Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Nikola Tesla Predicted Cell Phones in 1909

Posted

This is so cool. Nikola Tesla, the noted and influential inventor who contributed so much to early research and development of electricity, predicted cell phones . . . in 1909. It may have taken almost a century for his vision to come true, but it did.

Long before others were making similar predictions, Tesla said:

“It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument no bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles.”

You can view the whole 1909 New York Times article over at Recombu.

Predicting the future is very dangerous work—you are much more likely to be wrong than to be right—but when somebody really hits the nail on the head, especially so far ahead of time, it’s always a little spooky.

‘Gallery Shortcode Style to Head’ Version 2.0

Posted
Plugin Settings Screen

I just released version 2.0 of the ‘Gallery Shortcode Style to Head‘ plugin for WordPress. This is the first version with any major new features since I took over maintenance of the plugin.

By default, the plugin does the same thing it’s always done: when it’s activated, it moves the WordPress gallery CSS styles out of the body and into the head so it won’t break XHTML validation.

Version 2.0 gives you some additional flexibility though. There are two new options the plugin adds to Settings > Media in your your WordPress admin:

  • First, there’s a check-box that lets you disable the default styles entirely so you can control the gallery styles with your WordPress theme CSS, if you prefer.
  • Second, you can modify the default CSS styles to your liking right there in your WordPress admin.

Hope you like it. As always, contact me if you find any bugs or issues!

The Boy Who Cried ‘Car Bomb’

Posted

Perhaps it is a sign of the times; when I got the report last night that New York’s Times Square had been shut down due to a suspicious vehicle, I ignored it. Suspicious vehicles and packages shut down public places all the time. It has become an inconvenient routine in New York and here in the D.C. metro area, and it is hardly newsworthy when it happens. When the reports were updated to say that the vehicle had been ‘smoking,’ I immediately thought the worst: maybe they had forgotten to get their oil changed.

It wasn’t until I woke up this morning and learned that the vehicle was loaded with flammable material like propane and gasoline that I finally believed this was an apparent attempt at a terror attack. Judging by the lack of media attention last night, most people had the same or similar thoughts to mine. We assumed it was nothing.

This proves to me that we’ve gone too far. Our supposed preparedness for attacks and disaster has rendered us numb, and thereby less able to deal with them when they really occur. This isn’t unique to terror attacks, though. Think about this: In most office buildings, people ignore fire alarms. Every time the workers have heard the alarm go off, it’s been a pointless drill or a false alarm that just inconveniences them for no reason whatsoever. One day, when the building is really on fire, people will sit at their desks ignoring the alarms until they see smoke or some other indication there’s a real problem—and by then it might be too late. Have regular fire drills made us safer?

Read more . . .

Elizabeth Chang on Obama’s Census Form

Posted

Interesting piece in the Washington Post from Elizabeth Chang about President Barack Obama’s (D) census form. You see, Obama—who is the mixed-race son of an African father and a Caucasian-American mother—marked his race as ‘black’ on his census form.

People keep referring to Obama as our first black/African-American president, but in truth he is our first non-white president and our first bi-racial president. This is an equally important and notewothy accomplishment, but it has troubled me throughout the 2008 campaign and into Obama’s presidency that so few seem willing to report it accurately. Doesn’t accuracy count for anything any more? He’s not fully black; he’s not fully white. He is both and neither. He is mixed-race.

I’m a white American. My wife is an Asian-American (her family is of Chinese descent). If God blesses us with biological children, they will be bi-racial. I hope, in that case, that they will equally and equitably acknowledge and embrace both sides of their heritage. I’m disappointed that Obama chose not to do so. For Obama to mark his race as black and black alone is disingenuous at best. Personally, if I were on his mom’s side of the family, I’d be pretty pissed about it—especially considering that his mom’s side of his family is the side that raised him after his father walked out.

After long lobbying by mixed-race advocacy groups, the census form was revised in 2000 to permit the selection of multiple races and, if that wasn’t enough, it also has a blank to enter ‘other’ races than the ones listed. Obama should have availed himself of the opportunity to fill out the form honestly and accurately.

HP to Acquire Palm

Posted

Hewlett Packard (HP), the venerable technology firm and computer manufacturer, announced today that it will acquire smartphone-maker Palm for $1.2 billion. HP intends to expand support and development of Palm’s well-regarded WebOS mobile operating system, scaling it to new phones and other devices like tablet computers.

Palm has been faced with a number of challenges recently, and while WebOS is much-adored by tech pundits and users it has not met with wide success in the marketplace.

According to preliminary information, Palm will continue to operate as a semi-independent business unit within HP and will retain much of its current leadership team, including CEO John Rubenstein. Palm shareholders will receive $5.70 per share and the merger is expected to close in the third fiscal quarter of this year.

As a Palm user and long-time Palm fan, I am cautiously optimistic about this turn of events. Hopefully it will lead to better phones and faster development of my favorite mobile operating system.

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.