Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

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.

Read more . . .

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.

Firefox Download Day 2008

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I blogged last week about the Haiku Code Drive 2008, which was a cool way to support a great open source project but, as much as I love Haiku, it’s not a production product today. If you’re looking for a way to support an open source project that provides an immediate benefit (without opening your checkbook), then maybe Firefox Download Day 2008 is for you instead.

Firefox, of course, is the excellent open source web browser from Mozilla and it has been my primary web browser for some time. It’s fast, reliable, standards-compliant, extensible, and compatible with almost every platform you can imagine (even really obscure ones). For a few months now, I’ve been using betas and release-candidates of the upcoming Firefox 3, which will be released in the coming weeks.

So how does the Firefox team intend to celebrate Firefox 3 (and get some media attention)? By attempting to set a world record for downloads over a 24-hour period! Click the link, pledge your support, and when the release date comes give it a download (or six) to help them set the record.

The Martian Flagpole

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While it’s not one of the main topics I usually write about, I’ve always loved space exploration (too many hours watching Star Trek: The Next Generation as a kid). I follow the exploits of NASA, the ESA, the RFSA, and other space-faring agencies—public and private—with great interest.

The big news from space this week is that the Phoenix Lander has successfully landed on Mars (and you thought the big news was the toilet failure on the International Space Station). Mars is a particularly interesting planet, in that more than 50 percent of attempted missions to Mars end in failure—a much higher failure rate than you find in missions to any other planet or body in our solar system. Personally, I think somebody is shooting them down . . . but that explanation usually gets incredulous looks from the people I share it with.

Regardless, parts of the blogosphere are already noticing a curious feature in some of the photos being sent back from Mars by the lander. In browsing the gallery at the Phoenix Lander web site, I noticed the same curious feature (here and here). From a distance, it looks like a flagpole. Closer in, it looks either like a rock formation drastically different from those that surround it . . . or, dare I say, something artificial. Whatever it is, it doesn’t match its surroundings, and it has already gotten the attention of curious scientists (and space-watchers) around the world.

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.