy to use.

Over the last several years Jobs has suffered serious health setbacks, including a bout with pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. He has taken two medical leaves of absence from Apple, and stepped down permanently as Apple’s CEO in August. There has been no official statement regarding the cause of his death, but it is presumed that he succumbed to a recurrence of cancer. Jobs is survived by his wife and four children, and by an entire industry that is much better today than it would have been without his influence.

On a personal note, Jobs and I did not always see eye-to-eye on technology and I am no longer an ‘Apple guy’ (except for my aging iPod Classic). Even so, I am still the first to acknowledge Jobs’s and Apple’s influence across the whole tech industry. Windows 7 is as good as it is because Microsoft was forced to compete with Apple’s excellent Mac OS X. Android is as good as it is because the Apple iPhone forced the mobile phone industry to up its game. Every technology user, Apple-lover or Apple-hater, owes Steve Jobs a real debt of gratitude for his constant efforts to push the industry forward over the last thirty-five years.

I am praying for the repose of Jobs’s soul, and for his family, friends, and associates. Farewell, Steve. We techies will miss you.

Endorsement Statistics, 2004-2010

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Since I’ve spent a good hunk of my free time over the last week or two working on this year’s Off on a Tangent political endorsements, I thought it might be interesting to look back at my endorsement history and do some statistical analysis (yes, I am that nerdy). I thought it might give me (and you) a broader insight into my political views and produce some interesting tid-bits.

For this analysis, I looked at all political endorsements made on this site from 2004 (my first time making formal endorsements) to 2010. This year’s elections are excluded for now because they haven’t happened yet; part of what I’m looking at is how often my endorsed candidates won, and I won’t know that until November for this year’s endorsements.

Over the 2004-2010 period, I have written endorsements in races for 32 elective seats, and have reviewed the positions of 85 candidates for those seats—an average of 2.66 candidates per seat and 4.57 seats per year. In total, I have endorsed Democrats 16 percent of the time, Republicans 53 percent of the time, and third-parties or independents 6 percent of the time. The remaining 25 percent of the time I have either made no endorsement or endorsed abstention due to a lack of acceptable candidates, lack of differentiation between candidates, or utter pointlessness of the office.

Read more . . .

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.