Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Man Shall Not Live by Scripture Alone . . .

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In the Christian liturgical year, yesterday was the First Sunday of Lent. In the Catholic calendar, the Gospel reading came from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew (quoted here from the RSV):

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'”

Then the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

This passage is the central inspiration behind the liturgical season of Lent, which is a forty-day period ‘in the wilderness’ contemplating our sins and resolving to grow ever-closer to God. Christ—just like all of us—was tempted by the devil to do things that he shouldn’t, and had the opportunity to choose to serve God or to serve his own desires. Of course, given who Jesus is, there was never any real doubt which he would choose . . . but that he suffered temptation as we do every day shows that he is, indeed, truly human just as he is truly divine.

Something stood out to me, however, during the reading of the Gospel . . . something I had never noticed before, despite having read and heard this particular passage probably hundreds of times.

Read more . . .

Donate to Japanese Relief Efforts

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As you are surely aware, Japan was struck by a very powerful earthquake off its eastern coast near the city of Sendai on Friday. The quake, measuring a whopping 9.0 magnitude, is among the five strongest ever recorded. It spawned a devastating tsunami up to thirty feet high that further decimated areas of northern Japan less than ten minutes after the quake.

Already, more than 1,500 are confirmed dead and thousands are missing. The death toll is expected to rise. In the aftermath of the quake and tsunami, at least two nuclear reactors at Japanese power plants went into partial meltdown, and at least some radioactive material has escaped from one of them. It is unknown at this time how serious the nuclear accident is, or will become.

As I did after the Haitian earthquake just over a year ago, I call on my readers to donate to quake relief efforts. Personally, I recommend donating to Catholic Relief Services (which will distribute funds through its partner, Caritas Japan) or the American Red Cross. Both are trustworthy organizations that will quickly and efficiently distribute your donations to the people who need it most.

Thank you for your support and generosity. God bless you.

Donate toCatholic Relief Services

Donate to
the American Red Cross

At the Tone, the Time Will Be . . .

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At some point in my northern Virginia childhood, I discovered that I could call 844-1212 and find out exactly what time it was. “At the tone, the time will be 11:41pm and ten seconds . . . (beep).” Around the same time, I also learned that dialing 936-1212 would get you a free, recorded weather report.

These services were provided by C&P Telephone, which was eventually subsumed into Bell Atlantic, and then into Verizon. Against all odds, both services survived from 1939 to present. Long after my preferred weather source moved to CompuServe and then to various Internet sources, you could still get a report from (703) 936-1212. Long after we all got cell phones that synced with accurate tower time automatically, you could still call (703) 844-1212 and get that archaic, soothing voice and tone.

If you call those numbers now, you still get those age-old recorded services . . . but the weather report is preceded by a glib message indicating that Verizon’s time and weather services will cease to exist on June 1 of this year. Such is the price of progress, but I’m always kind-of sad to see these kinds of things go.

SPR Draw-Downs: Not Necessary (Yet?)

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In the aftermath of the 1970’s energy crisis, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). Signed into law by President Gerald Ford (R) in 1975, the law established the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which is intended to be used to help carry us through serious oil supply disruptions like the 1973-74 embargo. Stocked nearly to capacity with 726.5 million barrels of oil, the SPR is today the largest emergency fuel supply in the world.

In the event of short-term oil supply disruptions, the U.S. federal government can loan oil from the SPR to oil companies, who then repay the oil (with additional oil as interest) back into the SPR once the supply issues are resolved. Since 1996, this has been done about a dozen times due to pipeline blockages, channel blockages, accidents, and hurricanes.

Additionally, during more serious oil supply disruptions that threaten national security or safety, the government can sell oil from the SPR on the open market to ensure sufficient supply in the market. This has only been done twice, first during Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91 (21 million barrels), and second following the massive oil supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (11 million barrels).

The SPR has only been used once for reasons other than mitigating oil supply deficiency. In 1996-97, under President Bill Clinton (D), the U.S. government sold 28 million barrels on the open market for the purposes of deficit reduction. These sales both artificially reduced the federal deficit in those years, and helped push fuel prices below their natural equilibrium price. Those of us who enjoyed the spectacularly-low gas prices in the late 1990’s, and who remember the subsequent economic shock when they jumped up more than $0.30/gal. in a short time thereafter, can place at least some of the blame for the price instability on the government.

Read more . . .

Bypass TurboTax Browser Check in Chrome OS

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I’ve used Intuit’s TurboTax service to file my taxes for many years, and I’ve generally been pretty happy with them. Today, I decided to check my refund status with the IRS’s Where’s My Refund service, which requires me to enter my Social Security number, filing status, and refund amount.

Well, I don’t have my refund amount memorized, so I went to the TurboTax site to log in and get the magic number . . . only to discover that, according to Intuit, the version of the Chrome browser that ships in Chrome OS is officially unsupported. Usually in these situations, companies design their sites to let you continue anyway (with a warning that things might not work right). Intuit, however, decided to just completely block their site for users of officially unsupported browsers.

Normally I would just spoof the user agent of a supported browser, but Chrome OS doesn’t have any practical way to do this (and, frankly, I shouldn’t have to anyway). Luckily, however, Intuit didn’t spend a lot of time on their browser checker. It is very easy to bypass.

All you need to do is bring up the developer tools (in Chrome, wrench menu > tools > developer tools), click on ‘Console’ (at the far right), type or paste this command at the console, and press enter: greenStartAsPost(productid,true);

Tahdah! The browser proceeds to the login screen and everything seems to work as-expected from there on. Note, Intuit doesn’t support this version of Chrome because they haven’t tested it. Using an unsupported browser might not work right. I’m not responsible if you use this trick and your taxes get all screwed up ;-).

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.