Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Regular Posting (!!), Site Tweaks, and Shooting

Posted

It’s amazing; I’ve been making regular postings since the new site went live on April 1. I know I’ve been extremely lax in my posting for a while, and I really wanted to get back into a regular cycle. I’m not making any promises yet, but my target is a five-posts-per-week average. Wish me luck.

Speaking of the site, I’ve made a number of minor tweaks between the 4/1 launch and today. Most of them are probably invisible and unimportant to most users (like the site now passing the W3C XHTML and CSS validators), but I’m making occasional visible tweaks too so keep an eye out. If you find anything goofy or have any thoughts or recommendations, please email me or leave a comment.

Outside of site stuff, life is good and busy like usual. Melissa and I have decided to learn to shoot, so we’re going to be taking an introductory pistol class at a local range in May. Should be fun! I’ve been making good use of my First Amendment rights for years, I figured it was time to start making good use of my Second Amendment rights too!

Post-War Occupations: A History Lesson

Posted

I have long compared the Iraq War to World War II, at least in some respects, going all the way back before it started. Interestingly, the post-war occupation we are mired in now has even more parallels than the war itself. Big kudos to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, David Stafford at the Washington Post, and Jessica’s Well for illustrating this better than I ever could.

Thanks to our lackluster education system here in the United States, most of us don’t realize that the post-war occupation in Germany lasted ten years and was marked with violence, social strife, financial ruin, and more before that war-torn nation finally got back on its feet and our troops could go home. Meanwhile, if you view the Jessica’s Well link above, the press at home in the U.S. wasn’t too favorable toward the occupation—”Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe” blared the headline in the January 7, 1946, issue of Life Magazine.

So before you judge the post-war occupation in Iraq too harshly, read up on the history of post-war occupations in Germany and Japan following World War II. Keep it all in just a little bit of perspective.

Code of Virginia Supports Claims of Breakaway Churches

Posted

Following the U.S. Episcopal Church (part of the Anglican Communion) deciding to endorse homosexual activity and, in the process, abandon the Bible as guiding document of the church, eleven Episcopal congregations in Virginia voted (by membership majority) to leave the U.S. Episcopal Church and align themselves with a more Biblical Anglican group, the Congregation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).

While not challenging the right of a congregation to leave the denomination by majority vote if it chooses, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has chosen to try and exert property ownership over the eleven church properties in question and, essentially, evict the breakaway church congregations. This created an interesting legal conundrum—the deeds of the properties are held in trust by the Board of Trustees of the individual church (which seceded), but the trust beneficiary is the diocese and the diocese retains ownership by denomination policy in the event of a congregational secession.

Read more . . .

Browser Screenshot Bonanza

Posted

This will likely be of no interest to you unless you’re a nerd (so apologies in advance to my non-nerdy readers). As many of you know, I endeavor to make this site compatible with every major, current web browser—and even a few non-major, non-current web browsers—to ensure that you can enjoy my site no matter your platform or browser preference.

For every major revision of my site, I check it in all of the supported browsers to make sure it works as-expected. To do this, I need to run multiple desktop operating systems on my MacBook Pro (using both Parallels Desktop and Q [Mac Version of QEMU]). In addition, I check the site on two real mobile phones (running Windows Mobile 6 and Palm OS 5.4) and several phone development emulators on my computer (Apple iPhone, Blackberry, and OHA Android).

This isn’t new. What is new, however, is screenshots of the site in all supported browsers are now linked from supported browser list on the About the Site page. I only did one shot per browser, so multi-platform browsers (like Firefox) get one screenshot (usually from Mac OS X) as a representative sample. The only screenshot I couldn’t get was of Blazer in Palm OS 5.4 (the screen capture apps kept crashing the phone), so I just took a photo of the phone and cropped it down—that’s why it’s a lower quality shot than the rest.

Nerds, rejoice.

Your Tax and Tuition Money: Building Hotels

Posted

So, let’s say that you run a publicly-funded state university . . . you know, a university like George Mason University. The school is a public institution—owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia—that receives much of its money from state tax revenues and the rest from ‘use fees’ (tuition, etc.). If you could obtain, say, 30 million dollars for this school that you run, what would you use it for?

Dorm buildings? Parking lots? Academic programs?

Well, if you’re Alan Merten—the GMU president who presided over bank-breaking tuition increases (115 percent over the four years I attended)—you wouldn’t waste 30 million dollars on supporting the mission of the university or the needs of the tax- and tuition-paying public. Heck, he doesn’t even intend to waste it on the sports program. No, the Washington Post reports that GMU leadership wants to use our money to build a for-profit hotel and conference center.

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.